Business &amp; Branding

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Stay ahead in business: strategies and insights for success

<p>Getting noticed is a powerful tool for anyone looking to make an impact, and branding yourself is what helps you earn it. Personal branding is the art of defining and communicating who you are, your value and what you stand for.</p>



<p>Your personal brand is one of your biggest assets. The way people see you, both online and in real life, can shape your career, grow your network and open doors in the long run.</p>



<p>It doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur, professional or creative; learning how to<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-build-your-personal-brand/"> build your personal brand</a> will differentiate you from the rest. Solid branding strategies are useful for anyone who wants to be more visible, grow in their field or attract new opportunities. Just like <a href="https://www.djkhaledofficial.com/">DJ Khaled</a>, whose brand turned him from just another DJ into a global name, personal branding has power. Get inspired by the tips below to gain the kind of clarity and consistency that can transform your personal brand.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-brand-yourself-start-by-identifying-your-values"><strong>Brand Yourself: Start by Identifying Your Values</strong></h2>



<p>A personal brand begins with knowing yourself. When you're clear about your values, passions and strengths, it becomes easier to shape how others see you.&nbsp;</p>



<p>DJ Khaled is one of the most successful personal branding examples. His brand is built on positivity, hard work and self-worth.&nbsp;</p>



<p>His background as the son of Palestinian immigrants shaped his mindset. Watching his parents grow a tailoring business from the ground up taught him discipline and determination. That upbringing helped him stay focused on creating value and building something meaningful. You can start building that kind of clarity for yourself by looking inward and identifying what drives you:</p>



<p>Try these tips to identify your core values and what drives your brand:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Values Reflection: </strong>List five principles you live by (e.g., integrity, creativity, resilience). How do they guide you?</li>



<li><strong>Passion Check: </strong>What excites you so much that time flies by when you're doing it? This might be your career, a hobby or a cause that matters to you.</li>



<li><strong>Strengths Inventory: </strong>Ask three friends to describe your top qualities. Look for patterns in what they say.</li>
</ul>



<p>These exercises can help you create a strategic <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/writing-personal-brand-statement/">brand statement</a> that reflects you. When your values and strengths align, your brand becomes something people recognize and trust.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-personal-brand-development-defining-your-niche"><strong>Personal Brand Development: Defining Your Niche</strong></h2>



<p>A clear niche helps your brand stand out and speak directly to the people you want to reach. DJ Khaled carved out his space by blending hip-hop with motivation. His catchphrase, “Another one!”, isn’t just for show; it speaks to people chasing success and pushing for more. Even details like the lion statue in his garden reinforce his “king of the jungle” image, which connects with fans who see themselves as <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/when-leadership-meets-personal-branding/">leaders </a>in the making.</p>



<p>To figure out your niche, try these tips:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Align Your Brand With Your Strengths: </strong>Let’s say you’re a storyteller with an eye for design—you could specialize in visual branding for new businesses.</li>



<li><strong>Know Your Audience: </strong>Look at who responds to your work. Use social media polls, simple surveys or your comment section to find out who’s paying attention: professionals, parents, creatives?</li>



<li><strong>Test Content: </strong>Post consistently in the area you want to be known for. Then track what people engage with the most and adjust your focus from there.</li>
</ul>



<p>Khaled’s brand took off because he knew how to back people, energize them and keep things positive. That kind of focus helps turn followers into loyal fans.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-building-your-personal-brand-through-consistency-across-platforms"><strong>Building Your Personal Brand Through Consistency Across Platforms</strong></h2>



<p>Consistency in how you show up, your messaging, visuals and tone, all help people recognize and trust your brand. DJ Khaled says, “Consistency is key. To be the greatest, you got to put in that work.”</p>



<p>At the height of his Snapchat fame, his catchphrases, emojis and lion symbols were everywhere, and his followers always knew what to expect.</p>



<p>To stay consistent with your branding:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Stick to One Look: </strong>Pick colors, fonts and a logo that reflect your vibe, and use them across all platforms. Khaled uses the same branding strategy on his albums, merch and posts.</li>



<li><strong>Keep Your Voice the Same: </strong>Decide how you want to sound (for example, motivational, calm or playful) and stay in that lane.</li>



<li><strong>Stay on Topic: </strong>Share content that ties back to your core message. If your brand is about growth, don’t drift into unrelated trends.&nbsp;</li>
</ul>



<p>Consistency turns you into someone others remember and rely on. That kind of steady presence is what keeps a brand strong.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-emphasizing-authenticity-and-genuine-connection"><strong>Emphasizing Authenticity and Genuine Connection</strong></h2>



<p>Authenticity builds trust and keeps people coming back. DJ Khaled connects with his audience by being open about where he comes from; his parents’ hustle, his early days in music and the challenges he’s faced. He doesn’t pretend to be perfect.</p>



<p>That honesty draws people in.</p>



<p>To show up authentically:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Tell Your Story: </strong>Talk about your highs and lows. A quick post about a past failure and what you learned can inspire someone who’s going through it.</li>



<li><strong>Be Honest: </strong>Own up to mistakes. It shows you’re human, and people respect that more than fake perfection.</li>



<li><strong>Talk to People Like You Care: </strong>Respond to comments, answer questions and connect in your DMs. That one-on-one attention makes a difference.</li>
</ul>



<p>The more real you are, the stronger the bond you can build.&nbsp;</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-leverage-social-media-as-a-tool-for-enhancing-your-brand-nbsp"><strong>Leverage Social Media as a Tool for Enhancing Your Brand&nbsp;</strong></h2>



<p>Social media can take your brand to the next level when you use it with intention. DJ Khaled made Snapchat his playground for motivation and connection. He didn’t show everything, but he knew how to keep his vibe consistent and inspiring.&nbsp;</p>



<p>To make social media work for you:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Pick the Right Platforms: </strong>Find where your people are. Instagram is great for visuals, LinkedIn works for insights and TikTok helps you jump on trends.</li>



<li><strong>Give People Something They Can Use: </strong>Share helpful tips or tell stories that people can use for inspiration or problem-solving.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Mix It Up: </strong>Use different formats; videos, carousels, reels. Khaled blends music, motivation and family time to keep followers engaged.</li>



<li><strong>Show Up Regularly: </strong>Try to post three to five times a week. Consistency keeps you visible and builds trust.</li>
</ul>



<p>Check what’s getting the most engagement and tweak your approach. Social media gives you the spotlight: own it.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-networking-and-collaborating-for-personal-branding-success"><strong>Networking and Collaborating for Personal Branding Success</strong></h2>



<p>Some of the best personal branding success stories are built on connection. Relationships are key to building a strong personal brand. DJ Khaled’s career has flourished through collaborations with artists like Drake, Jay-Z and even motivational figures like Tony Robbins. He’s built a circle where partnerships lead to big moments and bigger wins.</p>



<p>To grow your network:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Be Active Online: </strong>Leave thoughtful comments on posts or share valuable content with your take.&nbsp;</li>



<li><strong>Work Together: </strong>A content creator might collaborate with a photographer or coach to co-host a live session.</li>



<li><strong>Show Up in Person or Virtually: </strong>Attend <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/networking-for-business/">networking </a>events, summits or workshops. Make it a point to follow up afterward to build connections.</li>
</ul>



<p>The goal is to build meaningful relationships that support growth. Keep your network strong, and your brand will keep expanding.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-evolving-your-personal-brand-over-time"><strong>Evolving Your Personal Brand Over Time</strong></h2>



<p>Personal brand development doesn’t end once you’ve built a name; it continues as you grow. DJ Khaled’s journey from DJ to mogul to motivational voice shows how a brand can expand without losing its essence. His empire, created with his sons Asahd and Aalam in mind, has grown alongside his shift toward more family-focused content. This adds a personal layer to his public image.</p>



<p>To evolve your brand:</p>



<ul class="wp-block-list">
<li><strong>Check in Often: </strong>Review your messaging every few months to make sure it still fits your goals.</li>



<li><strong>Showcase Growth: </strong>Add new layers, like public speaking or mentoring, to your story.</li>



<li><strong>Stay True to You: </strong>Make sure every shift still reflects your core values so your audience doesn’t get confused.</li>
</ul>



<p>Khaled’s move toward highlighting fatherhood didn’t change who he was; it added to it. Personal brands that grow with intention stay relevant and real.</p>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-take-action-and-build-your-personal-brand"><strong>Take Action and Build Your Personal Brand</strong></h2>



<p>Building a personal brand like DJ Khaled’s takes self-awareness, a clear niche, consistency, authenticity, smart use of social media, collaboration and growth.&nbsp;</p>



<p>He says, “Stay focused. When times get hard, go harder, when times [are] great, go even harder.” These words capture the mindset behind his success. Khaled’s ability to inspire through passion and unity stands out; he believes in others just as much as he believes in himself.</p>



<p>Start today by writing your brand statement, posting something meaningful or reaching out to a potential collaborator. If you’ve already started, you can also use these tips to enhance your personal brand​ and take it even further. Your brand is your legacy; build it with purpose.</p>



<p style="font-size:12px"><em>This article originally appeared in the September/October 2021 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em> <em>Photos by Ivan Berrios</em></p>

Want to grow your influence? Learn personal branding strategies inspired by DJ Khaled to define your niche, stay consistent and connect with your audience.

Hip-hop mogul and entrepreneur DJ Khaled has mastered personal branding, collaboration and self-motivation. | SUCCESS

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Personal Branding Inspired by DJ Khaled | SUCCESS

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Jonny Auping is a freelance writer based in Dallas.

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Elevate your lifestyle for success and happiness

<p>“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”</p>



<p>The philosophical query raises some interesting perspectives on reality and our participation within it. But there’s one part of the riddle that no one disputes: The tree did fall. Things happen in this world—<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/look-for-the-hidden-good-and-3-other-ways-to-react-to-problems/">many of them stressful</a> and polarizing—even if we make an effort to ignore them.</p>



<p>Now imagine a tree falls and everyone is around to hear it except for you. You’re on the outskirts of the forest, covering your ears. When you get back, everyone might be divvying blame for why the tree fell. They might be talking about who is most affected by it or what needs to be done in this post-fallen-tree world. That tree very well might be the talk of the forest. So if a tree falls under those circumstances, how hard are you going to have to work to ignore it, and what exactly are you missing out on?</p>



<p>For better or worse, the news <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/why-reading-news-is-important-for-managers/">is never going on vacation</a>. If you want a break from the news, even just to see what it might be like, you’re going to have to self-impose some sanctions. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/taking-break-news-can-improve-mental-health-study-finds-rcna51954" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">This kind of media avoidance</a> is actually a rather popular method for <a href="https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/11/strain-media-overload" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reducing media strain</a> on our mental health. If you <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/what-happened-when-i-ditched-technology-for-7-days/">expose yourself to less media</a> and reduce the degree to which you fill your mind with pollutants—politics, controversy, natural disasters and tragedy, for example—your mental health may improve, as the thinking goes. So, with a bit of trepidation, I accepted my <em>SUCCESS</em> editors’ proposal to actively avoid the news and see where it took me. I stuck my head in the sand for a month while, presumably, trees were falling all around me.</p>



<h2 id="h-avoiding-news-and-focusing-on-other-things">Avoiding news and focusing on other things</h2>



<p>Being relatively informed has always seemed to be something of a responsibility to me. Sure, we might see things that distress us on the news, but the notion that we can’t do anything about it feels like a slippery slope toward indifference. So normally, I’ve taken on the stress and anxiety that come with consuming the news.</p>



<p>It’s been reported that Warren Buffett <a href="https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/warren-buffett-says-anyone-can-achieve-success-by-following-1-simple-formula-he-uses-every-day.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reads six newspapers each day</a>. Personally, by breakfast I’ve normally managed to half-process a couple of headlines, which then bounce around my head as unformed thoughts while I brush my teeth or feed the cat. Without those complex stories to halfheartedly grapple with during my monthlong abstention from keeping up with the rest of the world, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/all-you-have-is-this-moment-how-will-you-choose-to-spend-it/">my focus was a little more attentively placed</a> on the things directly around me.</p>



<p><em>The leaves on the courtyard tree have started to grow back.</em></p>



<p><em>When was the last time I cut my fingernails?</em></p>



<p><em>Man, the cat has really gotten chubby.</em>&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-this-is-your-mind-on-news">This is your mind on news</h3>



<p>Do you remember those anti-drug PSAs they used to show us in school that went something like, “This is your brain on drugs”? Well, let’s take a second to talk about your mind on news.</p>



<p>Even when the actual news is neutral and objective, the implications of those hard facts are anything but. Two people can land on drastically different sides of the same bit of news. Processing our feelings on the news requires a sort of patient reckoning with how it affects us, how it affects others and a handful of other personal factors. That healthy mix of cynicism and <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-tips-to-keep-an-open-mind/">open-mindedness</a> is what places us a safe distance between mindless robot and conspiracy theorist on the spectrum. We might not consciously take in the news with this mindset, but the reasonable among us do it unconsciously every day.</p>



<h3 id="h-this-is-your-mind-when-you-avoid-news">This is your mind when you avoid news</h3>



<p>All that to say, even when you take your mind off the news, it’s still trained to think the same way. Scrolling through Twitter one day, dodging breaking news stories like I would <em>Game of Thrones</em> spoilers, I stumbled across a video of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHzOE_Uo1TQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a pack of Siberian tigers</a> in China playfully chasing a drone. Not wanting to bother my editor, I made the executive decision that this was not news.</p>



<p>That doesn’t mean I didn’t spend the next 10 minutes studying it like the Zapruder film of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Similar to news-based journalism, the video was susceptible to our own biases: Tigers are much cooler than lions, for instance, and I shouldn’t even have to say that. And it also prompts us to ask follow-up questions: For example, what exactly is China up to with this adorable drone footage?</p>



<p>My mind was off the news, but maybe this was something like withdrawal.</p>



<h2 id="h-feeling-removed-from-society">Feeling removed from society</h2>



<p>When I grabbed coffee with a reporter friend early in the month, I made the disclaimer that we couldn’t talk politics or current events, and I couldn’t help but be a little embarrassed when that restriction resulted in a few awkward silences. What else <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/blog/15-tips-to-get-better-at-small-talk">do you talk about</a> when you can’t talk about, well, what’s happening?</p>



<p>About a week in, I had started to become a bit unhinged. Feeling removed from society, I purchased Henry David Thoreau’s Transcendentalist manifesto, <a href="https://amzn.to/40wgy5L" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"><em>Walden</em></a>, in which he leaves civilization behind for two years in a cabin. I turned to <em>Walden</em> for some confirmation that being out of the loop could be a good thing. I made time in the following days to read Thoreau’s celebration of Mother Nature. I even read it outdoors, as one does.</p>



<p>Thoreau wrote, “And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper.” To him, the news was just a continual rerun of things we’ve already been told, to keep the cycle going. “If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,—we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications?” he asked.</p>



<p>It’s a fair notion from one of America’s great minds. But then again, Thoreau spent numerous hours a day hoeing beans in his garden, not because he needed that many beans but because he enjoyed the “inexhaustible entertainment which the country [offered].” So we were bound to have some philosophical differences. Besides, I was stubborn, and I don’t think I wanted to see the good in this exercise. The cumulative stress of avoiding the news and averting my eyes from the first few words of headlines was taking a greater toll on me than expected.</p>



<p>The events of <em>Walden</em> took place circa 1845-1847, long before the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle. But how does someone reach any level of intellectual stimulation in the 21st century when removed from current events? Early in the month, my response was that it wasn’t reasonably possible—I wanted my news fix.</p>



<h2 id="h-benefits-of-avoiding-the-news">Benefits of avoiding the news</h2>



<p>I can’t pinpoint the moment when the challenge of living without the news got easier. I just know it was at least a week or so before the moment I was willing to admit it.</p>



<p>That moment didn’t come until close to the very end of the month during a conversation with Neville, an acquaintance of mine who is a novelist, technology writer and tennis instructor. He let me finish describing the hardships and emotions of the experiment before casually mentioning that he had avoided the news for most of the past two years, briefly checking in the night of the 2016 election. He doesn’t even bother with the weather forecast, claiming people spend a disproportionate amount of energy planning around the weather compared to the chances it will affect them.</p>



<p>What shocked me most wasn’t that Neville had gone so long without the news. It was that I previously had a number of stimulating exchanges with him and had no idea. Meanwhile, I had dramatically disclosed my no-news policy in the majority of my conversations that month. I realized there was actually plenty to talk about without the news. There’s information all around us, even if it isn’t coming in the form of a news ticker or smartphone notification.&nbsp;</p>



<h3 id="h-freeing-up-headspace-by-avoiding-news">Freeing up headspace by avoiding news</h3>



<p>It was after my conversation with Neville that I thought back to my previous week or so living without the burden of the implications of current events. The withdrawals had begun to wane, and I hadn’t even realized it. My mind was a little <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/12-creativity-hacks/">more open to creativity</a> and introspection.</p>



<p>My 20-minute walks to the coffee shop were a bit more reflective. Three weeks in, I prepared chicken tacos with pico de gallo and fresh corn, not even recognizing that it was the first thing I had cooked outside of the same four meals in my dinner rotation in three months. I handwrote a script for a short film in mini-breaks from other projects. I tried to teach myself the ukulele—to my neighbors’ chagrin.</p>



<p>The truth is, I didn’t actually have more free time on my hands allowing me to do these things. I just had more headspace for them.</p>



<h2 id="h-a-new-outlook-to-news-consumption">A new outlook to news consumption</h2>



<p>When the month ended, I, unlike Neville, chose to go back to reading the news, but I was careful not to chase it or let it be the backdrop of everything else. I also came to terms with a tiny bit of my own self-righteousness.</p>



<p>The excuse of social responsibility was perhaps a bit of a façade on my part, a justification to keep doing things <em>exactly</em> how I had become accustomed to doing them. Thoreau, for example, lived quietly, spurning society’s news cycle, but history proved him to be a man with his fingers on the pulse of injustice. Thoreau was one of the 19th century’s prominent supporters of the abolitionist movement and an outspoken opponent of <a href="https://concordlibrary.org/special-collections/antislavery/39" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the Fugitive Slave Act</a>. He was an active citizen of the world more than he was a consumer of the news.</p>



<p>I spent the better part of a month treating the news like a drug I couldn’t live without, but I found out that it’s actually a lot like the weather. You can’t reasonably avoid every aspect of the news. Some of it will directly affect you. But every morning you have a day’s worth of life to live, even if it’s raining.</p>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the July 2017 <a href="https://store.success.com/by-media/success-magazine-july-2017-bishop-t-d-jakes.html">issue of SUCCESS magazine</a> and has been updated. Photo by GaudiLab/Shutterstock</em></p>

One writer was challenged to avoid the news for a month and write about their experiences. Here's what happened.

One writer was challenged to avoid the news for a month and write about their experiences. Here's what happened. | SUCCESS

What Happened When I Avoided the News for 30 Days

What I Learned When I Chose to Avoid the News | SUCCESS

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As you prepare to turn the calendar to 2019, consider our list of ideas to help you get better and feel better as long as the number of days in a year.

As you prepare to turn the calendar to the new year, consider our list of ideas to help you get better and feel better as long as the number of days in a year. | SUCCESS

365 Ways to Improve Yourself

365 Ways to Improve Yourself | SUCCESS

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<p>Francis Ngannou can talk for a long time without bringing up the thing that he does for a living.</p>



<p>Ngannou’s job is to fight people until he or they are physically unable or unwilling to keep fighting. He’s arguably better at it than anyone else on the planet. As I write this, he is currently the reigning heavyweight champion of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s premier mixed martial arts (MMA) league. But to whatever extent every 35-year-old’s life up to that point has been a journey, his has been something more epic, full of moments that would be turning points in the life of any person, and insurmountable challenges in the face of most.</p>



<p>A native of Cameroon in Central Africa, Ngannou first met serious adversity at age 6 when his parents divorced and he was sent to live with his aunt. His life was surrounded by the kind of poverty that can crush hope. At 10, he was working in sand mines in order to pay for school supplies. As a young man he made up his mind to go to Europe to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-ways-to-pursue-the-job-you-want/">pursue his dream</a> of being a professional boxer. The continent didn’t want him; he risked his life to be smuggled across borders, he was robbed and thrown in a Spanish jail, all to make it to Paris where he lived homeless at first.</p>



<p>This was all just to have the opportunity to fight men who knock other men unconscious for a living. An interview with this particular competitor doesn’t really <em>need</em> to get into the specifics of MMA. Ngannou talks about his past and his future with an almost shy thoughtfulness, as if he is realizing with every new interview that his story is remarkable.</p>



<p>“For you it might be a story,” Ngannou tells <em>SUCCESS</em>. “But for me, it’s my life.”</p>



<p>I think any writer trying to put together a profile of someone listens to the subject talk, and some sentences naturally stand out as quotes that help illuminate something they didn’t already know about the person. They might jot them down in a notebook or bold them as they type. You can find out a lot about people who might warrant a profile just by typing their names into Google. But until you’ve heard them react to a question in a way that makes you feel like you know them better than their Wikipedia page, how could you possibly write something that warrants a reader’s time?</p>



<p>The problem with the quotes Ngannou gave us, which accomplished that level of intimacy, is the way they made me feel. You’ll read his words shortly, and you’ll react however you react. Ngannou now has exactly the life that he once dreamed of living, but as much as his story is one of hope, it’s also a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/your-5-step-resilience-exercise-for-accepting-change/">story of acceptance</a> that his former life—the one he escaped—simply couldn’t get any better where he was, and that’s something that I have trouble framing as inspirational.</p>



<p>No one should be made to feel the way that Ngannou felt during his formative years (let alone do the things he did to survive), and I’m hesitant to suggest that What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger, as if I have any right to justify his struggles. I’m also wary of suggesting that, considering all that Ngannou’s been through, surely you can overcome whatever small-by-comparison challenges are in your way, because it feels like a cheaply condescending way to sum up someone’s life.</p>



<p>But I just kept listening for that thing I felt comfortable labeling as inspiration. Please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying; I find nearly everything Ngannou said admirable, impressive and commendable, and eventually, I did find something that inspired me and that I believe you could apply to your own life.</p>



<p>I’ll try to tell you as much as I know. Maybe you’ll be inspired all along the way, too.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FrancisNgannou_creditRandy-Raehnrich_feature2-1024x682.png" alt="" class="wp-image-62407"/></figure>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>Plenty of young boys look up to their fathers. Francis Ngannou was no different. His dad was tough. He presented as someone who wouldn’t back down to anyone, and entering a world that a 5-year-old Ngannou could already tell looked harsh, who else better to lead you through life?</p>



<p>“<a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/5-life-lessons-i-learned-from-my-father/">My dad was my hero</a>,” Ngannou says. “For me, he was the best man to ever exist.”</p>



<p>He was so young and he could only see things from the inside. Between his mother and his father, it felt like he had everything a child could need: love and protection. But his parents would soon divorce. He was sent to live with his aunt, but that didn’t last long. He was shuffled to various family members with good intentions, but they were struggling with their own poverty and raising their own kids, so Ngannou was treated like a burden they needed to shed after six months or so.</p>



<p>There are only so many concepts that a child can realistically comprehend as things that he possesses: a family. Routines or stability. A hero. And Ngannou had them all taken away. “I went from my little piece of heaven, which was my family, to see all that collapse and then deal with an entire world that was unknown to me, everything that wasn’t familiar to me.”</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>Five-year-olds don’t know all that much about what makes a hero.</p>



<p>Most of the things that Ngannou lost after his parents’ divorce were made fairly obvious to him by the absence of those things. But the thing he might have thought he would have been able to hold onto, the thing you’d think couldn’t be taken away from him, was his perception of his father.</p>



<p>That perception was confined to that slice of heaven. It was naive and clouded by what his father likely wanted his son to think of him. It wasn’t an accurate picture, and it hadn’t been exposed to reality.</p>



<p>Ngannou doesn’t get specific about what he learned about his hero, but he’s not particularly vague either. Among their village community, Ngannou’s father had a reputation for violence. To those who have a certain amount of fight inside them, there’s a fine line between toughness and anger, between being a protector and being a bully.</p>



<p>“He didn’t know how to handle things without using his punch,” Ngannou learned.</p>



<p>Taking a child away from what he knows is hard enough. But taking a belief away from that child when there’s so little he believes in the first place is disorienting. Ngannou was interested in competitive fighting from about as far back as he can remember, and his father was surely the original impetus for that. But fighting garnered his dad more disdain than respect.</p>



<p>“I remember at that specific moment, I made myself a promise not to have the same reputation as my dad, even though he was the guy that I loved,” Ngannou says.</p>



<p>It’s an almost unbelievable degree of awareness for a child to exhibit. It wouldn’t be the last moment of his past that he remembered so clearly. And it wouldn’t be the last of those moments that he followed up with a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-are-the-most-important-what-do-yours-say/">promise to himself</a>.</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-full"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/FrancisNgannou_creditRandy-Raehnrich_feature3.png" alt="" class="wp-image-62410"/></figure>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>Through these difficult early years, the young Ngannou <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-find-calm-during-times-of-chaos/">developed a coping mechanism</a> he called his “Future World.” It was escapism, but he tried to tell himself the far away world he was daydreaming of wasn’t some magical planet, but an ordinary life he would someday claim. It might only be a few minutes at a time, but everything was perfect; he had a family, he had a couple more pairs of clothes, he had enough food.</p>



<p>“As time goes by, that future world evolves. I think I still have a little bit of it now,” Ngannou says with an embarrassed laugh.</p>



<p>His actual existence was more grim. He was 10 when he started working in the mines, shoveling sand each day—a type particular to the region which is best suited for creating construction materials. He and many more pre-teens worked so they could afford what was needed to attend school. Ngannou has stated in interviews that he knows working in those mines made him physically strong, but it also robbed him of any bit of free time that he could have had as an adolescent. The teachers would kick him out of class for not having notebooks, pens and textbooks. He would return when he earned the money to buy what he was missing, but he would struggle to catch up to the lessons. Other kids treated him harshly.</p>



<p>“It wasn’t a great profile for a [potential] friend, so no one was excited to be a friend with that type of guy,” Ngannou says.</p>



<p>Another specific memory comes when he was 13. The Future Worlds weren’t enough and his sadness turned to anger. “I had been working for a couple years already in order to afford school supplies, and it still wasn’t enough,” he remembers. He was asked to leave class for not having the right book. “That day, something happened. I recounted my life and thought about everything that I’m doing, trying to figure out what I did wrong, and I didn’t see anything. The other kids didn’t deserve anything more than me.”</p>



<p>Ngannou describes this moment in great detail. He thought of the vacations he never went on. The weekends he didn’t enjoy. The luck that every other kid seemed to at least get the occasional taste of. He was barely a teenager, but he knew something had to change.</p>



<p>“I needed something extraordinary, so they could see me and realize that I wasn’t worthless,” Ngannou recalls thinking. “Everything that I did from there on was to make a point that <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-appreciate-yourself/">I’m not worthless</a>. I didn’t have a chance as a kid, but I didn’t deserve less.”</p>



<p>He was still set on avoiding his father’s reputation, but there was only one thing he imagined could make him extraordinary: boxing.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>When Ngannou was young he would beat up banana trees like they were punching bags, and his foster parents would yell at him because they needed those bananas. He idolized Mike Tyson, but as a teenager there were no outlets for him to train. There wasn’t a boxing gym within 15 miles of him, and between school and the mine, he hardly had spare time anyway.</p>



<p>At 17, Ngannou dropped out of high school because he couldn’t consistently afford it. At 22, he became determined to pursue boxing. America had always been his dream (he’d nicknamed himself “San Francisco” because it was a big American city), but that would have to wait. Reaching the first stepping stone would prove hard enough.</p>



<p>Being smuggled to Europe from Cameroon was so perilous that it’s tough for Ngannou to look back on it. “We put ourselves in danger,” he remembers. “Today, when I think about some of that stuff that we went through to get to Europe, honestly, if you put me in that position today, I’m turning around. I’m not doing it.”</p>



<p>He was a different person then, driven by anger and a dream to have some control over his life for the first time. These weren’t the risks of someone who wanted more. These were decisions made by someone who wanted a life worth his existence. He was robbed along the way. He spent two months in a Spanish immigration jail after arriving on the continent.</p>



<p>“When I got to Paris, I was homeless,” Ngannou says. “But I think that was one of the biggest moments in my life when I was happy.” Opportunity doesn’t mean success or security or even remotely fair treatment. But to someone who had never had it, <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/4-ways-to-invite-opportunity-into-your-life/">opportunity was everything</a>.</p>



<p>He found a local fight trainer who convinced him to switch from boxing to MMA and let him sleep in his gym. He stayed in Paris and mastered the sport, developing the kind of power that turned heads quickly—UFC this year claimed that the 6-foot-4, 263-pound Ngannou is the hardest puncher in recorded history.</p>



<p>When he was 27 he participated in his first paid fight. At 29 he landed his first UFC contract.</p>



<p>In December 2015, Ngannou flew to Orlando for a fight. A Cadillac Escalade was waiting for him. The driver took his luggage and drove him to a Hyatt hotel. “That was the moment I felt like I made it,” he says with a big grin. It was his first time in the country he’d always dreamed of going to, and a complete contrast from his arrival in Paris.</p>



<p>Just over five years later, he is the sport’s champion and making millions of dollars every year. He says the night he won the heavyweight championship this past March, he imagined kids from his childhood back in Cameroon saying, “Actually he’s not bad.” He did something extraordinary just to prove that he had value.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>The shattered image of his father’s reputation. The Future Worlds. The belief that his peers saw him as worthless. The obstacles he navigated. It’s not that I don’t find those things inspirational or would dispute that they made him stronger. It’s just that I don’t think it’s for me to say that his current success was worth all of that. There’s not a lot that’s worth a child feeling worthless.</p>



<p>What inspires me is how he uses his past to inform the belief in his future. Ngannou looks at what he’s been through matter-of-factly. He knows exactly what he’s capable of. He has the best kind of pride: the kind that makes him approach the rest of life with confidence instead of desperation.</p>



<p>“That’s how I know that I am a successful man, not because of what I have but because of where I’m at with my mindset,” he says.</p>



<p>He claims that he could go from the top back to the bottom and he would feel capable of navigating his struggles. “Obviously we always do our best,” he explains. “We <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/10-powerful-ways-to-stand-up-for-yourself-in-any-situation/">don’t have control</a> over what will happen. But what I do know is that I will overcome it.”</p>



<p>If you’ve seen Ngannou fighting, it’s hard to imagine someone taking his UFC Heavyweight Championship away from him, but it will happen eventually, because that’s the sport. The other competitors have bricks for fists, too, and one punch can end even a great champion’s night.</p>



<p>But he thinks of himself as more than a fighter, and whatever happens after his reign, good or bad, he’ll be calmly prepared for it. That’s inspiring to me.</p>



<p>“I will keep overcoming challenges,” Ngannous says. “<em>That’s</em> my title. That’s my trophy. Nobody can take that from me. I own that.” </p>



<p style="font-size:12px"><em>This article originally appeared in the January/February 2022 Issue of </em>SUCCESS<em> magazine. Photos © Randy Raehnrich</em></p>

His story is one of hope, but it’s also a story of acceptance that his former life simply couldn’t get any better where he was, and that’s difficult to frame as inspirational.

His story is one of hope, but it’s also a story of acceptance that his former life simply couldn’t get any better where he was, and that’s difficult to frame as inspirational. | SUCCESS

Francis Ngannou Is the Reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion, But That's Not What Makes His Story Worth Telling

Francis Ngannou Is the Reigning UFC Heavyweight Champion, But That&#8217;s Not What Makes His Story Worth Telling

Beyond the Championship: Francis Ngannou's Inspiring Story

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The New Normal: Finding Routine and Perspective in Coffee Shops

Future of Work

Future of Work Archives

Future of Work | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

<p>Terrible breakfast sandwiches. Over-caffeinated jitters. Genial small talk. Awkward exploratory Tinder dates happening across the room.</p>



<p>Put together, these things might constitute an array of distractions, and they don’t sound like the <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-enneagram-at-work/">ideal work environment</a>. But they make up the sights and sounds of coffee shops all around America, from the shiny, generic corporate chains to the most pretentious hipster paradise. As a freelance writer, they have been my not-so-personal offices for the majority of the past eight years.</p>



<p>It started as a way to shake things up early in my career when I was typically writing belabored essays and trying to convince editors to publish them. But like anything you repeat enough times, it went from habit, to routine, to full-blown dependency. I spent more than four hours at a coffee shop an average of six days a week for a significant portion of my 20s.</p>



<p>If I thought hard enough, I could probably tell you which coffee shop I was in when I wrote any given story over the years. That nearly suffocating aroma of coffee beans that attacks your nostrils the moment the door closes behind you sharpens my focus like a bell being clanged at Pavlov’s pup. I know more than 15 baristas by name. I could tell you what some of them were studying in school. I could give you the gist of one’s book proposal. My only rebuttal to a lecture about how much money I’ve wasted on coffee is how much free coffee I’ve received as result of the rapport I built up with those same baristas.</p>



<p>That type of workday was rendered impossible when the pandemic hit. In obvious ways, I was lucky; my <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/digital-nomad-what-you-need-to-know/">job can be done literally anywhere</a>. It wasn’t made obsolete by the shuttering of any physical space. But at the same time, those coffee shops were where I chose to work.</p>



<p>I can’t imagine anyone having made it through 2020 without some sort of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-improve-your-mental-health/">mental health struggle</a>. And yet they say that, despite the very real health and financial consequences of a pandemic, extreme events tend to exaggerate difficulties that are already there, simmering under all the coping mechanisms we’ve created to keep them at bay.</p>



<p><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/11-steps-to-build-an-evening-routine-and-why-you-should/">Routines can be powerful</a> elixirs for a number of problems. I’d recommend them to anyone. But when you find something that works, you don’t usually question why exactly it works, and you probably don’t want to dig deeper to see that the problem is more complicated and painful than you’ve labeled it.</p>



<p>My entire work process was upended. But I kept opening up my laptop and typing and doing the work. Writing is writing no matter where you do it. My editor doesn’t care where I was when I wrote this. You might not either.</p>



<p>After I was vaccinated, it felt like I was at a crossroads. I wanted to figure out if going to coffee shops would help me feel engaged with the work once again, if I could handle being around strangers after so much isolation.</p>



<p>So I dipped my toe back into the water with a three-day experiment, at three different coffee shops. It’s not that I wanted writing to be easy again; it never was. I just wanted to figure out what part of me those coffee shops were putting a band-aid over before they were taken away.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>The first day, I eased back into the experience. I went to a coffee shop that I had walked to plenty in the previous few months to grab coffees to go. I went with a plan of doing mostly busy work. Nothing too tough on the brain; the sort of writing you can do while listening to catchy music. The goal was to reacquire a comfort level with being around people and focusing.</p>



<p>I tried to settle in, but my people-watching skills were out of practice. I found myself staring at people, and not liking them for arbitrary reasons. There were two friends meeting up who each vented about different topics, both clearly not listening to what the other was saying. Another customer talked to the barista for 45 minutes in some vaguely non-platonic way. These types of people used to be interesting and innocently funny to me. <em>Everyone has their own story</em> I’d think.</p>



<p>Some guy wearing a weird, fashionable beanie in 84-degree weather was sitting across from me. Thoughts arose like, <em>Why is he wearing that hat?</em> or <em>Who does he think he is?</em> or <em>Could I pull off a hat like that?</em> or <em>Where do you even get a hat like that?</em> or <em>Would it be weird if I asked him where he got his hat?</em></p>



<p>Still, I stayed. And I chipped away. And those people left and were replaced by new people. And I became less annoyed. And I realized people-watching is not person-watching. You’re not supposed to home in on one person. You’re present at a moment in time of their lives and you’re getting random little snapshots.</p>



<p>Later, I thought that it was OK that those two venting friends weren’t really listening to each other. At least they had someone in their lives to vent to. And, you know, my relationship was once vaguely non-platonic. And I don’t need another hat.</p>



<p>Realistically, I didn’t get all that much work done that day. But I got a little bit done, and navigating the relatively unexciting events around me was enough to distract from the existential dread that tends to come out of showing up each day to <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-to-align-your-career-with-your-personal-definition-of-success/">push an independent career forward</a>.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>The next day, I went to a coffee shop that doubles as a bar at night. By the time I got there at noon, a few people were already leaning into the bar aspect more than the coffee aspect. But I was ready. People can be loud, but they can’t be much louder than Fleetwood Mac on my headphones.</p>



<p>This day was less about being comfortable around people. It was about a physical reset. It was about being away from home. You might be able to control the elements in your house, but that doesn’t inherently make focusing easier. Sometimes going to work is the only way to make yourself do the work.</p>



<p>I met my girlfriend early in the pandemic and we moved in together in January while still mostly quarantining from the outside world. The journey has been fun, and great, and fulfilling and pretty much without a hitch. But she’s also a writer, and that sort of turned us into co-workers even though we’re writing about different things for different outlets. Frustration might be a little contagious. Procrastination is definitely contagious. Being around someone you love talking to is certainly a distraction. I realized, maybe, even if she wouldn’t admit it, that she could benefit from having me out of the house during her peak writing hours.</p>



<p>This coffee shop was a 25-minute walk from our place, and that was intentional. Walking to a coffee shop is the best possible option if the weather is nice. The walk prepares me. But it’s the walk back that salvages my evening. The <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/11-strategies-for-managing-stress/">stress of work</a> is hard to shake, and a long walk home gets it out of your system better than a 5-foot walk to the couch.</p>



<p>I did real work at the coffee shop bar. I even filed a complicated story to an editor. I was stressed that it might not be good enough, or it might not be what that editor wanted (it was not; I had to rewrite much of it the next week), but shortly after filing that story, I walked home and the worry slowly seeped out of my mind. I got back and felt briefly separated from work. We had a nice night.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>The third day I went to one of those coffee shops full of people like me. That is to say, potentially insufferable people who are trying to make things happen and look eager to tell you about it. This particular place had the phonetic spelling of its name on the coffee cups if that helps give a sense of the general vibe.</p>



<p>I had quite a bit to work on. I was overwhelmed and not confident. I didn’t think I could finish the work I had, and I didn’t know how I would get more work when I did finish. These aren’t rare thoughts in my freelance career.</p>



<p>Routines are good because stability is necessary. But sometimes you fill the day with a plan; the good thoughts aren’t worth the bad thoughts, and packing a structure tightly into your day is the best way to run from them both as best you can. The thing about finding love during the pandemic is that it gave my life one incredible bright spot big enough to let me confront the parts of me that I didn’t want to (to some degree that I wouldn’t dare venture to quantify, she probably saved me from a darkness that I had to reckon with when my routine was stripped away).</p>



<p><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/lets-stop-talking-about-impostor-syndrome/">Impostor syndrome</a>. Clinical anxiety. The signs of moderate depression and a number of the symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder. The impossible-to-quiet thought that the people I care about will cease to be a part of my life. They’re all right there, somewhere in my brain. Some people have it so much worse, but everybody has something or some nagging combination of things. Work can’t solve those things. But how you fill your days is proof that you’re more than the things that scare you.</p>



<p>I wrote some of what I needed to that day. Not all of it. The people around me were all doing their own thing, and it felt good to be sharing that space. A graphic designer was helping someone with their website. Two friends were meeting for lunch on a work break. Two substitute teachers were comparing lesson plans.</p>



<p>By the end of that day, I remembered why I went to coffee shops. It was more than routine. It was always a reminder that your work exists outside of the four walls in which you perform it. Everyone’s does, and after a <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-not-so-lonely-road/">year of isolation</a>, it’s probably easy to forget that. Your work matters, otherwise you wouldn’t be getting paid for it. The key is to be proud of it, but not be precious with it. Everyone is trying to play their own part.</p>



<p>I walked home that day knowing that I worked, but more importantly, knowing that I’d be back. I always come back. Because I want to.</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>I know I said that you probably don’t care where I am as I was writing this, but just in case you’re curious I thought I’d let you know. I’m on an airplane, because it’s safe to travel again, and I thought I’d enjoy that. And I can write from anywhere.</p>



<p>These days I’m just trying to stack good work and kind decisions, and whatever that adds up to is enough.&nbsp;You might see me at a coffee shop one of these days. I might look pretty focused, but I’ll be totally honest with you: I probably want you to say hello. </p>



<p style="font-size:12px"><em>This article originally appeared in the September/October 2021 issue of SUCCESS magazine. Photo by @crystalmariesing/Twenty20</em></p>

A return to working in coffee shops shows that little by little, life and work are warming up again.

A return to working in coffee shops shows that little by little, life and work are warming up again. | SUCCESS

The New Normal: Finding Routine and Perspective in Coffee Shops | SUCCESS

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Money

Money Archives

Achieve financial success and freedom

<p>Mark Cuban’s money has publicly been up for grabs to anyone with the right idea and business plan ever since he joined the cast of <em>Shark Tank.</em> He has invested tens of millions of dollars in dozens of different companies that seemingly have nothing in common with each other. Some of those ventures have thrived and some failed to reach the potential he saw in them, but each piqued his interest with an initial pitch.</p>



<p>Taking a look at some of Cuban’s most noteworthy <em>Shark Tank</em> investments might not show identical patterns—he’s too outside-the-box of a thinker to be predictable with his money—but it might be a glimpse into what a good idea looks like to a man who has heard just about every type of pitch imaginable.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Ten Thirty One Productions</h3>



<p><em><strong>Expanding the next big thing…</strong></em></p>



<p>Melissa Carbone essentially tried to scare Cuban and the rest of the Sharks into investing in Ten Thirty One Productions, an entertainment company that started with a Los Angeles-based haunted hayride. She brought a zombie and a possessed scarecrow with her to their <em>Shark Tank </em>pitch.</p>



<p>But Cuban wasn’t afraid to partner with Carbone. In fact, he ultimately agreed to what was, at the time, the biggest investment in the show’s history: $2 million for 20 percent of the company. Ultimately, the big motivator seemed to be expansion; what Ten Thirty One Productions had mastered in Los Angeles could someday be replicated in places like San Francisco, Dallas, Miami, New York and Nashville. Some people like to be scared. We’re talking truly terrified, and that’s one thing that you can’t manufacture for yourself. It takes a horrific experience, and for better or worse, Ten Thirty One Productions knows how to provide that to anyone brave enough to step into one of their attractions. Cuban called it the “next big thing,” and quickly convinced them to plan an expansion to Dallas where he lives.</p>



<h3>UniKey Technologies&nbsp;</h3>



<p><em><strong>A hustler makes things happen...</strong></em></p>



<p>Every entrepreneur has their wheelhouse. Cuban’s is technology or software that’s on the brink of becoming ubiquitous. UniKey Technologies came to <em>Shark Tank</em> with the technology and plan to provide customers with a smartphone-based electronic door locking system. It was a product that could render physical keys obsolete.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But as much as he likes good technology, he knows someone resourceful enough to deliver results. Cuban wore a knowing smile on his face when he referred to the company’s founder and pitch man, Phil Dumas, as a hustler. And Dumas, leaning into the role, claimed that his previous title was VP of MIH (Making It Happen). Ultimately he lured Cuban on with a spot on the company’s board.</p>



<h3>CoolWraps</h3>



<p><em><strong>Owning a good idea...</strong></em></p>



<p>Cuban wanted to know the history of CoolWraps when Jeffery Miller pitched it on <em>Shark Tanks</em>. It certainly seemed like a good idea—a gift bag that you can put any reasonably-sized gift inside before shrinking the bag with a hairdryer to fit the gift. But why had Miller come up with the product 10 years ago and not made a single sale?</p>



<p>The truth was that he was no salesman. He couldn’t get his product in front of investors, and he couldn’t get adequate loans from the bank. But he did have one thing: a utility patent preventing any other company from taking his idea. So Cuban stepped in, knowing his investment led to stake in an idea with its own cornered market of potential. Cuban’s willingness showed that, while business savvy and salesmanship go a long way, a unique idea is a great place to start.</p>



<h3>DUDE Products</h3>



<p><em><strong>Making smart moves after the investment...</strong></em></p>



<p>Cuban isn’t hung up on partnering with the most glamorous of products. He invested in DUDE Products because he saw the vision of its creators to rebrand flushable baby wipes for men. The founders, longtime college friends, were recent college graduates who were brainstorming in their apartment. Perhaps that tugged at the nostalgia of Cuban who made his name as an entrepreneur at the same point in his life. It led to an investment for stake in the company.</p>



<p>He recently applauded DUDE Products in their mid-quarantine decision to amp up advertising while other companies took time to reassess. In a short stretch when toilet paper had become something of a commodity, DUDE Products introduced their business to a broader range of customers.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>The Red Dress Boutique</h3>



<p><em><strong>Not looking for hand-holding….</strong></em></p>



<p>Sometimes the best way to get someone to invest in you is to make it clear that you don’t need them for <em>everything</em>, you need them for <em>something. </em>The Red Dress Boutique was already making millions of dollars when Diana Harbor and her husband Josh came on <em>Shark Tank</em> to pitch their online retailer. “I think the biggest thing is that [Cuban] saw that we were already an established company,” Josh told CNBC. “We weren’t starting from scratch.”</p>



<p>The company wasn’t a finished product, but Cuban was putting his money into something much further along than the idea phase. “We weren’t in desperate need for someone to hold our hand through everything, but we absolutely were seeking his guidance. We wanted a partner that could help us through some high-level decisions during the massive growth that’s coming.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Melni Connectors</h3>



<p><em><strong>No one understood Cuban either….</strong></em></p>



<p>Cuban called the founders of Melni Connectors “delusional” when they told him they valued their company at $10 million. Their product was fairly technical; a faster, cheaper, safer electrical connection technology. The average person might not quite understand its utilitarian benefits. That included most of the Sharks.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Then again, Cuban said that no one really understood his first entrepreneurial ideas in the early days of the internet. The important thing was that they understood how their product could make an entire industry’s life easier. So he invested $500,000 in the company.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>iLumi</h3>



<p><em><strong>Making the investor prove his worth….</strong></em></p>



<p>iLumi makes color tunable LED smart bulbs that can be turned on or change colors via smartphones. They can be paired with smart speakers and serve as alarm clocks or regular speakers that sync with the light and color of the room. Cuban knew he wanted in because he felt he was the one who could push them forward. “The biggest upside of this company is going to come from ongoing developments,” he said on <em>Shark Tank.</em></p>



<p>The negotiator that he is, he wanted more than the 15 percent stake in the company. He insisted on 25 percent for his $350,000 investment. So iLumi actually wanted to know how he added value to <em>them</em>. They asked Cuban who he could call on the phone that could “change the game for us?” His answer was simple: “There’s nobody that’s not going to take my call.” It’s all they needed to hear, and the two sides did business.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong><em>Read next: </em><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/forget-2020-mark-cubans-secrets-to-focusing-on-the-future/">Forget 2020: Mark Cuban’s Secrets to Focusing on the Future</a></strong></p></blockquote>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>Photo by Matt Doyle / Getty Images</em></p>

What does a good idea look like to a man who has heard every type of pitch imaginable? For a glimpse into what piques Mark Cuban’s interest, these are some of his most noteworthy ‘Shark Tank’ investments.

What does a good idea look like to a man who has heard every type of pitch imaginable? For a glimpse into what piques Mark Cuban’s interest, these are some of his most noteworthy ‘Shark Tank’ investments. | SUCCESS

How to Get Mark Cuban’s Money

How to Get Mark Cuban’s Money | SUCCESS

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<p>The <em>SUCCESS</em> magazine November/December <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-payal-kadakia-disrupted-the-fitness-industry/">cover story</a> of Payal Kadakia examined all the factors that went into Kadakia’s big idea to start ClassPass, a booking website that organizes disparate fitness classes in a given area into one place, and the reasons why her life up to the point of coming up with that idea equipped her to execute it.</p>



<p>But what it doesn’t get into is how to react when the whole world changes and your great idea gets disrupted along with just about everything else in life. Behind Kakakia’s vision and leadership, ClassPass was growing tremendously coming into this new decade. At the beginning of 2020, the company received additional funding that put its valuation at over $1 billion. Shortly after, as was likely the case for you in 2020, things became very difficult.</p>



<p>“We lost close to 95% of our business in a week,” Kadakia says, matter of factly. </p>



<p>Fitness classes in the world of social distancing aren’t necessarily impossible, but they’re certainly difficult. Fitness studios, especially in crowded cities, can be small. People are staying home, and even with the right precautions, it takes time for some to become comfortable moving and sweating around others. </p>



<p>So what could ClassPass, and Kadakia, do to survive?</p>



<h3>1. Think back to how you solved old problems.</h3>



<p>Everything that’s been successfully built stands on a foundation of former dilemmas that required creative problem-solving. </p>



<p>Back in the early days of ClassPass, when the company had been struggling to reach a large customer base, it finally received some buzz and traction when they implemented an initiative called “PassPort.” It essentially allowed customers to dabble with different classes for 30 days. Customers did like the variety, but they didn’t seem to be sticking with any of the studios, who Kadika looked at as their partners. She was trying to look ahead and she knew she had to do away with something that was, at least for the moment, working. </p>



<p>“My team was like, ‘Payal, why are we changing this? We <em>just</em> changed it.’ You just have to keep fighting and I’m glad we did.” </p>



<p>Adapting, even if it just looks like “switching things up” to the outside, is how you sustain success. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t feel like pulling teeth sometimes. “That one was hard because we had customers coming in the door and we had progress with reservations. But when I fast forwarded to the long-term business model, it wasn’t going to work.” </p>



<h3>2. “Go back to your North Star.”</h3>



<p>The execution phase of an idea, project or business never seems to end. You build and then you grow, and that’s that. At least until something drastic turns your business model upside down. When that happens, you might have to step away from the execution and get back to the idea. “This is when you have to go back to your True North,” Kadakia says about COVID-19’s upending of our previously understood society. “Just because there’s a global pandemic doesn’t mean your True North changes. How you approach it might, so just figure out how to keep giving whatever you set out for people.” </p>



<p>How ClassPass works is different from why ClassPass exists. Anyone can explain the former, but only Kadakia truly knows the latter. It comes back to why PassPort would never truly work.</p>



<p>“I didn’t want to change someone’s life for a month,” Kadika said. “I wanted to affect their entire lifestyle and keep their passions in their lives.” </p>



<p>ClassPass was always trying to make fitness classes more available to more people who had busy lives, unique circumstances, and needed a physical and mental release regularly. If they needed that before a pandemic, they surely need it during one. Circumstances don’t change your North Star, they just change the route you take to get there. </p>



<p>“Your environment has an impact, but at the end of the day it’s your mind. If you can keep your mind engaged into things you love, it doesn’t really matter where you’re at.”</p>



<h3>3. Who have you always needed?</h3>



<p>Remember when Kadakia did away with PassPort, in part because it wasn’t in the studios’ best interest? Well, those studios are the ones who have really struggled throughout everything going on. Without them, what is ClassPass?</p>



<p>“We realized that one thing we need to focus on during all of this is keeping our partners afloat,” Kadakia said. “We did a partner donation fund where customers can donate.” </p>



<p>The studios were the most basic part of the original idea. So Kadakia looked out for them. </p>



<h3>4. Now get back to executing.</h3>



<p>Having revisited your idea and reestablished your North Star, now you get back to the execution fund. “We’re used to pivoting overnight, so we flipped our entire product to on-demand video.”</p>



<p>Now, ClassPass offers over 50,000 classes a day that customers can livestream in their homes. That money goes right back to the studios. “We know it’s not the same experience as going in person,” Kadakia admits. “And we can’t wait for people to do that again, but we had to figure out what tools we still had. “We still have the same mission: Get people to move, be passionate and work out. That doesn’t change.”</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong><em>Read next:</em></strong> <strong><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/how-payal-kadakia-disrupted-the-fitness-industry/">How Payal Kadakia Disrupted the Fitness Industry</a></strong></p></blockquote>



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<p><em>Photo by <strong>©</strong> Christopher Patey</em></p>

How the ClassPass founder made flexibility part of her company’s DNA

How the ClassPass founder made flexibility part of her company’s DNA | SUCCESS

Payal Kadakia: 4 Steps to Perfecting the Pivot

Payal Kadakia: 4 Steps to Perfecting the Pivot | SUCCESS

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Professional Growth

Professional Growth Archives

Professional Growth | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

<p>When I sat down in a quiet place to speak with Sinek, who had granted me an hour over the phone, I had just recently finished reading his latest book,&nbsp;<em><a href="https://simonsinek.com/product/the-infinite-game/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Infinite Game</a></em>, which challenges the finite mindsets we tend to apply to the parts of our lives that are actually meant to go on forever, even after we’re gone.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But the thing about forever is that it’s a really, really long time. And when you read 11 chapters about building an infinite mindset, then go into a conversation with the man who wrote them, the notion of time is probably going to be on your mind.&nbsp;</p>



<p><em>What even is an hour to this guy? Are my questions forward-thinking enough? Will this story have value in five, 10, or 20 years?&nbsp;</em></p>



<p>Ultimately, Sinek is an optimist. What you talk about with him will come back to particular goals; finding solutions and revealing truths. A trained ethnographer, he’s written five books including two&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>&nbsp;bestsellers, and his first TED Talk in 2009 became the second most viewed of all-time.</p>



<p><em>The Infinite Game</em>&nbsp;concedes that there are, of course, finite games that exist. A basketball game, for example, is finite. There are specific rules and you absolutely should be planning to have the most points by the time the fourth quarter ends. Most of life doesn’t actually work that way, however, even though we tend to pretend it does. Too often we tackle aspects of life as if we can escape them with a victory. But to face things like they will never end, to create something worthy of being carried on by someone after us, we can inspire people to follow, join, and support us.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So, the phone rang, and it was Sinek, and I knew there were only two options for me:</p>



<p>There’s the finite approach to an interview with Simon Sinek, and the obligations of that approach can’t be disregarded: I have a story to write for this magazine, and my editor expects to get it at a certain time containing an agreed upon amount of words.</p>



<p>But there’s also an infinite mindset to engaging a resource like Simon Sinek. That mindset requires me searching myself for a bigger&nbsp;<em>why</em>. Not for why I’m writing&nbsp;<em>this</em>&nbsp;story but why I write in general, why I want people to read the words I write. An infinite minded conversation with Sinek might be all over the place, because you’re going to want to figure a lot of stuff out. You never know when it might help you.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>One fact about&nbsp;<em>The Infinite Game</em>&nbsp;is that it was supposed to come out in December of 2018. His publishers put “amazing pressure” on Sinek to get it out in time for all the readers looking to start 2019 with the next book by the best-selling leadership author.&nbsp;</p>



<p>It wasn’t that Sinek had no intention of&nbsp;<em>trying</em>&nbsp;to meet that deadline, but he has a philosophy about deadlines. “There are deadlines that actually matter, and there are arbitrary deadlines,” he says. Most people who have signed a book deal with a major publishing house wouldn’t consider the deadline given to them as “arbitrary.” But that deadline was placed with narrowly focused intentions, and he wasn’t about to meet it at the expense of his own goals, which went well beyond the sales projections for January 2019. “When they were trying to tell me that the book has to be done by that date, they pulled that out of their ass.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Sinek set about writing the book with his own intentions. He wanted to write a book that could articulate his ideas and was bolstered by unique examples. He wanted to make sure it represented the way he looked at the world. He wanted it to be good, and to sell a lot of copies, and he wanted it to have the kind of success and impact on readers that theoretically could enable him to write another book down the line. Books, by their very nature, are permanent. Once it’s in a reader’s hands it can’t be revised. But that permanence is powerful, too. It might be picked up by someone decades after it’s written, and in that year—in that moment—it can have as much resonance on a reader as anything going in his or her life or in the world around them.</p>



<p>For all of those reasons, Sinek pushed the deadline three times (“Or, in their words, I missed the deadline three times”) until he had written a book he was pleased with. All of those reasons, you might notice, are to the benefit of all parties involved: Sinek, the publishers, and the people who invest money and time reading it. Infinite-minded decisions tend to benefit the most people, and thus tend to be the most productive decisions.&nbsp;</p>



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Copy-of-Untitled-1-2-1024x695.png" alt="" class="wp-image-51663"/><figcaption><em>Photo courtesy of Simon Sinek</em></figcaption></figure>



<p>Not everyone has the luxury of disregarding the deadlines placed upon us, even if they are arbitrary. But we often place deadlines on ourselves that risk jeopardizing the bigger picture and it’s healthy to acknowledge the difference between those and the deadlines that actually are immovable. “I have to buy a birthday present by the time of my nephew’s birthday,” Sinek acknowledges. “The point we’re trying to make here is that not all deadlines are created equal. The deadline describes many things even though we only have one word for it.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>It’s not that time exists differently for Sinek or that he is encouraging anyone to be difficult to work with. Long-term motivations can change short term actions, but they don’t disregard them. Infinite-minded motivations require planning, too. The reason that Sinek can get away with telling his publishers that he needs another year is because they know he’s not thinking about what can get accomplished in that extra year. He’s thinking much further than that.&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>A conversation with Sinek can manage to be both painfully matter-of-fact and deeply philosophical, sometimes in the same breath. Perhaps that’s because, to him, his points are not discoveries unlocked by intellect but rather somewhat obvious truths that are often shrouded by a lack of transparency. “I just want people to be honest,” he told me more than once with a sense of aggravation in his voice.</p>



<p>See, an infinite mindset is accomplished through a Just Cause according to Sinek, because a Just Cause can go on forever. It may adapt as time and circumstances and environments change, but it serves a mission that is worthy of being served, for you, for me, and for the future. People follow, work for, consume from, or promote a Just Cause because they understand the value in their loyalty to it. A finite-minded leader focuses on results in ways that have nothing to do with a Just Cause. Sinek’s book is full of companies and organizations whose successes were short-lived because reaching the pinnacle was their goal so their time at the top couldn’t be sustained. Growth for growth’s sake isn’t a Just Cause. After a while it starts sounding like profit for profit’s sake, and people can find that mission just about anywhere.</p>



<p>Naturally, without realizing that they are half-heartedly impersonating an infinite mindset, there are no shortage of companies plastering their walls and websites with mission statements that mean nothing and aren’t embodied by the people in their offices. This is an example of why Sinek thinks the infinite mindset, a relatively simple concept, becomes less clear to the average person. “I don’t have a problem with a company being shareholder-driven,” he tells me. “Just don’t pretend to be purpose-driven. Stop lying to us.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>Being shareholder-driven isn’t necessarily an evil or morally corrupt approach; it’s simply a shortsighted one. You don’t play business to win. You participate in business to sustain. This applies to all levels of an organization. We get to choose our mindsets. “I don’t have a problem with people who are playing with a finite mindset in the infinite game of business. You can play with that mindset, but it comes with a liability.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s what Sinek wants to warn us about. History shows that a hyper-focus on the results in front of us leads to a loss of trust, cooperation, and innovation. “All of those things eventually lead to the decline and demise of an organization.”&nbsp;</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>There’s a line in&nbsp;<em>The Infinite Game</em>&nbsp;that is particularly striking, and helps distinguish Sinek’s theory from simple forward thinking. Sinek writes, “America’s Just Cause has yet to be realized, and for all practical purposes it never will be. But we will die trying. And that’s the point.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>There’s a word in that sentiment that is anything but vague:&nbsp;<em>never</em>. We’re often taught to think for the future, and the concept we’re told to embrace is “delayed gratification”; the idea that we can resist rewards in the present for greater rewards in the future. But Sinek’s providing a framework that might be difficult for a lot of people to reckon with, that we should always be working to inch closer to something we’ll never achieve. “The point is you’ll never see ideals,” Sinek says to me. “But you should see progress.”</p>



<p>The simplest analogy that Sinek can provide is that people should not be taking on most aspects of life as if they are competing in, say, an athletic competition. Rather, they should be approaching it with the mindset of trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle in order to get in shape. “Even if you achieve your health goals, you have to keep exercising and eating healthy for the rest of your life,” he said. Through this lens, “never” seems less daunting and more obvious.</p>



<p>Sinek has long had an interesting habit of adding a footnote when someone is being described as particularly successful or on top of their respective industry: “For now.” He’s not the type of author who props up the success stories of famous CEOs or entities to bolster the framework of his theories. When I brought up the rise of Amazon it was, I will admit, out of my own personal concern.</p>



<p>I’d assumed that there are two philosophical perspectives on Amazon. There are cynics like myself, who are skeptical of the company’s ethics and are fearful of what their growing power will mean to the future of small businesses. And then there are people who see it as a successful business that offers plenty to its customers.</p>



<p>But Sinek tends to see things from a more detached vantage point. Amazon, according to him, is playing a finite game, and they are doing it better than anyone. He feels their founder, Jeff Bezos, is relatively transparent about this. And of my fear that they will “take over the world”? Sinek isn’t too worried about it. They don’t have the attributes of an entity able to survive an infinite game. They are not known to treat their employees particularly well. They don’t have a Just Cause, so their customers are in no way committed to them. “Nobody loves Amazon,” he told me. “We like Amazon. But no one is going to turn down a cheaper deal or a better service because they&nbsp;<em>love</em>&nbsp;doing business with Amazon.”&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s not to say he’s predicting any sort of imminent demise of the company. (He generally assumes it will be eventually broken up by antitrust laws or pecked down to size by a combination of competitors.) These outcomes are simply a result of trying to win a race rather than pursuing an ideal that can be chased forever. “It’s successful not because of trust, love, and loyalty,” he says. “It’s successful because of an exaggerated transactional relationship with absolutely everyone, arguably even its employees.”</p>



<p>Most of us tend to think of a “five-year plan” as a responsible way to prepare for the future, but that is by its very definition a finite game. Would you rather shop from (or work for) a company trying to sell the freshest produce or a company trying to make sure that people have access to fresh produce? The latter is playing the infinite game. Its goal will never end. Its strategies will be reflected by that goal and will adapt with the times to meet that goal. It will attract employees who share that goal and reward them as a means to keep them. It will attract customers who also share that goal and are less likely to lose them to competitors.</p>



<p>There’s another striking line in&nbsp;<em>The Infinite Game</em>: “Time is always the great revealer of truth.”</p>



<p class="has-text-align-center">* * *</p>



<p>There was one question I asked Sinek that seemed to baffle him. I didn’t stump him; he legitimately didn’t understand the question, even though I’d assumed it was a relatable notion to just about anyone. I asked, after completing this book, which was a monumental task taking years of his life, whether he was at all burdened by an existential question:&nbsp;<em>What next?</em></p>



<p>You would have thought I’d asked him if he believes in the Boogey Man. After rephrasing the question a few times he simply responded no. He will just keep going on the same journey that the book was a part of.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“You don’t finish breakfast and think,&nbsp;<em>‘What am I going to do with my life now?’</em>” he tells me.&nbsp;</p>



<p>None of us knows what the future holds, which for many is a source of anxiety. Sinek is able to mitigate that dread because he knows what he wants out of the world. His understanding that it can’t be fully accomplished only means he will always have a task at hand. He escapes perfectionism by not allowing this book (or the previous one, or the next one) to be the thing that he sees as defining him. “My books exist in a continuum,” he says. “They’re a snapshot of where I am at that time.”</p>



<p>Infinite mindedness isn’t his goal. It’s the means to what he wants for the world. He wants people to wake up inspired, feel safe at work, and be fulfilled when they complete a day. He believes that we’re all entitled to that. But how safe do any of us feel when we’re surrounded by people playing finite games? Their goals might change, and at some point will we unwittingly be standing between them and their finite goal<em>&nbsp;du jour</em>?</p>



<p>I don’t know if Sinek will enjoy this story or not. I don’t know whether it will catch the eye of any other editors at other publications and result in more assignments for me to write. But I know that the reason I write stories is because, if I can just give people something to think about, maybe they’ll have something to talk about with each other, maybe over dinner, maybe over drinks, maybe in the breakroom at work. Maybe that leads to a genuine, thoughtful conversation, and where it goes from there is up to them.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So that’s what I tried to do with this story about Sinek. And that’s what I’ll try to do with the next story I write, regardless of who or what it’s about. As far as I can tell, that’s how you play the infinite game.</p>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><br><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://store.success.com/patchworks-imported-products/success-magazine-july-aug-2020.html" target="_blank"><em>This article originally appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em></a><br><em><em>Main photo by </em>© <em>Andrew Dolgin</em></em></p>

The leadership expert says the key to business significance and ultimate success is to think in infinite terms.

The leadership expert says the key to business significance and ultimate success is to think in infinite terms. | SUCCESS

Simon Sinek: Building an Infinite Mindset

Simon Sinek: Building an Infinite Mindset | SUCCESS

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<p>There’s been a theory developing about working from home since long before social distancing became a dire necessity. That theory suggests that we should have already been doing it to some degree all along. Not for the reasons that we’re currently doing it but because it’s actually <em>more efficient</em>.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong><em>Related:</em> <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/12-efficiency-secrets-of-the-worlds-busiest-people/">12 Efficiency Secrets of the World’s Busiest People </a></strong></p></blockquote>



<p>This is a difficult time
for everyone because we’re all going without things we need. We need to be able
to see and hug our families. We need to socialize with our friends. We need to
get out of our homes and see more of the world. We need to be around other
people. At some point, life becomes demonstrably harder to enjoy without these
things, and we’re all struggling with that. But, if you’re grouping “office
life” with those things, it’s likely because you’ve been conditioned to believe
that you need it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Of course, there are
situations where close physical proximity is crucial to accomplishing something
as a team or business. In a few industries, these situations are commonplace.
In others, they come up a few times a month. In many others, they are actually
very rare, but companies will manufacture necessary attendance through meetings
or supplies and equipment that remain in the office.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I can only speak for
myself as someone who spent some of my career in various office environments
and the rest as an independent contractor determining my own schedule and
workspace. I’m going to put this in fairly dramatic terms: I believe the
reasons office environments are the established norms in most industries are
motivated by corporate control and fear. Think about the last time you were the
first person to leave the office on any given workday. Could you feel the
eyeballs staring as you walked out the door? Does that seem healthy when you
think about it?&nbsp;</p>



<p>Office environments
naturally set up hierarchies similar to school environments where your peers
are like your classmates and anyone above you is like a teacher or principal;
authority figures with bigger offices and better parking spaces. Close physical
proximity allows managers to keep a watchful eye over their employees, but it
also makes that monitoring seem more necessary than it is and makes their job
seem more important than it is.&nbsp;</p>



<p>That’s not to say that the manager who you’ve come to see as a legitimate friend is a bad person or specifically trying to exploit you. These systems have been in place for a long time and fear-based motivation develops organically. It’s just generally assumed that tasks will be completed more efficiently if people are in a space where they’re not allowed to do anything else, but evidence suggests otherwise. In 2017, <a href="https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/a-2-year-stanford-study-shows-astonishing-productivity-boost-of-working-from-home.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">a two-year Stanford study</a> on work-from-home versus office environments that incorporated a company of 16,000 employees was completed and the results did not suggest a give and take. The data pointed toward much greater degrees of efficiency when employees worked from home, not to mention a $2,000 saving <em>per employee</em> for the employer in reduced office space.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Perhaps your employer will
see this as an opportunity to establish a more sensible compromise than five
days a week at the office. Or perhaps you disagree with the general premise
that I’ve laid out. But either way, you’re going to need to adjust your mindset
for the time being. So it’s worth looking into what you can take advantage of
now that no one is watching you work.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Your
tasks and your schedule are now in a relationship.</h4>



<p>Healthy relationships
require compromise and trial and error. Perhaps you work most efficiently from
9 a.m. to 5 p.m., or perhaps you just think that because it’s all you’ve ever
known. If you’ve been going into an office for years, then individual tasks can
begin to blur into one big category of “work.” Strip away the idea of being
“clocked in” and you see a task for what it is: something you need to
accomplish by a certain date.&nbsp;</p>



<p>You’re expected to be
creative in your execution of a task so why not be creative in how you go about
accomplishing it? Maybe you’ll realize that you come up with a fresh
perspective if you walk away from a project every 45 minutes. Maybe you’ll find
that sometimes you get hours of momentum if you chip away at something late at
night. And this is going to sound crazy, but if you stay up late working on
something, you <em>can</em> sleep in the next morning (!).&nbsp;</p>



<p>Work tasks are taking time
away from your personal life one way or another. Try being the one who decides
which hours it’s taking from you. If you’re meeting deadlines with good work,
no one is going to be there to tell you no.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Mental
health doesn’t have to take a backseat.&nbsp;</h4>



<p>Ultimately, you’re the one
who can understand what’s good for your mental health, and now’s the time to
figure that out. Your work can now be scheduled around the conclusions you come
to. Maybe, it’s something small, like having a cup of coffee and a snack at 2
p.m. every day. Maybe you like working outside. Maybe you like reading in the
middle of the day. If you’re able to do that without falling behind, then do it
as much as possible.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Imagine turning on some
speakers and playing your favorite album at the office? You can do that now.
Would having a video conference or phone call with a therapist every week be
good for you? You can do that in the middle of the day. We might owe our
employers work, but they don’t get to decide what’s good for us.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>No
commute means banked time.</h4>



<p>Working from home can be
tough to get used to. I understand that. <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/11-tips-for-working-from-home-with-kids/">Maybe
you have kids</a> in the house distracting you in the morning. Maybe it’s just
hard to adjust to a new work environment. So when you sit down at your desk or
workspace and realize you’ve let 45 minutes pass without making any progress on
anything, I’d ask you to not be so hard on yourself. For some of you, you’d
still be in traffic on the way to the office if you’d had to go in.&nbsp;</p>



<p>A lack of commute is saving you money. It’s returning hours back to your day. It’s lowering your stress. <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/sound-and-health-cities/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">Studies have shown</a> that continuous freeway or subway sounds are occurring at a volume our ears weren’t designed for and have long-term effects on our health.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>If your commute home was
helpful in letting you decompress, then don’t just walk from your desk straight
to your couch when you wrap up work for the day. A 10-20 minute walk around
your neighborhood to take your mind off work goes a long way in establishing
some balance in your life.&nbsp;</p>



<h4>Your
colleagues aren’t gone.</h4>



<p>Of course, it’s still
important to be able to see the people you work with periodically, and
hopefully that will become feasible again in the near future, but until then we
still have the resources available to stay in touch. Zoom and Skype meetings
can start to feel as routine as regular meetings, but on an individual basis,
your colleagues are just a phone call away. You’re both just trying to accomplish
your specific tasks and might be able to help each other out.&nbsp;</p>



<p>I have a manager/editor I
would normally see about twice a week. When there’s been any possibility for a
misunderstanding during the past month, we’ve just given each other a call, and
I’ve noticed it’s been particularly informal. We tend to spend the first five
minutes catching up and joking around, the next five minutes addressing the
issue, and we always wrap things up on a good note.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Part of your manager’s job was to keep an eye on you and motivate you to work. That’s been taken away from them, so just by asking questions or requesting quick phone calls you’re providing them a sense of relief that you’re staying motivated. I also don’t have to tell you that calling and checking in on your peers or finding out if there’s anything you can do to help with their workload is a welcome gift during these times.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong><em>Read next:</em> <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-secret-to-staying-motivated-during-this-pandemic/">The Secret to Staying Motivated During This Pandemic</a></strong></p></blockquote>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>Photo by @halla.arabi/Twenty20.com</em></p>

What are the advantages of working from home, now that no one is watching you work?

What are the advantages of working from home, now that no one is watching you work? | SUCCESS

How Working From Home Can Make You More Productive

How Working From Home Can Make You More Productive | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-You-Can-Be-More-Productive-Working-From-Home.jpg

<p>Supplemental income is more available than ever. But the spirit of the side hustle is about more than clocking out of one job only to clock right back into another. For most people, the time away from their full-time jobs is the only time that is truly theirs to use as they please.</p>



<p>Lucrative or not, do we actually want to spend that time doing whatever boring work some giant corporation is willing to outsource to us?</p>



<p>Instead, many side hustlers are figuring out how to monetize the things they already want to explore in their free time. What follows is a collection of people who clock out of their full-time jobs only to hop into side hustles that they’re passionate about, learn from, or meet new people through, as well as a few resources to help you build your own side hustle. From savvy freelancers to small business owners to a guy who gets paid to create explosions, you don’t necessarily need to do what they do, but if you can think like they think, you might find that there’s money to be found in your own creative&nbsp;spirit.&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Type&nbsp;1&nbsp;//&nbsp;Own What You Already&nbsp;Know</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Matthew_Giles.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50261"/></figure></div>



<p><strong>Matt Giles&nbsp;</strong>is part of the editorial team behind the popular storytelling site <a href="https://longreads.com/author/hudsongiles/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Longreads (opens in a new tab)">Longreads</a>. Writing and editing are elemental parts of journalism, but a key responsibility for Giles is fact-checking, and it’s one that he can utilize outside of his full-time job. So, Giles lends his attention to detail as a freelance fact-checker for a number of publications including&nbsp;<em>The New York Times</em>&nbsp;and the Huffington Post.</p>



<p>When you read a lengthy, reported story in a credible magazine, newspaper, or website,&nbsp;you might not realize the lengths taken to ensure factual accuracy. The work that Giles does when he is brought in on a story goes beyond simply double-checking facts; fact-checkers often fully re-report stories from a new perspective. “It’s our job to make sure each detail in a piece checks out,” Giles says. To be able to make extra income by incorporating new stories into his free time is not only practical, it drops fascinating narratives right into his lap for him to explore. “You’re learning something new every single day.”&nbsp;</p>



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<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Jamie_Serrano.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50255"/></figure></div>



<p><strong>Jamie&nbsp;Serrano&nbsp;</strong>was just looking for a specific dress to wear for the rehearsal dinner before her wedding. It was sold out, but she ultimately found it in one of Facebook’s Buy/Sell/Trade groups, a resource for individuals to sell belongings that they no longer want. In the process, she realized that articles of clothing—the kinds of brands and styles that she owned but wasn’t regularly wearing—were selling for surprising amounts of money. So she dived into a flexible but time consuming world of taking photos, posting details, and negotiating prices.&nbsp;</p>



<p>“At first I loved it because it was a way to declutter and really pare down my closet,” she says. Over time, Serrano, a <a href="https://www.jamiegfriedlander.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="writer by day (opens in a new tab)">writer by day</a>, started looking at it almost as a side business. It requires planning and attentiveness, but, “If you have a penchant for shopping like I do, it’s a great way to make extra money,” she says.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Ann_Bush.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50256"/></figure></div>



<p>There was a time when&nbsp;<strong>Ann&nbsp;Bush</strong>&nbsp;worked in accounting. Now, she makes accounting work for her. Bush has a master’s degree in accounting and spent seven years as an auditor and property accountant for two big corporations. She was good at the work, but felt trapped in the company structures. “I was pretty miserable at my job,” she says. Frankly, her work wasn’t personal, so in 2014 she decided to make it personal. Recently married, and with an eye on starting a family, she started Arrow Books, a bookkeeping and consulting company, and she remains the sole employee.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Six years later, Bush is a mother of two young children, and Arrow Books has a stable of clients for which she prepares financial statements every month. Bush is free to treat her young sons, Jack and Finn, like full-time jobs, while having to answer to no one but her clients. “I’m able to pop open my laptop and get an hour in very early or another chunk of work during naptime.”&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Type&nbsp;2&nbsp;//&nbsp;Carve Out Another Identity&nbsp;</h3>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large is-resized"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Ken_Mahne.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50257" width="329" height="267"/></figure></div>



<p>Information technology is a great career field to get into, but&nbsp;<strong>Ken&nbsp;Mahne&nbsp;</strong>found that of the many skills deployed in his full-time IT job, creativity wasn’t high on the list. So he found himself arranging flowers for his wife, Cyndi, as a creative outlet. </p>



<p>Ten years ago, when one of her co-workers saw a centerpiece on her desk, she inquired whether Ken would do the flower arrangements for her daughter’s wedding. It went well, and Ken and Cyndi started <a href="https://www.petalpushersstl.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Petal Pushers (opens in a new tab)">Petal Pushers</a>, a floral arrangement company in St. Louis, Missouri. Word-of-mouth spread slowly but surely. The following year they did two weddings. The year after that they did 12. The next year 22. Now, they average 58 weddings a year without interfering with his job in IT. “It’s just a joy to know that I built up this little side business that makes people happy and allows me to be creative,” Mahne says. It’s a demanding job, but Cyndi says, “We still tear up when we get to watch a girl walk down the &nbsp;aisle.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="alignleft size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Bobby-Karalla.png" alt="" class="wp-image-50264"/></figure></div>



<p><strong>Bobby&nbsp;Karalla</strong>&nbsp;works in the digital department of an NBA team; what a lot of people might consider an exciting full-time job. But his side hustle is the gig that can really get his adrenaline going. When his schedule allows, he works for a fireworks display company as their “lead shooter,” which means when the explosions begin, he has the remote control in his hands. But the work starts well before he presses a button. “Seeing [fireworks] from this side has really opened my eyes to how intricate and detailed a production it is and how much work goes into a 20-minute show for thousands of people,” Karalla says.</p>



<p>Karalla became a licensed technician, and works with a team of people who make sure that everyone nearby is safe and everyone from a distance sees something spectacular. He just happens to have the show’s best view. “I think everyone gets a little tired of working inside an office all day, even if your office is a basketball court or a 20,000-seat arena,” Karalla says. “It’s exhilarating to hear one boom after the next. You can feel it in your gut.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>Discipline, leadership, motivation and work ethic are the kind of traits that&nbsp;<strong>Jeff&nbsp;Avanzato</strong>&nbsp;has developed in his 24-year career in the Air Force. So you probably wouldn’t guess that on the weekends he gets paid to make people dance. Avanzato always had a love for music, so he created an after-work persona called DJ Zato, and learned skills he’d never develop in the military. “You need to understand the art of playing to the crowd,” Avanzato says. Eventually he started <a href="https://networkdjs.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Network DJs (opens in a new tab)">Network DJs</a> to serve weddings and other events in Alabama and Kentucky. “The stresses of my current job in the Air Force are relieved when I have my headphones on and I’m doing my&nbsp;thing.”&nbsp;</p>



<h3>Type&nbsp;3&nbsp;//&nbsp;Improve Yourself&nbsp;in the Process</h3>



<p><strong>Camille Williams&nbsp;</strong>is a first-grade teacher, a job that’s both a calling and a trial on anyone’s patience. When Williams began looking for avenues to make additional income, barre, a fitness program that combines elements of yoga, pilates and ballet, stood out to her. To become a barre instructor required an extensive five-month training and certification process, but it’s a responsibility that came with its own perks. “I get to work out for free, which I love, be around people more than 7 years old, and wear workout clothes to work,” Williams says. She’s able to lead courses after school or on the weekends.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Hearing her talk about her side hustle sounds a lot like how you’d expect her to talk about her full-time job. “I’m challenged to create fluid, diverse class plans,” she says. “It’s become one of the greatest joys I never knew I needed.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p><strong>Alli Becker&nbsp;</strong>is a registered nurse in New York City, who’s simultaneously pursuing a master’s degree. Spare time isn’t something she has a great deal of. Looking for a way to alleviate the inevitable stresses of her job, she became a dog walker for <a href="https://wagwalking.com/dog-walker" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Wag! (opens in a new tab)">Wag!</a>, an app that pairs walkers with dog owners. “The flexible schedule and quality pooch time was very appealing,” Becker says. Some weeks, dog-walking has to take a backseat to work or school or life, but even if she makes enough just to afford her a guilt-free cocktail or two at the end of the week, it can be a nice way to break up her schedule. “Another great aspect is having an excuse to travel around the city and explore different neighborhoods while getting some steps in,” she says.&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<p>Music is a skill meant to be shared.&nbsp;<strong>Michelle&nbsp;Maves</strong>&nbsp;has been providing piano and voice lessons for over 10 years. It’s a personal experience, in which you get to witness the musical growth of a student. It helped her support herself through college and provided additional income through an acting career. She’s found students to teach while living in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. It was such a consistent side hustle that over the years it eventually blossomed into her full-time job.&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Getting-Started-1024x931.png" alt="cool side hustles" class="wp-image-50259"/></figure></div>



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<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p><strong><em>Related: </em><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-side-hustle-handbook/">The Side Hustler’s Handbook</a></strong></p></blockquote>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.successacademy.com/successmagazine" target="_blank">This article originally appeared in the May/June 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</a></em><br><em>Photo by GaudiLab/Shutterstock.com</em></p>

Meet nine people who have started up their own fun and interesting solopreneur ventures and find out how you can do the same.

Meet nine people who have started up their own fun and interesting solopreneur ventures and find out how you can do the same. | SUCCESS

9 Cool Side Hustles

9 Cool Side Hustles | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/9-Cool-Side-Hustles.jpg

<p>We’ve always come together
when times have gotten weird; when the future has felt unpredictable and
frightening. It’s how we cope. It’s how we tend to realize how strong we are
and what we’re capable of overcoming. So for events that we commonly enjoy to
be canceled is frustrating. To be told to isolate ourselves goes against what
we’ve come to think of as the healthiest ways to resist panic: the comfort of
togetherness.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Ultimately, the reality we’re facing is that “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">social distancing</a>” is a societal responsibility; it’s, among other things, a way of protecting those in our communities who face enormous risks if infected by COVID-19 (all of us know people who fall under this category, by the way). To interact with groups means potentially spreading the virus, and once (if) the virus has spread to a certain degree, the people we are trying to protect <em>will</em> get it.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So, if isolation is the solution to the problem, it’s a relatively simple one. We must <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/11-things-to-do-in-self-quarantine-that-are-more-productive-than-netflix/">stay home</a> and away from groups to whatever degree we’re able. But solutions to large problems pose problems of their own, and social distancing is going to have negative consequences on many people.</p>



<p>The spirit of coming together isn’t actually to stand face to face with one another. It’s helping people affected by a crisis. At some unknown point, we will make it to the other side of this pandemic. When that point comes, there will still be goals we want to reach, problems we want to fix, and lives we want to live. Let’s talk about how we can come together now and help others overcome something we’ve never been through.</p>



<h3><br>Who is financially affected by social distancing?</h3>



<p>While I understand why
anyone would take it seriously, it’s important to look beyond the stock market
when we talk about the negative relationship between a pandemic and money. For
one, the stock market, by its very definition, is capable of returning to a
high point from even its lowest points. That isn’t necessarily true of every
person’s quality of life once their mandatory bills and payments begin to
exceed their means of income. And for the economy to return to a point of
normalcy requires individuals to be able to support themselves before they have
disposable income.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But above all that: I ask
you to think about individual humans and how they get by rather than thinking
about numbers. Stadium vendors are out of work. Waiters normally live off tips.
Small businesses don’t have the luxury to reassess every financial quarter;
they are staying in business on a month-to-month or week-to-week basis.
Freelance workers will get no paid leave. Substitute teachers are not
salaried.&nbsp;</p>



<p>While we can always hope
that the very fortunate will be kind enough to try to help, and we can hope
that some government interventions can send some lifelines, there’s one type of
entity that is unlikely to extend a helping hand: landlords. I’d ask you to
think about that notion for at least a few more seconds. In 2020, the landlord
is often not a person but a large corporation that can’t be reasoned with. The
vast majority of Americans earn the rent that’s due on the first of the month
during the previous month. Even if given an extension on rent, how are they
supposed to earn double their rent the following month when their income has
halted to a stop?</p>



<p>There’s a global crisis
happening right now, but imagine the prospect of being evicted. Imagine your
sister with two children being evicted. Imagine your brother with a medical
condition being evicted. That is an individual crisis by any definition.&nbsp;</p>



<h3><br>How can I help?</h3>



<p>We’ve seen some great responses from high profile people with the means to help. NBA players like Kevin Love and Zion Williamson (who is a 19-year-old rookie) have pledged to help pay the salaries of arena workers of their home stadiums, and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban has declared that hourly employees will continue to be paid while the NBA is on hiatus. Some CEOs are sacrificing their salaries in order to institute paid leave for their employees. </p>



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<p style="margin: 8px 0 0 0; padding: 0 4px;"><a style="color: #000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word;" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B92AkPZAVy6/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Things might feel scary right now, but there's a lot to feel hopeful about. Like these people doing so much good. Remember, we're in this together! ❤️ ⠀ ⠀ Here are some ways you can help, too:⠀ 1. Donate to your local food banks or response funds. 2. Buy from small businesses. ⠀ 3. Help your neighbors. ⠀ 4. Practice social distancing.</a></p>
<p style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px; margin-bottom: 0; margin-top: 8px; overflow: hidden; padding: 8px 0 7px; text-align: center; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap;">A post shared by <a style="color: #c9c8cd; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px;" href="https://www.instagram.com/successmagazine/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> SUCCESS Magazine</a> (@successmagazine) on <time style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 17px;" datetime="2020-03-17T17:55:13+00:00">Mar 17, 2020 at 10:55am PDT</time></p>
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<p>But I know that many of you are also affected financially by the types of things we’re talking about, so you can only help in small ways. That’s how we truly come together. So let’s talk about it. These are just a few ideas; maybe they’ll help you come up with more of your own.&nbsp;</p>



<h5><br>1. The power of the gift card:</h5>



<p>A lot of businesses will
suffer, but we’re not talking about financial reports for some of our favorite
local businesses. We’re talking about businesses shuttering and never
returning. Many restaurants took out loans to open in the first place and pay
high rent costs for the property they’re operating out of. They simply can’t
survive a month of little to no business.&nbsp;</p>



<p>So how can we responsibly help keep them in business? Call or go online and see if they offer gift cards or if they’d be willing to write up and sign off on a gift card they would honor later. This is by no means a donation. You will need to eat meals down the line, as well, and it will be a nice relief to be able to finally go back to your favorite spots. They need the money <em>now</em>. You can enjoy the benefits a little later.&nbsp;</p>



<h5><br>2. Tip well:</h5>



<p>This one is obvious. If someone is doing something that requires a tip, please understand that they are receiving far less tips than they normally would be and they have a base pay well below minimum wage. Staying away from public places is the best option, but if you do end up getting service somewhere you feel isn’t crowded (or get takeout or delivery), then I implore you to tip more than you normally would. That person would love to self-isolate, but they need the money they’re counting on you to give them.&nbsp;</p>



<h5><br>3. Can you give someone paid leave?</h5>



<p>Do you normally have people come to your home? Babysitters? Housekeepers? Tutors for your children? Do you need them this month? Would you feel more comfortable not bringing people into your house or apartment during the pandemic? I know not everyone is able to do this, but if you are, you might consider providing them paid leave. If you value their services, then consider it an investment; if their circumstances change for financial reasons, then they may not be able to work for you down the line. Do you want to reward reliability?&nbsp;</p>



<h5><br>4. Musicians sell merch:</h5>



<p>This might seem small, but
in the streaming era, very few people buy albums, so musicians’ primary means
of supporting themselves is excessive touring. It’s a difficult life, but it allows
them to live their dreams and make something beautiful that fans are passionate
about.</p>



<p>Taylor Swift and Jay-Z and
Ed Sheeren will be fine, but there’s nothing better than seeing that less-famous
band or singer or artist in person when they come to town. I’m talking about
that one who you’ve convinced a couple friends to check out. The one who you
listen to when you’re having a rough time. The one who, as cheesy as it sounds,
feels like <em>your</em> musician. A huge loss in tour dates might impact their
ability to make another album next year, which might affect their ability to
come to town next year.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Go to their website and buy a t-shirt or a poster. You’ll be excited when it comes in the mail, and supporting art that we love feels good.&nbsp;</p>



<h5><br>5. Practice and explore self-sustainability and moderation.</h5>



<p>A global crisis leads to
panicked behavior. That’s only natural. But you want to be able to look back
and be OK with how you handled the adversity. We’ve all witnessed ransacked
grocery stores in the past week, and it can feel like a sign of the
times.&nbsp;</p>



<p>But rather than raiding a
store as if the amount you can fit in your grocery cart indicates how long
you’ll survive, perhaps you can take this time to practice and explore some
sense of self-sustainability and moderation. When I suggest that we consider
looking into growing our own fruits and vegetables, I don’t mean that we’ll
need it to survive some sort of dark ages. But it might be a good time to wake
up to how dependent we all are on extreme convenience for our most basic needs
(no one is more guilty of this than me).&nbsp;</p>



<p>But in simpler terms: We
need to be rational with our shopping and considerate to our neighbors. While
we want to go less than we normally would, the grocery store will not be off
limits to go back to during the pandemic. Leaving the shelves empty by getting
10 of every product is selfish. Take a look at your eating habits and try to
cut out some excessiveness. And please, take advantage of leftovers. Don’t
throw any food out. This is how we should already be living. Let’s use this
time to re-learn these habits.&nbsp;</p>



<p>And one other little
trick: If the grocery store is looking barren, try your local Asian
supermarket. Many citizens tend to not consider these communities for their
everyday shopping. You can avoid the chaos and support the business of
hard-working people. Plus, you can learn to cook some new dishes with some
flavors and combinations of foods that are a little more exciting than your
typical meal.&nbsp;</p>



<p><br>We can come together without being together. So let’s help and make a difference where we can. </p>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><br><em>Photo by Tim Mossholder/Unsplash.com</em></p>

The spirit of coming together isn’t actually to stand face to face with one another. It’s helping people affected by a crisis. Let’s make a difference where we can.

The spirit of coming together isn’t actually to stand face to face with one another. It’s helping people affected by a crisis. Let’s make a difference where we can. | SUCCESS

How to Come Together Without Being Together During This Pandemic

How to Come Together Without Being Together During This Pandemic | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Coming-Together-Without-Being-Together.jpg

Leadership

Leadership Archives

Leadership | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

<p>As the last decade wound to a close,&nbsp;<em>SUCCESS&nbsp;</em>embarked on a project to rank today’s influencers in terms of their social media impact across various platforms, zeroing in on the major areas of our coverage, including entrepreneurship and business, health, money, spirituality and mindset, entertainment and culture, as well as our bread and butter—personal development.</p>



<p>That process informed our selection of The New Thought Leaders. Collectively, these 12 authors, speakers, podcasters and social media influencers cast a wide shadow, helping to shape and improve millions of lives between them. They may have different areas of specialty, diverse backgrounds and varied interests, but in their own way, each carries the torch of the common sense values and self-determinism philosophies of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/your-future-is-now/">the New Thought movement</a>, which this magazine was founded on more than 120 years ago.</p>



<p>At the beginning of a new decade,&nbsp;<em>SUCCESS&nbsp;</em>wanted to highlight the people who represent the future of these timeless teachings, those who have only begun to realize the apex of their influence, the leaders who will define what personal development will mean to new generations, just as their predecessors did before them.</p>



<p><strong>Meet The New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<ul>
<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-gabrielle-bernstein/">Gabrielle Bernstein</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-tom-bilyeu/">Tom Bilyeu</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-brendon-burchard/">Brendon Burchard</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-rachel-cruze/">Rachel Cruze</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-prince-ea/">Prince Ea</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-tim-ferriss/">Tim Ferriss</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-marie-forleo/">Marie Forleo</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-rachel-hollis/">Rachel Hollis</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-lewis-howes/">Lewis Howes</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-trent-shelton/">Trent Shelton</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-jay-shetty/">Jay Shetty</a></li>



<li><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-gary-vaynerchuk/">Gary Vaynerchuk</a></li>
</ul>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-gary-vaynerchuk/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gary Vaynerchuk</figcaption></figure>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<figure class="wp-block-image aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-gabrielle-bernstein/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Gabrielle Bernstein</figcaption></figure>
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<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustrations by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>

This eclectic mix of authors, speakers, podcasters and social media savants are using new methods to teach the timeless lessons that can guide you to a happier, more successful tomorrow.

This eclectic mix of authors, speakers, podcasters and social media savants are using new methods to teach the timeless lessons that can guide you to a happier, more successful tomorrow. | SUCCESS

The New Thought Leaders: 12 People Who Can Lead You to Your Brightest Future

12 Thought Leaders Guiding Your Brightest Future

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Scott Bedgood

Jamie Friedlander

Cecilia Meis

Personal Development

Personal Development Archives

Personal Development | SUCCESS | What Achievers Read

<p>In 2011, <a href="https://gabbybernstein.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Gabrielle Bernstein (opens in a new tab)">Gabrielle Bernstein</a> was taking New York City and the country by storm. Her chic version of spirituality and personal development was unheard of at the time, and twenty-somethings across Manhattan were eager to sign up. She garnered nicknames like “the Dalai Lama of the&nbsp;<em>Gossip Girl</em>&nbsp;set” and “the new Carrie Bradshaw.” She smiles fondly at those times.</p>



<p>Now, the 40-year old No. 1&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>&nbsp;best-selling author, motivational speaker and spiritual teacher could be considered a veteran of modern personal development. That is, the kind of personal growth that doesn’t feel out of the touch with the real world. It’s taught with guidance, not rules. It’s softer and more human. Bernstein was at the forefront of that change.</p>



<p>“When I first started in this industry, I was one of the few people talking about this stuff,” Bernstein says. “No one was gluten-free, no one was drinking green juice, people weren’t busting through the doors of their yoga studio. It’s beautiful to see wellness as such a trend now.”</p>



<p>Like so many in the genre, Bernstein’s success is built on her own story. Once a successful public relations consultant and club promoter, she found the party life in New York. Addiction, chaos and unhappiness resulted. Her rock bottom led her on a path to find happiness and contentment within.</p>



<p>“My own personal journey of spiritual growth and recovery has been the driving force of all the books I’ve written, all the talks I’ve given and all the work I’ve been doing for the past 15 years,” Bernstein says.</p>



<p>And that work has paid off. She published&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/2GE6HDN" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">Spirit Junkie: A Radical Road to Self-Love and Miracles</a>&nbsp;</em>in 2011, marking her entrance into mainstream popularity. She’s produced six more books, with the most recent one,&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/3b1Iq8H" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams (opens in a new tab)">Super Attractor: Methods for Manifesting a Life Beyond Your Wildest Dreams</a></em>, out last November. She’s reached the No. 1 spot on the&nbsp;<em>New York Times</em>&nbsp;best-seller list. She’s made appearances on Oprah’s<em>&nbsp;Soul Sunday</em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>The Dr. Oz Show.</em> She holds a Guinness World Record for the most-attended guided meditation, leading it alongside Deepak Chopra, whom she considers a dear friend and colleague. Amid her relatively quick rise to success, Bernstein maintains the same message.</p>



<p>“I’m here to help people crack open a spiritual connection of their own understanding,” she says.</p>



<p>She’s come at that goal in a hundred different ways, which has increased the reach of her message. Whether judgment, self-doubt or self-loathing, the goal of finding and developing that spiritual connection with ourselves, with a higher power, is at the core of her business.</p>



<p>“I don’t think about my work as part of an industry,” Bernstein says. “My work is to wake up more people into feeling comfortable talking about this stuff.”</p>


<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/sPNwjWRb0Us" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>


<p>Indeed, for many people, reading something like “crack open a spiritual connection” might sound intimidating. It might result in a nervous chuckle. They might expect a feel-good speech that rings just a little too close to new-age religion for their comfort.</p>



<p>To those, Bernstein doesn’t have much to say. She isn’t thinking about the detractors or haters, or even those agnostic to her message.</p>



<p>“I trust that whoever is coming to this type of work is someone who needs it,” Bernstein says.</p>



<p>For all the soft language, there are real and tangible principles behind Bernstein’s business. She leads seminars that help attendees work through buried childhood trauma in ways they couldn’t before. Her calming nature is one that allows fans to feel comfortable and open to share deeply painful memories and feelings they otherwise couldn’t.</p>



<p>She’s seen the trends throughout the wellness industry and she’s excited for the growth that comes with social media. She feels that her calling is to be a source of inspiration and love in the world. Social media helps expedite that calling. But with that tremendous growth comes the inevitable bad players out to make a quick buck.</p>



<p>“Our truth is what heals,” she says. “Our truth is a transmission, an opportunity [for people] to see themselves in us. It creates a connection. If you’re not doing this work from a place of service first, that’s the threat.”</p>



<p>Modern personal development brings other concerns. Self-care is equated with a new meditation app or a trendy book. It can be used as an escape from the true, deep work of identifying our core issues, and working through them.</p>



<p>“I wish [my audience] paid more attention to their feelings,” Bernstein says. “A lot of people out there are doing meditation or manifesting or trying to attract things into their life or are reading the books, but they’re not really nurturing the feelings that may be the underlying root cause that blocks them from whatever it is that they desire in their lives. It’s the bravery and the willingness to feel into the places that scare us that allow us to step into the light of who we are.”&nbsp;</p>



<p> <strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-new-thought-leaders/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150"/></a><figcaption>The New Thought Leaders</figcaption></figure></div>
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<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-tom-bilyeu/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150"/></a><figcaption>Tom Bilyeu</figcaption></figure></div>



<p></p>
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<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em> <br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>   </p>



<p>[fl_builder_insert_layout slug="amazon-affiliate-disclaimer"]</p>

Like so many in the genre, Bernstein’s success is built on her own story. Her rock bottom led her on a path to find happiness and contentment within.

Like so many in the genre, Bernstein’s success is built on her own story. Her rock bottom led her on a path to find happiness and contentment within. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Gabrielle Bernstein

New Thought Leader: Gabrielle Bernstein | SUCCESS

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<p>If the personal development leaders we follow are heroes in some way—and that’s apt enough—then it’s only fitting that they each come with an origin story, a series of events that made them who they are and introduced their drives to help others.</p>



<p>Few of these stories are as dramatic as <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Brendon Burchard’s (opens in a new tab)" href="https://brendon.com/" target="_blank">Brendon Burchard</a>’s. As a 19-year-old, Burchard found out his girlfriend was cheating on him. He was devastated and depressed. So he made an impulsive decision to take a summer job in the Dominican Republic. There he was involved in a horrific car accident. According to Burchard, in the midst of the broken glass and blood, he had a moment of extreme clarity.</p>



<p>“I thought, ‘Did I even matter?’” Burchard recalls.</p>



<p>This phrase would eventually become part of his life motto and a key piece of everything he would do in the future. As he recovered from the accident and began re-evaluating his life, he found himself asking “Did I live fully? Did I love openly? Did I make a difference?” Those questions drove him to spend his 20s researching and studying ways to do those three things. He eventually quit his job and wrote his first book, which began his meteoric rise to become one of the most famous and popular high performance coaches.</p>



<p><em>Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?&nbsp;</em>These ideas are the throughline in all of Burchard’s works. He’s written multiple&nbsp;<em>New York Times&nbsp;</em>best-sellers, including<em>&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/38XqtGe" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Millionaire Messenger (opens in a new tab)">The Millionaire Messenger</a></em>&nbsp;and his most recent, 2017’s research-heavy&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/2ubv3BY" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="High Performance Habits (opens in a new tab)">High Performance Habits</a></em>. Burchard is one of the most followed personal development voices on Facebook and has a YouTube channel with more than 800,000 subscribers. His videos have been viewed more than 87,000,000 times.</p>



<p>Burchard’s&nbsp;<em>The Charged Life&nbsp;</em><a href="https://brendon.com/podcast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="podcasts (opens in a new tab)">podcasts</a> are different from many podcasts in the genre in that he doesn’t interview big name guests or have long shows. Instead, episodes are short (usually less than 20 minutes) and address a certain topic.</p>



<p><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/brendon-burchards-high-performance-habits/">The cover figure for&nbsp;<em>SUCCESS&nbsp;</em>in October 2018</a>, Burchard has been called “one of the most successful online trainers in history” by Oprah. Larry King has said that “Brendon Burchard is one of the top motivation and marketing trainers in the world.”</p>



<p>He focuses most of talks, podcasts, videos, and books on the insights he’s gained from studying many high performers. He takes these insights and transforms them into easy-to-digest information that inspires his followers.</p>



<p>Among his most popular offerings are his online courses, which have been completed by thousands of students and promise to teach the methods that have helped Burchard and others to live, love and matter.</p>



<p>It’s Burchard’s focus on the idea of a life that matters that drives so much of his work. He doesn’t just want people to be successful so they can make more money, he wants people to live a life of importance for others. Mattering is more than making money, getting a promotion, or being famous.</p>



<p>Ultimately, all of his efforts, from the books to the podcasts to the YouTube videos to the courses, work toward pushing people to that one goal, an answer to his three major&nbsp;questions.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>The Surprising Qualities of High Performers</h3>



<p>While researching for his 2017 book<em>&nbsp;High Performance Habits</em>, Brendon Burchard came across some major surprises, even after more than a decade and a half teaching and coaching some of the world’s greatest achievers.</p>



<p>“I expected that those folks would be more stressed, that their health would be more compromised, that they would feel lonely at the top,” Burchard says. “I was wrong.”</p>



<p>According to Burchard’s research, high performers are:</p>



<ul><li>Less stressed</li><li>Healthier</li><li>40 percent more likely to exercise at least three times per week</li><li>Happier</li><li>Engaged in more positive relationships</li></ul>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>Dealing With Stressful Situations</h3>



<h4><em>Three Steps for Cooling Down from Brendon Burchard</em></h4>



<ol><li><strong>Anticipate and ask for help.</strong>&nbsp;Ask people who have experienced this situation before and see what their advice would be. You should never go into a stressful situation without seeking out help.</li><li><strong>Plan what to do before, during, and after the stress.</strong>&nbsp;Make sure that the day before is planned out so you can be prepared, then plan the actual event, and always plan how you will recover from the situation. Stressful situations take a toll on our bodies.</li><li><strong>Visualize your success.&nbsp;</strong>This isn’t worrying about a situation, instead it’s imagining yourself being confident, capable, and doing a good job.</li></ol>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<p> <strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-tom-bilyeu/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Tom Bilyeu</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-rachel-cruze/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150"/></a><figcaption>Rachel Cruze</figcaption></figure></div>
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<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>



<p>[fl_builder_insert_layout slug="amazon-affiliate-disclaimer"]</p>

"Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?" This phrase would eventually become part of his life motto and a key piece of everything he would do in the future.

"Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter?" This phrase would eventually become part of his life motto and a key piece of everything he would do in the future. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Brendon Burchard

New Thought Leader: Brendon Burchard | SUCCESS

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<p>Five months after <a href="https://www.rachelcruze.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Rachel Cruze (opens in a new tab)">Rachel Cruze</a> was born, her parents, Dave and Sharon Ramsey, filed for bankruptcy.</p>



<p>It goes without saying our parents determine the environments we grow up in. Their decisions are the place-setters of our childhood, and their examples, at the very least, inform the values and knowledge with which we enter adulthood. Bankruptcy is a harrowing decision, but more detrimental is the stranglehold it’s designed to help us escape: debt. The choices that Cruze’s parents would make from that moment on would ultimately predicate the way she looked at money and foreshadow what she dedicates her life to.</p>



<p>You have probably heard of <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/dave-ramsey-has-a-plan-for-the-rest-of-your-life/">Dave Ramsey</a>. He recovered financially, went on to be a popular radio show host and author and advising people on their money, and built Ramsey Solutions, a platform of financial advice. His three children lived through it all: The Ramseys vowed to never be in debt again. “Vacation” wasn’t in their vocabulary. Shopping consisted of consignment sales. “My parents made so many sacrifices,” Cruze says.</p>



<p>She was raised through an adolescence of financial savvy, and saw it resonate with people as she sometimes traveled with her father as he spoke in front of large crowds. Once, when she was 15, her father was trying to articulate to an audience how to teach their children about money, and who better to share her experiences than his own daughter? “The first time I spoke in front of an audience it was in front of about 8,000 people,” Cruze says. “Public speaking is not everyone’s favorite thing, so the fact that I actually enjoyed it was a huge lightbulb moment for me.”</p>



<p>When she went off to college, she saw how often her friends and classmates would casually commit to decisions that would result in debt, the thing that had become so taboo in her house growing up. “They had no clue the mistakes they were making today were going to affect them for possibly decades to come,” Cruze says.</p>



<p>Eventually, she realized she could be the bridge between the values and lessons that her father preached and the obstacles facing her generation. She co-wrote a book with her father called<em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rachelcruze.com/store/product/smart-money-smart-kids-book-by-dave-ramsey-and-rachel-cruze" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Smart Money, Smart Kids (opens in a new tab)">Smart Money, Smart Kids</a></em>. And where her dad reached his audience on the radio, she reaches them through YouTube videos and her podcast,&nbsp;<em><a href="https://www.rachelcruze.com/show" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" (opens in a new tab)">The Rachel Cruze Show</a>.</em></p>


<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8GIZO5lfTVM" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>


<p>Her advice is more than just passed-down knowledge, though. She’s very aware of the obstacles that people today face while trying to save money. Think about shopping now versus in 1995: If you want to own something, you can, in all likelihood, purchase it in far less time than you’ve spent reading this article. And businesses aren’t passive, either. They invade the phone in your hand and manage to reach you in your downtime. “It’s just crazy how quickly you can buy things, even via Instagram and Facebook,” Cruze says. “I’m seeing people get deeper and deeper into debt.”</p>



<p>Cruze says that people fall into the trap of seeing financial troubles as hopeless, and she wants to reinsert hope back into their lives. Saving money is a habit-forming endeavor. “Personal finance is 80 percent behavior,” she says. “It’s only 20 percent knowledge.” Setting boundaries is important. There’s trauma and guilt to large financial mistakes, and just setting a weekly budget can trigger negative thoughts about money.</p>



<p>Debt has become alarmingly normalized in our society. Escaping it means financial freedom, which sadly, many people in this country have never actually experienced. Cruze likens this to changing your family tree for generations.</p>



<p>Talking about money can be taboo. People don’t like to come across as being defined by money, which would be fine if money didn’t have the ability to limit our lifestyles and hamstring our futures. Money may not define us, but it’s worth noticing how people can get a glimpse of how we define ourselves through our money habits. “What you value, what you fear, what you dream, all are reflected by how you handle money,” Cruze says. “When you do a budget you get to say, ‘I am doing my life with intentionality.’ ”</p>



<p>Cruze just had her third child last year. Her kids won’t have to live through the desperate sacrifices that Cruze and her two siblings experienced. But as a busy career and a growing family fill up her now unpredictable schedule, she knows that the one thing she can keep under her control is her financial decisions. She wants to helps others take the same control.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>Don’t Forget to Celebrate</h3>



<p>Personal finance expert Rachel Cruze advises people on a budget to set small rewards and make plans for fun once a week. The anticipation and planning can be part of the joy.</p>



<p>Wealth doesn’t happen overnight, so let yourself be happy in the present. Don’t focus on what saving is keeping you from doing. Instead, proactively plan to have a good time.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<p> <strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-brendon-burchard/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Brendon Burchard</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-prince-ea/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150"/></a><figcaption>Prince Ea</figcaption></figure></div>
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<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustrations by Hanane Kai</em> </p>

Rachel Cruze says that people fall into the trap of seeing financial troubles as hopeless, and she wants to reinsert hope back into their lives.

Rachel Cruze says that people fall into the trap of seeing financial troubles as hopeless, and she wants to reinsert hope back into their lives. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Rachel Cruze

New Thought Leader: Rachel Cruze | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/7.png

<p>His given name is Richard Williams, but you probably know the filmmaker, poet, motivational speaker and activist from St. Louis as <a href="https://princeea.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Prince Ea (opens in a new tab)">Prince Ea</a>. You’ve probably seen one of his videos circling social media without realizing it. His content goes viral frequently.</p>



<p>His most-watched video on YouTube was uploaded five years ago. It’s a three-and-a-half minute spoken word poem called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRl8EIhrQjQ" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="“Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?” (opens in a new tab)">“Can We Auto-Correct Humanity?”</a> It has more than 22 million views. In the video, Prince Ea is standing near the shoreline. He looks down at a phone and then up at the camera with an intense but kind gaze.</p>



<p>The video starts like this: “Did you know the average person spends four years of his life looking down at his cell phone? Kind of ironic, ain’t it? How these touch screens can make us lose touch? But it’s no wonder in a world filled with iMacs, iPads and iPhones—so many ‘i’s’; so many selfies, not enough ‘us’s’ and ‘we’s.’ ”</p>



<p>The video ends with, “Call me crazy, but I imagine a world where we smile when we have low batteries, because that means we’ll be one bar closer to humanity.”</p>



<p>As beautiful as the message might be, the reality is that Prince Ea found success using the same social media platforms that he cites as the reason for much of the disconnect and unhappiness that people are feeling. (He refers to Facebook, where he has more than 15 million followers, as the “anti-social network” in the video.)</p>



<p>For many in the personal development industry, social media is part of the game. For him, it’s a way to change a negative into a positive. If you can go viral with a video like “Everybody dies, but not everybody lives,” then change can happen from within—a familiar theme in personal development since its beginnings.</p>



<p>Prince Ea once planned to be a rapper—the greatest rapper. But in trying to secure that goal, he found only suffering. He lost touch with the message he was trying to deliver with his music, often comparing himself to other artists and worrying whether he was falling behind.</p>



<p>The unhappiness became unbearable and he stopped making music. With a degree in anthropology, he turned to knowledge as a cure, finding his own growth path in ancient Eastern spiritual texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and the Tao te Ching. He learned that happiness isn’t something you can achieve, but rather something that occurs when you accept where you are at that moment. Happiness isn’t doing but being. He felt inspired to share what he learned, tackling the hip-hop industry first.</p>



<p>In 2009, Prince Ea launched the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFlX2gZPeio" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label=" “Make SMART Cool” (opens in a new tab)">“Make SMART Cool”</a> movement, which stands for “sophisticated minds and revolutionizing thought.” The movement caught on, garnering support and promotion from artists and producers including record label So So Def producer Mike Kalombo. He began creating inspirational, thought-provoking videos. Some were professionally edited while others were in-the-moment videos shot from a phone. It resonated.</p>



<p>As of publication, the 31-year-old has a cumulative social media following of nearly 30 million. He has been named to 30-under-30 lists by both&nbsp;<em><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-success-30-under-30/">SUCCESS</a>&nbsp;</em>and&nbsp;<em>Forbes</em>. He’s appeared on Oprah’s&nbsp;Super Soul Sundays. He travels internationally to speak to underprivileged youth on topics of self-confidence, passion, love and connection. He’s made it his mission to “reach every single heart on the planet to show them that at our core we are Love, we are free, and we are one.”</p>



<p>But Prince Ea doesn’t just cover the feel-good, inspiration stuff made for Instagram’s highlight reels. And it’s not all based in spirituality either. Those are just two of the gateways he uses to get people in the door. Many of his videos have tackled hot-button issues, including the Michael Brown shooting, the 2016 election and terrorism.</p>



<p>He explains delicate and complex issues with grace and without convoluted language. In one, he says the current political climate is a blessing. He explains it like this: When the body is sick, it doesn’t (typically) die without warning. It gives off symptoms of the underlying issue. If we ignore the symptoms, our body will continue to deteriorate until death. Sometimes we have the option to take a pill to alleviate the symptoms, but it doesn’t fix the underlying issue. Our country is sick, Prince Ea argues. If we continue to take pills that alleviate this or that social or political symptom, it might feel better for a brief time, but there are larger underlying issues that must be addressed for us to be well&nbsp;again.</p>



<p>The videos resonate not just because of their relevancy or the straightforward way that Prince Ea delivers a message, but also because they force you to think, to re-evaluate convictions you once held and whether those convictions are still valid when presented with alternate perspectives. With more than 200 million total views, he appears to be on to something.</p>



<p><strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-rachel-cruze/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Rachel Cruze</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-tim-ferriss/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150"/></a><figcaption>Tim Ferriss</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>

His given name is Richard Williams, but you probably know the filmmaker, poet, motivational speaker and activist from St. Louis as Prince Ea. You’ve

His given name is Richard Williams, but you probably know the filmmaker, poet, motivational speaker and activist from St. Louis as Prince Ea. You’ve | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Prince Ea

New Thought Leader: Prince Ea | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Next-Gen-Covers-WEB-5.png

<p>For a guy who has built a career on change and adaptation, <a href="https://tim.blog/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tim Ferriss (opens in a new tab)">Tim Ferriss</a> has found a semblance of consistency in his last few years. Though he’s still constantly working on new skills, picking up new hobbies, and teaching new techniques, he’s settled into a routine of producing top-notch content that benefits both himself and his listeners via the <em><a href="https://tim.blog/podcast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tim Ferriss Show (opens in a new tab)">Tim Ferriss Show</a></em> podcast and his best-selling books.</p>



<p>Ferriss’s media empire is far-reaching and world changing. What started with the massively popular 2007 best-seller <em><a href="https://amzn.to/2Uf9FXq" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The 4 Hour Workweek (opens in a new tab)">The 4 Hour Workweek</a></em> has turned Ferriss from a relatively unknown entrepreneur into a media mogul. The book, which is about reorganizing your life and outsourcing tasks to virtual assistants, has changed the lives of millions of readers and remains a regular on best-seller lists to this day.</p>



<p>Ferriss has made a career of reinventing himself in both major and more minor ways. His dedication to picking up new skills is legendary. He approaches every new skill by looking for an advantage or hack that will allow him to learn quickly and master it in a much shorter time than it normally would take someone.</p>



<p>Since his first appearance on <a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-tim-ferriss-way-life-is-a-choose-your-own-adventure-game/">the cover of <em>SUCCESS </em>in 2015</a>, he also had an interview show on AT&amp;T’s Audience network called <em>Fear{less}</em>, which featured interviews with the likes of magician David Blaine and comedian Bill Burr.</p>



<p>It’s an apt title for Ferriss’s career and life. His lack of fear when seeking out knowledge, self-improvement, and entertainment is what has endeared him to audiences and made his podcast so popular. The podcast has surpassed 400 million downloads in its lifetime and has won numerous awards. Though it is ostensibly a business podcast, Ferriss explores many different topics with his guests, often trying to learn the methods and habits of highly successful people.</p>



<p>That’s the conceit behind his most recent books <em><a href="https://amzn.to/2S9ghUm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tools of Titans (opens in a new tab)">Tools of Titans</a></em> (2016) and <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3aTn6Sy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tribe of Mentors (opens in a new tab)">Tribe of Mentors</a></em> (2017) as well. Most of the interviews in the books were taken from podcast episodes, but Ferriss loaded the books with extras, from Tony Robbins’ morning routine to how to ask questions like Malcolm Gladwell.</p>



<p>Learning as Ferriss does takes vulnerability and a willingness to open oneself up to failure. Anyone who has seen him attempt to learn a new skill knows that he doesn’t master things the first time. He has even injured himself in his quests. When <em>SUCCESS </em>interviewed him in 2015, he was nursing an injury he picked up while doing AcroYoga, an extra-difficult form of yoga involving acrobatics and extreme flexibility. He also tore ligaments in his knee while learning parkour for his <em><a href="https://tim.blog/tv/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Tim Ferriss Experiment (opens in a new tab)">Tim Ferriss Experiment</a> </em>show.</p>



<p>Injuries, both physical harms and blows to one’s pride, are common when attempting to learn something new. But that has never slowed Ferriss down.</p>



<p>Ferriss is hard to label. Is he a personal development guru? Sure. Is he a business podcaster? Definitely. Is he a serial entrepreneur and successful investor? Well, if you consider early investments in Twitter, Uber, Alibaba, Shopify, Duolingo and more to be “successful,” and you should,<br>then yes.</p>



<p><em>The New York Times&nbsp;</em>pegged him somewhere between “Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk.” For a polymath like Ferriss, it can be impossible to find the exact label, but that comes pretty close.&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>Winning Without Social Media</h3>



<h4>Tim Ferriss’s Guide to Doing Business the Old-Fashioned Way</h4>



<p>Tim Ferriss uses social media to push out information and news on his podcasts and books, but doesn’t spend huge amounts of time scrolling pointlessly. In an age when many businesses—particularly YouEconomy solopreneurs and side-hustlers—are convinced they can only get ahead by mastering social media, Ferriss pushes back. Here are his tips for how to be successful without relying on social media.</p>



<h5>Make Your Product So Good People Can’t Ignore It</h5>



<p>Ferriss points out that thousands of businesses have been successful without posting incessantly on Instagram throughout history. Usually, their products and services are so good that people seek them out and tell others about them.</p>



<h5>Let Your Fans Do the Posting</h5>



<p>You might not be relying on social media from your own accounts, but it won’t hurt for your raving fans to spread the love online. So incentivize those fans to post about you. If they love your product, they’re going to want to do it anyway. The most effective marketing is marketing that a fan is doing on your behalf.</p>



<h5>Have a Long-Term Plan</h5>



<p>If you’re going to use social media, don’t do it to just be part of the endless stream of information that people see. Set goals and work on ways to execute your plan without losing yourself in the stream of information. Make social media a tool that benefits you instead of a time-wasting burden.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<p><strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-prince-ea/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Prince Ea</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-marie-forleo/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150"/></a><figcaption>Marie Forleo</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>



<p>[fl_builder_insert_layout slug="amazon-affiliate-disclaimer"]</p>

What started with the massively popular 2007 best-seller The 4 Hour Workweek has turned Tim Ferriss from a relatively unknown entrepreneur into a media mogul.

What started with the massively popular 2007 best-seller The 4 Hour Workweek has turned Tim Ferriss from a relatively unknown entrepreneur into a media mogul. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Tim Ferriss

New Thought Leader: Tim Ferriss | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Next-Gen-Covers-WEB-6.png

<p>A former professional football player and current high-performance athlete, 36-year-old <a href="https://lewishowes.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Lewis Howes (opens in a new tab)">Lewis Howes</a> has truly carved a niche for himself in the world of personal development, using his expertise in sports to inform his teachings.</p>



<p>His podcast,<em>&nbsp;<a href="https://lewishowes.com/blog/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The School of Greatness (opens in a new tab)">The School of Greatness</a></em>, regularly ranks in the Top 100 on iTunes, and he is a&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;best-selling author with&nbsp;two books,&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/38XZM4w" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The School of Greatness (opens in a new tab)">The School of Greatness</a></em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/31c3BAe" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Mask of Masculinity (opens in a new tab)">The Mask of Masculinity</a>.</em></p>



<p>In addition to his podcast and books, Howes regularly hosts online classes, as well as his annual event, <a href="https://lewishowes.com/events/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Summit of Greatness (opens in a new tab)">The Summit of Greatness</a>, which this year will be held in Columbus, Ohio, in September.</p>



<p>Howes doesn’t take his success for granted.</p>



<p>“I’m constantly blessed because I get to interview some of the smartest people in the world,” he says, adding that he often develops strong, ongoing relationships with guests on his podcast.</p>



<p>He’s interviewed countless personal development masters, from Gabby Bernstein and Simon Sinek to Brendon Burchard and Rachel Hollis. If you asked Howes whether he wanted to collaborate with his competitors 10 years ago, he would’ve said&nbsp;no. Back then, he says, he operated with a scarcity mindset, not an abundance mindset. He’s since changed his tune.</p>



<p>“As I matured and grew and learned, I realized that in order to truly make an impact, I needed to collaborate with the right people—and more people,” Howes says. “I don’t care if they’re bigger or better than me, or smarter or have more followers or whatever it may be. I want to support people with a great message that can serve my audience.”</p>


<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/b4PvbZgXLT8" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>


<h4>Credible Creator</h4>



<p>With over 150 million podcast downloads, over 2 million Facebook fans and nearly 1.5 million Instagram followers, Howes doesn’t take his influence lightly. He says the most important part of cultivating a loyal community is not only getting personal (which he regularly does), but also creating a brand that is credible. He sees himself not just as a thought leader, but as a brand.</p>



<p>“Brands stick around for much longer,” he says. “Brands have credibility. Brands have a story and they have a connection to their audience. Without being a brand, it’s hard to build trust in a relationship with someone. You have to be willing to invest in your brand, invest in your design, invest into longform quality content and doing things that are challenging or hard, like writing a book.”</p>



<p>Reliability has always been a crucial element of his brand, too. Howes started his podcast seven years ago, and he always releases a weekly episode, no matter what. “That consistency builds trust,” he says.</p>



<p>Howes says one of the biggest hurdles he faces in the future is figuring out the best place to disseminate his work. There are more channels than ever for spreading information, and it’s an ongoing challenge to determine the best platform to pour his energy into.</p>



<p>“There are amazing benefits to changing technology—and challenges,” he says. “The benefits are that there are always new tools to help you spread a message and build a community. The challenges are that you could put all of your energy into one platform, and then the platform doesn’t work for you anymore.”</p>



<h4>The Comparison Trap</h4>



<p>Howes thinks personal development has surged in popularity in recent years because young people need more help than ever before, in part because of the effect social media has had.</p>



<p>“I really think millennials are struggling with comparison, with judgment, with feeling like they’re behind, and with feeling like they’re not getting what they want, and therefore they’re seeking answers,” he says. “They’re seeking information, wisdom and resources to help them improve their life quicker because they feel more insecure, depressed, uncertain and unclear with all that’s happening in the world.</p>



<p>“They need the tools to help improve their lives. And that’s why they’re invested.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>Across the Board Advice</h3>



<p>Personal development is exactly what its name implies: personal. But there are a handful of daily tasks Lewis Howes thinks everyone can benefit from:</p>



<ol><li>Changing the way we think.</li><li>Moving our bodies every single day with some type of physical activity.</li><li>Getting the right amount of sleep.</li><li>Meditating and focusing on one’s breathing, even if it’s only for two minutes a day.</li><li>Being in service to someone else every single day.</li></ol>



<p>The final habit resonates with him the most.</p>



<p>“The fastest way to overcome insecurity or self-doubt is to help other people and to give to other people,” Howes says.</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>The&nbsp;Best Advice I’ve Ever Received</h3>



<p>“The thing that’s always resonated with me is being a passionate, loving individual. We attract what we are and we attract what we bring to the table. If you want more love and passion and excitement, then bring that.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<p><strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-rachel-hollis/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Rachel Hollis</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-trent-shelton/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Trent Shelton</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>



<p>[fl_builder_insert_layout slug="amazon-affiliate-disclaimer"]</p>

A former professional football player and current high-performance athlete, 36-year-old Lewis Howes has truly carved a niche for himself in the world of personal development, using his expertise in sports to inform his teachings.

A former professional football player and current high-performance athlete, 36-year-old Lewis Howes has truly carved a niche for himself in the world of personal development, using his expertise in sports to inform his teachings. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Lewis Howes

New Thought Leader: Lewis Howes | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/12.png

<p>Of&nbsp;all the things that don’t go particularly far on a résumé, running fast and catching footballs are skills that qualify you for one specific job. For <a href="https://www.trentshelton.com/home" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Trent Shelton (opens in a new tab)">Trent Shelton</a>, fizzling out of the NFL in 2009 after three years of limited opportunities was some combination of humiliating and terrifying. “By the time I was 25, my dream was over,” he says.</p>



<p>It’s hard to quantify how painful it is to come close to that specific dream and still fail. Around the same time, Shelton’s college roommate Anthony Arline, another football star, took his own life.</p>



<p>So, if you’re Shelton, what do you do? Not just how do you overcome the pain—literally, what do you do with your life?</p>



<p>What you can accomplish on the football field might not help you get a lot of office jobs, but elite athletes are more familiar than most with a universal part of life: adversity. Shelton got out the other side of the depression and self-destructive behavior that followed his NFL career and began uploading videos to social media that were part philosophical musing, part pep talk. In doing so, he was entering a personal development space that he didn’t even know existed.</p>



<p>“My personal development was Lil Wayne,” Shelton remembers. “It was hip-hop. Master P. That’s what I grew up on. My mentors were people like Tupac.”</p>



<p>Rappers and other musicians sometimes tell stories of personal development, but more often they make music in service of motivation, and so athletes are naturally drawn to it. Sports exist in a realm where results are an immediate product of effort and execution. Winning is everything, and yet every athlete has lost. The life skill that an elite athlete like Shelton has is the ability to lose without being defeated.</p>



<p>His videos are optimistic and motivational. Whatever setback you’re going through, he understands the feeling. He’s lost games and literally come back stronger and faster, and he believes that mindset can propel people through life. He overcame his fear of public speaking by realizing that being on a stage doesn’t require playing a character. He could just be himself.</p>



<p>It wasn’t always easy. Shelton didn’t look like the typical guy on stage telling people how to improve their lives. “I’m a black guy with dreads and tattoos,” Shelton said. “I don’t talk proper.” The other men in the industry wore suits. Shelton wore hoodies and a snapback hat and was criticized for it. “One lady told me I don’t look professional enough. I said, ‘Well, I’m purposeful enough.’ ”</p>


<p style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mv3SM3yiqz8" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p>


<p>In 2013, he got some emotional proof that his messages were resonating with people when a woman approached him at an event with tears in her eyes. She claimed that a couple months back, Shelton had saved her life. She was on the verge of suicide and opened up Facebook to post a goodbye message to her friends and family. Shelton happened to be recording a Facebook live video at that exact moment. “Your video literally stopped me,” she told him before her sons gave him a hug. “You can’t measure impact,” Shelton says.</p>



<p>Now, he reaches over 60 million people weekly though his videos and has written a book titled&nbsp;<em><a href="https://amzn.to/38W0NKb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Greatest You (opens in a new tab)">The Greatest You</a></em>. His signature signoff “RehabTime” draws from his experience as a football player. We often refer to athletes as “physically gifted” but most of them have experienced injuries. That’s because our bodies weren’t specifically designed for football the way it’s played at the highest levels. Likewise, our worlds aren’t designed to perfectly set us up for the lives we’re chasing. Things will go wrong. And rehabbing from our setbacks is a conscious decision.</p>



<p>For Shelton, that means time in nature. Plenty of his videos take place during an impromptu break from a run out on a trail. “I love nature,” he says. “I don’t like snakes and that stuff. But nature, that heals.”</p>



<p>Shelton might not have been able to keep the job he had strived for, but he found the career he was perfect for. “I’m in the service industry,” he explained. “Just like you’d go to Home Depot to fix or improve your house and go get tools. I’m someone who can give you tools to improve your life.”&nbsp;</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<h3>Trent&nbsp;Shelton’s Three A’s of Personal Development</h3>



<h5>Appreciation</h5>



<p>“Appreciation is the first step to elevation. If you can find appreciation in your sunshine and your storm, then you got it. Appreciation will carry you through.”</p>



<h5>Accountability</h5>



<p>“I’ve been an athlete over half my life, and accountability is big. Eventually what you don’t do will show. You will be exposed. You can preach good health, but if you don’t practice it, it will show.”</p>



<h5>Attention</h5>



<p>“I wish my audience paid more attention to themselves. We’re always on the phone. It’s like we’re in the stands watching other people play the game of life. Focus on yourself a bit.”</p>



<hr class="wp-block-separator is-style-wide"/>



<p><strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



<div class="wp-block-columns">
<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-lewis-howes/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Lewis Howes</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-jay-shetty/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Jay Shetty</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>



<p>[fl_builder_insert_layout slug="amazon-affiliate-disclaimer"]</p>

Of all the things that don’t go particularly far on a résumé, running fast and catching footballs are skills that qualify you for one specific job. For Trent Shelton, fizzling out of the NFL in 2009 after three years of limited opportunities was some combination of humiliating and terrifying.

Of all the things that don’t go particularly far on a résumé, running fast and catching footballs are skills that qualify you for one specific job. For Trent Shelton, fizzling out of the NFL in 2009 after three years of limited opportunities was some combination of humiliating and terrifying. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Trent Shelton

New Thought Leader: Trent Shelton | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Next-Gen-Covers-WEB-10.png

<p>Known by many simply as “Gary Vee,” <a href="https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Gary Vaynerchuk (opens in a new tab)">Gary Vaynerchuk</a>, 44, has used his decades-long impact to motivate millions of people. The entrepreneur, author and business expert is well-regarded for his tough teachings, occasionally laden with adult language, as well as his knack for deeply and thoroughly documenting his life.</p>



<p>Born in Belarus, Vaynerchuk moved to the U.S. when he was just 3. He shared a studio apartment with eight family members in Queens before his family moved to New Jersey. His entrepreneurial spirit began when he helped his father grow his small New Jersey liquor store into a massive online wine retailer with $60 million in annual sales.</p>



<p>Vaynerchuk was one of the first people to see the internet’s promise as an ecommerce platform. Since then, he’s gone on to launch myriad ventures, including <a href="https://vaynerx.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="VaynerX (opens in a new tab)">VaynerX</a>, a media conglomerate that serves as the parent company to VaynerSports—an agency that represents athletes—and VaynerMedia, an advertising agency with clients like Chase, Toyota, and Johnson &amp; Johnson.</p>



<p>Right now, Vaynerchuk is focused on helping people grow their online businesses and social media platforms—he recently launched a 270-page guide for <a href="https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/how-to-create-64-pieces-of-content-in-a-day/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="how to create 64 pieces of content a day (opens in a new tab)">how to create 64 pieces of content a day</a>.</p>



<h3>Face of the Future</h3>



<p>Vaynerchuk has been vlogging (video blogging) his life for decades. When he began in the early 2000s, he produced grainy, poorly shot videos about wine from a dark room with a bleak background. Now, he’s a major player on TikTok, the latest social media app to take the country by storm, not to mention Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter. He isn’t afraid to pivot and explore new forms of technology—it’s part of the reason he’s been able to grow his follower base exponentially.</p>



<p>If Vaynerchuk thinks a platform has potential, he’ll try it out. And if he sees his followers are spending time somewhere else, that’s where he’ll focus his energy.</p>



<p>Vaynerchuk has mastered the need for thought leaders to reach their audiences exactly where they are.</p>



<h3>A Daily Dose of Vee</h3>



<p>Vaynerchuk prides himself on being a robust content creator, pushing out at least 64 pieces of content each day. A day doesn’t go by without a hit of motivation from Vaynerchuk, whether it’s on the #AskGaryVee Facebook Q&amp;A; his podcast,&nbsp;<em><a href="https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/podcast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The GaryVee Audio Experience (opens in a new tab)">The GaryVee Audio Experience</a></em>; or YouTube. He has so much content, in fact, that he recently launched the GaryVee search engine, which helps followers search through thousands of his videos for a specific topic.</p>



<p>One of Vaynerchuk’s latest initiatives is<em>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FA-A72QKBw3noWuQbaVXqSD" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="DailyVee (opens in a new tab)">DailyVee</a></em>, a YouTube series that documents a day in the life of being a CEO. With over 600 videos to date, DailyVee explores all things business and personal development, from happiness and failure to regret and the importance of individuality.</p>



<p>How does he do it all? The key to growing a personal brand, he says, is to focus on documenting, not just creating. For example, he says, imagine how cool it would be if we had documentary footage from when Vera Wang created her first dress. “You need to be thinking about documenting more than you need to be thinking about creating,” he said in an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfA33-E9P7FC0AoARnMLvgFgESJe4_Ngs" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="#AskGaryVee  (opens in a new tab)">#AskGaryVee </a>YouTube video.</p>



<h3>The One-Life Mindset</h3>



<p>Vaynerchuk’s teachings explore everything from growing one’s business to the pitfalls of procrastination. But perhaps what he’s best known for and the subject of his most-watched video is his ongoing message that we only have one life, so it’s important to live without regret.</p>



<p>“The biggest poison in us is regret,” he says. “If anybody ever did it, then you can, too. Stop making excuses. Stop complaining. Nobody’s listening.”</p>



<p>At the end of the day, he says, you only need to make one person happy: yourself.</p>



<p>“If you have any inkling to take a jump—do it,” he told&nbsp;<em>SUCCESS</em>. “Because at 80, you’ll be more upset that you didn’t try than the fact that you lost your life savings.”</p>



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<h3>Gary Vee By the Numbers</h3>



<p><strong>7.2 million+:</strong>&nbsp;The number of Instagram followers Vaynerchuk has.</p>



<p><strong>64:&nbsp;</strong>The number of pieces of content he creates daily.</p>



<p><strong>3.4 million+:</strong>&nbsp;The number of Facebook fans Vaynerchuk has.</p>



<p><strong>$160 million:</strong>&nbsp;His estimated net worth, per 2017 data.</p>



<p><strong>5:&nbsp;</strong>The number of&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;best-selling books Vaynerchuk has written.</p>



<p><strong>2.4 million+:</strong>&nbsp;The number of subscribers on the GaryVee YouTube channel.</p>



<p><strong>175 million+:&nbsp;</strong>The total number of views on Vaynerchuk’s YouTube channel.</p>



<p><strong>800:&nbsp;</strong>The number of employees at VaynerMedia.</p>



<p><strong>2 million+:</strong>&nbsp;Vaynerchuk’s Twitter followers.</p>



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<p><strong>Meet the other New Thought Leaders:</strong> </p>



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<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/new-thought-leader-jay-shetty/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/2-2.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44077" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>Jay Shetty</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>



<div class="wp-block-column">
<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><a href="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/the-new-thought-leaders/"><img src="https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/1-7.png" alt="" class="wp-image-44078" width="150" height="150"/></a><figcaption>The New Thought Leaders</figcaption></figure></div>
</div>
</div>



<p class="has-small-font-size"><em>This article originally appeared in the March/April 2020 issue of SUCCESS magazine.</em><br><em>Illustration by Hanane Kai</em>  </p>

Known by many simply as “Gary Vee,” Gary Vaynerchuk, 44, has used his decades-long impact to motivate millions of people.

Known by many simply as “Gary Vee,” Gary Vaynerchuk, 44, has used his decades-long impact to motivate millions of people. | SUCCESS

New Thought Leader: Gary Vaynerchuk

New Thought Leader: Gary Vaynerchuk | SUCCESS

https://successcom.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/15.png