Part 1: All Rise
Lessons from Catherine Zeta-Jones: Find Your Fire and Step into the Light
Create an environment in your workplace and at your home that keeps you relaxed and connected to your values and emotions that you want to share with your colleagues, friends and family.
Be open to new ideas, experiences and opportunities that broaden your worldview. Never be afraid to reach out to people, even if you don’t have a friend in common. Sometimes, a spark in someone’s eyes or even a good gut feeling is all you need to make a connection. So, follow your instincts.
The conventional wisdom “follow your dreams” is only partially right. Yes, you can go ahead and follow your highest aspirations, but you also need to win conscience among the people who care about you the most. They’re the ones who’ll stick with you when things don’t work out.
Lessons from Kyle Maynard: Don’t Make Excuses
When Kyle started out as a motivational speaker, he felt like a fraud because he wasn’t exactly practicing what he was preaching.
If you focus on how far you still need to go, it’s too easy to become demotivated. The key is to look at how far you’ve come, while maintaining a clear picture of yourself in your mind and how you see yourself in the future.
Human body is more adaptable than you think. Always be willing to make necessary adjustments, physically and mentally, to keep open to new approaches and embrace the concept of change.
We don’t have to do everything right. We just need to do one thing really, really, really well. So, be the guy who practices that one kick a thousand times.
Part 2: Embrace the Grind
Lessons from Nely Galan: Stand for Something
Think big but act small. Keep the steps to get there within reach. Take chances. See what works as well as what doesn’t.
Speak up. Nelly’s parents were handcuffed by a kind of second-class-citizen mentality. Never be afraid to stand up for something and get what’s yours. Remember when you see an obstacle, there’s almost always a way to go around.
Integrity is the name of the game. Nely’s opportunities came about because she was self-assured and confident in her own skin enough to honor her voice. And when you see that opportunity like Nely does, go figure it out. When life hands you an opportunity, it doesn’t always come with an instruction book.
Part 3: Make the Time
Lessons from Tyler, the Creator: Create a Carnival
Listen to the melody in your mind. Your mind moves your body.
Pursue the goals that are meaningful to you, without worrying how they’ll pay you back or advance your career. You may worry a little bit about those things but never let your worries hold you back from chasing what matters. Love what you do. Would you call it work when there’s joy in your work?
Tyler put his business model second to achieve the freedom in doing his own things, even if they don’t promise any sort of return on his investment. Sure, this might not work for you or for me even. But it worked like magic for Tyler.
Put things on paper. We’re living in a digital world but there’s a power to be tapped in the simple act of writing things down and setting our own thoughts, the music that lives inside us runs free…
Lessons from Lola Alvarez: Celebrate your Differences
We’ll have limited time and energy. Identify the resources available to you and make sure you’re making full use of them to meet your priorities.
Learn from struggles you’ve had in childhood and put those lessons to work for you in your adulthood. Just because you’ve struggled doesn’t mean your kids have to do the same. Maybe you can help your kids struggle a bit less with the same issues.
Wake up earlier than your house, your workplace to get ready for the demands of the day lying ahead.
Part 4: My Early Rising
Lessons from Gary Vaynerchuk: Lift the Weight of Worry
When you feel like everything is falling apart, take time to appreciate what you have and where you come from. Then confront your doubts, fears and negative beliefs. You can force yourself to think through the worst-case scenarios of each that are awaiting you in your career or your personal life. And always… always remember to count your blessings. But keep them in mind, you can’t always count on them.
Learn to juggle. Yes, we are not designed to multitask but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. There simply aren’t enough hours in a day to get everything off the to-do list but we can trick our mind into tackling one by one.
Delegate at your own risk. You can’t hand certain aspects of your job to someone else, like connecting with your customers. People will see it right through you if you do so. Don’t talk yourself into believing that a job or a task is beneath you.
Lessons from Brian Lee: Pay Your Dues
Don’t be afraid to chase your dreams even if it seems a little crazy to everyone out there. Give it a try, experiment and find a way to fail early and learn. If you can do so before you’ve got kids and a mortgage, or employees and killer costs, that’s even better.
Carve out blocks of uninterrupted time for your personal life. When you’re taking your time off, do this in a disciplined way. Brain for example shuts off his phone completely if he has to.
Take your time to prepare your pitch. Write it down. Own it before you go yourself to a high-stake presentation or find yourself in an unexpected position of making your pitch. Know that when you’re cold-calling someone, you might be surprised by the number of times the actual decision-maker picks up the phone.
Trust the instincts of the people around you. If your partner loves you to buy her shoes or organic foods, be open to opportunities that confirm what she’s been trying to tell you. Pay your dues to everyone while you grind hard, but not so much that you give yourself permission to slow down once you achieve some success.
Lessons from Kristina Guerrero: Bark Once for a Big Idea
Lay a solid foundation. There’s rarely a better example than military personnel, but even normal people can develop good, purpose habits and learn to move and think like them.
Know your strength that leads to even more strengths. If you attack your day with relentless passion and precision, you’re bound to go to bed as a better person than you were yesterday.
If you’re planning to start a family, look for opportunities that allow you to work from home or maintain a flexible schedule. This is easier said than done. But if you keep it in mind and start your career or your business venture, you might make certain choices along the way to meet the demands of parenthood in your busy schedule.
Part 5: A Day in the Life of a Shark
Lessons from Carlos Santana: Live in Abundance
Wake up each morning feeling thankful, mindful and joyful. Greet every single day with a song in your heart.
Immerse yourself in positive influences, energy and people. And maintain a positive outlook on your life and people around you. Celebrate excellence and elegance in you and those around you. As long as you’re cherishing, go ahead and celebrate those small victories too. Everytime we do so, we’re buying ourselves an affordable boost for next steps.
Trust your talents. Practice makes perfect but sometimes you get to a point where there’s nothing left to practice and you know your gifts will be there waiting for you.
Lessons from Wendy Williams: Do Your Own Thing
When you’re putting on a show, remember that your audience can see right through you, so maintain transparency and authenticity as much as you can.
Find a hobby or a craft to let your mind run free and help you to put your life on a meaningful trajectory. Make room in your life for exercise regime, preferably with the people you love. You’re not only doing yourself a favor, you’re reinforcing their healthy habits and becoming a cheerleader for their extra efforts.
Dress for success. But you don’t have to overdo it especially when you’re not a millionaire. You are who you are after all. Embrace it and present the best version of you.
Lessons from Michael Parrella: Use What’s Useful
Take the time to learn your identity: who you are, how you manage your business, family, your commitments. Honesty is the key to measuring up and making some changes if necessary.
When you give away something for nothing, it doesn’t make sense to expect something in return.
Be careful what you feed your mind and your body. Yes, we can survive on microwave meals like Mike did for a certain period of his life. But it’s not doing us any favors.
Empower the people around you. Sometimes, you are the star and sometimes, you help the start. Their success can be your success. Their failure can also be your failure.
Respect resilience. Know that if you fail (and you’ll like everyone does), you have it in you to recover.
Question the status quo. Just because some things have been done in a certain way all the time, you can’t find a better way to build a better mousetrap.
Lay a solid foundation of knowledge you can fall back on. Fire up your computer, spend your time reading, learning, growing. You never know when life will throw you a lifeline – and it will – you won’t’ be able to grab on it if you’re too busy twiddling your thumbs.
Part 6: Grind All Night
Lessons from Jake Kassan and Kramer Laplante: Know When the Moment is Right
Keep loading up on those audiobooks, podcasts. For someone like Daymond who’s dyslexic, there’s no better and more efficient way to read than to have someone else read to him.
Seek creative partnerships with like-minded people whose interests and energy levels match your own. Create a workplace culture that reflects your personality and the spirit of your product or service. Put in your time when you’re just starting out. Pull back once you’ve found your footing. Get sweaty early this way.
Understand how you plan to scale your business before you even start one. And be prepared for surprises. Be willing to pivot — the marketplace will tell you if you’re headed in the wrong direction. But you have to listen to it and change your trajectory as you go.
Lessons from Grant Cardone: Beat the Sun
Grant starts his morning meets at 9:06AM sharp and that keeps everyone on their toes.
Create time by taking on multiple trivial tasks at once, like going on a walk and listening to a podcast to make things happen.
Exercise to get the juices flowing. Daymond tends to exercise in big, long-hour blocks while Grant is able to jump-start his body and get the flow going in under twenty minutes. His workouts are short enough that he’s able to do it one more time at the end of the day.
Extend your network. The more you meet, the more you’re likely to collaborate with, learn from and inspire people.
Keep the short game going while keeping your eye on the bigger prize in the long term. Do what you have to but at the same time do something nobody expects.
Part 7: Step back
Lessons from Al and Brittani Baker: Come back to What You Know
If you don’t succeed at first (and you most likely will not), come back at it another way. That’s a tried-and-true lesson for Al. If Al had stopped selling his barbecue sauce from Mail Boxes Etc location, Daymond wouldn’t be carrying all this weight around his middle from these boneless ribs!
Double down on your strengths when you’re working with a partner. Al understands ribs and barbecue inside out while Brittani knows sales and marketing. They understand they have to leave it up to each other to do their own things. And it paid off huge time.
Take the time to pray and give thanks. It’s been repeated throughout the book but Daymond keeps repeating this message so you can get a hold of this important lesson in life.
Don’t quit. Brittany took this message loud and clear when she was in high school and she was quick to put it back on her father when he needed to hear it. You can even turn your accidents into opportunities. Al recalls a story of how he forgot to defrost the turkey on one Thanksgiving. So he put it on the grill while it was still frozen. And as it turns out, the turkey was superduper juicy on the inside. And that’s the accident that gave birth to its one of the most popular items – smoked turkey! Keep the lights on as long as you can. You never know when the opportunity strikes. It’s always the darkest before dawn.
Baby-stepping is better than overstepping. And overstepping is better than not taking a step at all. When Al and his wife started Mail Boxes Etc. franchise, they had this big corporation behind them, so they could take risks and figure things out with a cushion to fall back on.
Just when people think you’ve made it, it’s time to double down even more and get to work. It’s one thing to make it onto the stage but it’s an entirely different thing to stay on the stage.
Lessons from Joel Osteen: Your Emotional Energy
Don’t be afraid to take a project or a business beyond its original scope, just because your parent or your partner who started it is no longer around to shape his or her vision.
Seek out a quiet place where you can be yourself fully and recharge. For some people, meditation works like charm. For some, a silent reflection works better. Find out what works best for you.
Negative thoughts come and go but you don’t have to act on them. Acknowledge your flaws and shortfalls. Focus on the true things you do that’s yours and yours alone. In Joel’s case, that’s writing and delivering his sermon week in and week out. He’s learned to organize his time around that so all his energies are directed towards his focus.