Today’s guest has an incredible background. He served in Baghdad during the invasion of Iraq. And, somehow, he managed to take the corporate world by storm shortly after finishing his time in the service, despite not having previous business experience.
His name is Anthony Butler. Anthony has written a book that just came out in September.
Two years into running his own digital agency, Anthony was stunned when a new client left. The work was good, they said, but the results weren’t consistent.
So, he set out to fix it—to design a reliable digital marketing system that would always come out ahead.
The result is a cutting-edge approach that combines evolutionary psychology with age-old story techniques to create high-performing digital content that cuts through the noise.
Whether you’re competing for local foot traffic or global downloads, Primal Storytelling will help you forge authentic connections with your audience, improve your brand performance in social media and SEO, and supercharge your content results.
Intrigued? Click the play button below to learn more Anthony and his book.
Carmine reveals the communication strategies that Jeff Bezos pioneered to fuel Amazon’s astonishing growth. As one of the most innovative and visionary entrepreneurs of our time, Bezos reimagined the way leaders write, speak, and motivate teams and customers.
The communication tools Bezos created are so effective that former Amazonians who worked directly with Bezos adopted them as blueprints to start their own companies. Now, these tools are available to you.
Intrigued? Click the play button below to learn more Carmine and his book.
My guest today is truly one of the best-prepared and most articulate guests I’ve ever had the privilege to welcome to the show. And that voice. I often get compliments on my own voice, but wow!
Wait until you hear the voice of René Rodriguez. You just might melt.
But more importantly, I can’t wait for you to hear his message. It’s incredibly compelling.
René is here today to help us apply the latest advances in neuroscience to your real-world persuasion and influence strategies for immediate results
In Amplify Your Influence, he delivers an eye-opening roadmap to using applied neuroscience to improve readers’ communication ability, critical thinking, cultural awareness, and leadership skills.
Perfect for executives, managers, sales professionals, and other business leaders, Amplify Your Influence is required reading for anyone seeking to improve their ability to effect change in the people around them, whether they’re in the office, the boardroom, the classroom, or at home.
Intrigued? Click the play button below to learn more René and his book.
During my reading early this morning, a part of my morning ritual, I ran across this quote from Ziglar…
Don’t be distracted by criticism. Remember, the only taste of success some people have is when they take a bite out of you.
Zig Ziglar
In an interview with author Seth Godin several years ago, I asked about doing what you feel called to do in the face of detractors. I loved his answer (paraphrased here):
“No author has ever read all their 1-Star Amazon reviews and then said to themselves, ‘Gee, now I’m a better writer.’ When people express their dislike for your work, it doesn’t mean your work is bad. It just means it wasn’t for them. Your job is to continue showing up and putting out your work for the people who it is for…as soon as you realize you don’t have to please everyone, the last excuse you have for doing your best work goes away.”
He also makes a distinction later between “informed criticism” and the criticism that comes “from the pain of the critic.”
It immediately brings to mind the “Man in the Arena” quote from one of Roosevelt’s speeches (and an inspiration for the title of Brené Brown’s book Daring Greatly).
At any rate, if you’re facing criticism today, or struggling with the fear of potential criticism, know that you’ll likely never escape it, at least not as long you’re doing anything worthwhile.
If anything, let the criticism you do receive serve as confirmation that you’re doing exactly that: worthwhile, meaningful, and life-changing work.
I find that a lot of professionals and creatives take copious notes on the content they consume…with the best of intentions. Unfortunately, for many of them, much of that work goes to waste.
Generally speaking, they rarely—if ever—do anything with their notes, making the whole practice meaningless. And if they do attempt to leverage their notes, the experience is often an unpleasant one. To address this, I suggest following a four-part framework. This framework will help increase the likelihood you’ll actually come back to your notes AND make your notes infinitely more useful when you do.
It’s the same, four-part framework I walk students through in my Note-Making Mastery course. In short, this framework is the key to an effective Personal Knowledge Management system.
Collect, Connect, Crystallize, and Create
COLLECT addresses the necessary tools and workflows, understanding that your note-taking archetype informs, to some extent, the tools you’ll require.
The key here is identifying, based on your archetype, what will ultimately become the Central Hub of your PKM system.
Additionally, you’ll likely use a number of other capture tools, all of which should be optimized for getting your notes, highlights, etc., effortlessly into your Central Hub. CONNECT is about understanding the value (and power) in connecting new ideas to your existing ideas, as well as how best to organize your system in such a way you look forward to coming back to it again and again.
Alternatively, you remain intimated by it (meaning you don’t use it regularly, if at all).
If you’re a folders person, the fewer the better (I’d suggest around seven, give or take three). In my old system, I had over a hundred folders. Yikes! CRYSTALLIZE teaches you how to develop and distill your notes, first by summarizing in your own words what you’ve learned, and eventually adding your own unique insights and ideas into the process.
Many note-takers stop at simply copying down the words of others.
Unless your notes include the original author’s insights paraphrased in your own words (at least), or explored further with your own added ideas (at best), then they likely won’t be of much use to you later. CREATE is the ultimate goal. It’s about understanding that each of your notes has the power to serve as a building block or knowledge asset toward something larger.
When it comes time to create, you’ll never again have to stare at a blank page or screen.
That’s because the notes you’ve already amassed, baby-step-by-baby-step along the way, means that 70 to 80% of the work is already done.
Your job is simply to connect them by means of a cohesive narrative.
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Each of your notes travels through these four phases at its own, unique pace. Some notes will go the distance, while others will only travel a portion of the way…and that’s okay.
It’s important to understand, however, that the further a note travels, the more potential value it contains for you and your system.
When practiced, it’s possible to simply glance at a note in your system and instantly recognize what phase of the journey it’s in, saving you valuable time when your time is arguably at its most valuable (i.e. during the actual creation process).
