The Playbook With David Meltzer

On this episode of #ThePlaybook, Charles Eagan, Chief Technology Officer of Blackberry, sits down to chat about: [1:05] - How Blackberry has evolved from a phone company into a world leader in security and privacy [3:13] - The threat that cybercriminals pose to our safety and how to protect yourself [9:24] - How Blackberry’s new automotive AI platform will change the future of vehicles [15:38] - Why having a high level of self-belief is essential for young entrepreneurs to excel

Building yourself into a leader who inspires others to follow is no simple task, especially during heightened times of uncertainty. However, the best leaders have a firm grasp on the values that they believe in, and those values are what resonate most when building relationships, both in business and in life. As the head of an organization, you must also learn to listen to the input of others, filter advice (especially from mentorship) in order to gain a better awareness of your surroundings, and leverage that heightened awareness to improve your decision making.

On this episode of #ThePlaybook, Becky Center, CEO of Indiegogo, shares her insights on:[4:04] - How her time at Groupon helped her to understand online marketplaces and ecommerce[8:37] - How the company’s “FACE values” (fearlessness, authenticity, cooperation, and empowerment) have become a part of its DNA[12:28] - Why her time in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina taught her the power of staying true to who you are[18:10] - How a deep emotional connection can create brands that “punch above their weight class”

There are two simple ways to get what you want in life or business:1. You can ask for it.2. You can attract it.ASK: A piece of information or content with a specifically designed “ask” built in for the target market that will inspire them to take action.Ask people for help or ask people if they know somebody who can help. When you ask people if they know somebody that can help, you have exponentially more success, because everyone has hundreds of connections to other people on average.ATTRACT: A piece of information or content with no clear ask but that instead has the goal of drawing the target audience’s attention to a brand or inspires them to take some action, whether defined or undefined.An attract’s result comes when you are focused and put both your attention and intention on what you want in life, whether personally or professionally.

Contrary to popular belief, people that schedule or have many meetings during the day are not busier than other people.There are only two determining factors, whether you're busy or whether you're accessible, and how productive you are. You want to hone in on your accessibility and productivity when you look at your calendar.Leverage Your CalendarA calendar is a tool that can change your life. It’s there for a reason, but people often think of using it as a chore.One of the most compelling reasons to be a student of your calendar is that while the amount of time spent on scheduling grows with the amount of appointments that people have, the time needed to actually schedule meetings decreases.This means that the more meetings you schedule, the better you get at scheduling them.Understand that there is a vast difference between being busy, which is filling up those 24 hours you have in a day, compared to productivity, which is being efficient with those 24 hours.A busy person always has something going on, whether that is work or simply sleeping on the couch. They aren’t necessarily productive with the time they are busy, though, and they are often inaccessible.Understand Your ActivitiesA productive person knows how to maximize two things: the activities they get paid for and the activities they don’t get paid for.This delineation is important to make when maximizing your productivity and accessibility, so you can prioritize the activities you get paid for, as well as those activities which you enjoy the most.

Randy Garn, New York Times Best Selling Author, Investor, Life and Business Strategist, talks about why approaching life abundantly leads to joy in your heart and the most valuable lessons he learned from his football coach father, including the idea that if you don’t have your own goals, someone will use you for theirs.Garn and host of #ThePlaybook, David Meltzer, have a discussion about a range of topics including what Randy has learned as he’s followed his passion for maximizing human performance, secrets to overcoming the limitations that others try to put on us, as well as the three main components to prosperity and how to balance them.

All problems are the same size. All that matters is the amount of energy you give each problem. The easiest way to shift your perspective on this is to change the framework of each problem in your life. It may be a little extreme but what if someone told you, “if you don’t solve this in 6 months then you’ll lose your mom.” There would be nothing that would stop me from finding a way to solve the problem. It’s all about framework and energy.Look at every problem, challenge, and resistance you face in your life as something that you didn’t have planned. All it takes is faith to believe that everything will come in the right way at the perfect time.

On this episode of #ThePlaybook, Neel Dhingra, CEO and Content Creator at Forward Academy, sits down to chat about:[:52] - Why there are riches in the niches for subject matter experts[8:52] - Why you should think of your personal brand as a tent[9:40] - The best piece of content creation advice he got from Gary Vee[13:09] - Why most people are looking at opportunity the wrong way (and losing out as a result)

The most common way that faith works is that we place our faith in what we want to manifest in our lives. Just like a credit card, the higher the limit of your faith, the more you can manifest and make into reality. Of course, simply having faith is never enough to get what you want. You need to take the right actions, with the right energy and the right mindset.The less-understood way that faith works comes when we put our faith into what others want for us or things we don’t want for ourselves. What happens when we put our faith in what others want for us is that often if we achieve it, we feel some sort of resentment. There is a massive difference between accomplishing a goal you set for yourself and a goal that others have set for you (or convinced you to set for yourself). Often times, we are limiting ourselves by putting faith in what others want for us. We are also limiting ourselves by putting faith in things that we don’t want in our life.

On this episode of #ThePlaybook, Ilya Fedorovich, Founder & CEO of Xeela Fitness, Co-Founder of Doughbriks, and Social Media Influencer, shares his insights on:[2:52] - Why the “fake it until you make it” approach does not work[4:16] - How a conversation with his concerned mom led him to launching his supplement line[9:25] - What entrepreneurs must do to grow and leverage their personal brand[14:45] - His goals for the future of Xeela Fitness and their products