Developing Your Social Skills
By Cheval John
When you are attending an event, whether it is a conference, sports, etc., it is viable to know how to act in certain situations.
Just because a person pays a boat load of money does not mean they should act like a fool.
We have seen at sporting events, fans who would try to get involved with the action of the games and would end up paying the price for it.
For example, an Alabama fan went after the Oklahoma students during the team’s humiliating loss in the Sugar Bowl.
She did not stop to think that her actions would hurt her reputation in the long run.
If she was an entrepreneur or a professional, many would point to the video and then wonder if it is ideal to do business with her.
In the same manner, if a professional is traveling overseas for business, they will have to understand how the norms of the country’s culture in which they are doing business.
Kara Ronin, founder of Executive Impressions, understands the nuances of doing business in another culture.
She has lived and worked in Japan, the United States and now France.
She had to adapt to the different working norms of the countries in order to succeed.
Her experience has allowed her to teach people from corporate to university students on how to adjust to the living standards of the countries through her company, Executive Impressions.
You can take a listen below.
After listening, what are your thoughts on developing your social skills?
You can leave your comments below.
Video courtesy of Bon Blossman
Making An Investment In Yourself
By Cheval John
Photo Courtesy of Podcast Movement
People who are successful in their businesses or careers always do one thing that others don’t do.
They invest in themselves.
Whether it is buying information products about the public relations industry or attending conferences, they know that they will improve their skills because of the lessons learned.
That is why people who are achieve success are not lucky like many would say.
They also have the entrepreneurial mindset in which they don’t wait for permission to achieve their goals in order to make other people’s lives better.
People like Sara Blakely, who solved a problem for many women when she create the company Spanx, which made billions of dollars.
Or Patty Elizee, who decided not to settle for the status quo of working the 9-5 and founded her podcast, the Brand You Economy.
Ms. Elizee’s story is really awesome because she started that journey to freedom when she set goals for herself.
Among those goals were to participate in Cliff Ravenscraft’s “Podcasting A to Z Course” and to attend the inaugural Podcast Movement that took place last year.
It was there that she met Jared Easley, who was one of the co-founders of the conference.
Now there is a “twist” to the story of how Podcast Movement was founded.
Mr. Easley was attending the New Media Expo, an annual conference held earlier last year in Las Vegas.
This conference is geared towards evolving media like YouTube, podcasts, etc.
It was there that he over-heard a conversation of people who were wondering, “Why Isn’t There A Conference Exclusively For Podcasters?” #paraphrased
Mr. Easley was wondering the same thing and in that moment, he was thinking about the idea of creating a national conference for podcasters.
The reality of bringing together recognized speakers, securing a venue, and the costs to put a national conference together could have stopped Mr. Easley, Dan Franks, Gary Leland and Mitch Todd from creating the first national podcast conference.
However, they thought outside of the box and launched a Kick-Starter campaign to see if people would be interested.
The campaign goal was to raise $11,000 dollars in 30 days.
To their surprise, they achieved that goal in 9 hours and eventually raised the money by three times the amount in 30 days.
That was the signal that they needed to go out and create a national conference for podcasters
After much hard work and dedication, the first ever Podcast Movement took place in Dallas, Texas with over 600 attendees.
Seeing amazing commentary on how many past, present and future podcasters learned from each other and the meetups that transpired was great.
At the same time, I was sad because I missed out on this amazing conference.
I made the decision that I was not going to miss this year’s Podcast Movement.
Even though this will probably be the only conference I attend this year, it will be worth it because I will have the opportunity to meet great podcasters that I have built strong friendships with on social media and interviewed on my very own podcast, “What’s The Word?”
I honestly believe that if anyone will invest in conferences like Podcast Movement, they will be able to take their careers or business to another level that will allow them to make the world a better place.
The only question is “Are You Willing To Invest In Yourself?”
Learning A Language To Discover The World
By Cheval John
You may have heard these quotes:
“To Have Another Language Is To Possess Another Soul” Charlemagne
“The Limits of My Language Are The Limits Of My World” Frank Smith
“Language Is The Road Map To A Culture. It Tells You Where Its People Come From And Where They Are Going” Rita Mae Brown
The last quote is very profound.
When a person wants to learn more about the culture of a country or a tribe, the best way to access the culture is through the language.
It is true that we see great poetry like Don Quixote translated into English and being taught in schools.
However, it is difficult to really understand and appreciate the story of Don Quixote if a person is not a Spanish speaker.
And to bring on another example, Columbian super-star singer Shakira, who speaks Spanish, English, and Portuguese, made an excellent song back in the mid-2000s called, “No” in her native Spanish.
The song is really beautiful and achieved a smashing success like her other songs.
When the producers or music executives of the record company wanted her to make the same song, “No” in English, she said “no” to the idea even though she recorded her other Spanish songs in English.
The reason why she decided not to record “No” in English was that it would not have had the same impact that it had when she sang it in her native Spanish.
So fans of Shakira who were only English speakers, missed out on an opportunity to hear the beautiful song, “No.”
Now the same fans could do what few in this world have done, learn another language.
The only thing that will keep them from learning another language is their limited belief that they can’t learn a second language.
I would suspect that they feel that they don’t need to learn another language because of the belief that the world is learning English.
It is true that English serves as the important language of organizations such as the United Nations and the language for aviation.
That should not be an excuse to not learn another language.
You might have to start learning from scratch if your are not a first generation American.
For those who are offsprings of immigrants, they have a fast start because they grow up listening to their parents native language and also English.
Ladan Jiracek is one of those people who had the fast start to knowing multiple languages.
His parents immigrated from Slovokia and he had the fortune of growing up in a different culture and has traveled to over 80 countries.
What is really cool is that he took advantage of the opportunity to intern in Berlin, Germany while he was an undergraduate student.
Now, he lives in India and host the Travel Wisdom Podcast, where he interviews best-selling authors, world travelers, polyglots, etc.
The most important thing is that if you want to understand a culture that is different than yours, you have to speak the language.
When you know another language, three, 6, etc., you will have more options to work anywhere in the world and also enjoy your travels.
Video courtesy of Shakira Vevo
The Quest Of Learning A Foreign Language
By Cheval John
A quest is something that many should pursue if they want to have a fulfilling life.
The problem is that many are content with the o.k. lives that they have.
While others might think that pursuing a quest means going sky diving or climbing Mount Everest.
Those are worthy quest in a sense because you are pushing your limit.
However, pursuing a quest can be something that is not so adventurous.
Like learning multiple languages and becoming bilingual or even a polyglot.
You might even know that being bilingual, trilingual, or a polyglot can help a person to have more work opportunities according this article by Laura Morsch of Career Builder.com.
Some might think that it is too late to learn another language in their adult years.
They believe that if they don’t learn a second or even a third language by a certain age, they will miss out on the opportunity to be bilingual.
That is certainly not the case.
According to this article by Lucy Kinder of The Telegraph, learning a second language can allow your brain from getting dementia years later than those who only know one language.
This should give you encouragement to pursue language learning.
You might have the excuse that you do not have the time to learn another language because you are working full time or you are not living in another country where the language is spoken, etc.
Steve Kaufmann, founder of LingQ.com, explains in this interview with John Forthingham of I2mastery.com, that he spent time in Hong Kong in the late 60s where English was the predominant language and was still able to learn Mandarin Chinese.
He did not have all of the resources like Duolingo or iTalki plus the internet to chat with native language speakers that we have today.
And to add on to the fact of learning language late in life, Mr. Kaufmann, who speaks 11 languages, learned five of those languages after the age of 55.
Another benefit of knowing a lot of languages is the option of watching a major sporting event like the World Cup on television.
If you do not like the English commentary, you have the option of watching the same matchup in a different language and still be able to follow the matchup.
I will admit that it is great to be bilingual because of the options of watching a sporting event in a different language.
Now I feel that I am still limited despite knowing both English and Spanish.
My goal is to learn as many languages as possible during my lifetime.
And I have started this journey with Portuguese.
Though I began learning Portuguese last year, I did not continue with learning the language.
So I have restarted that goal of learning Portuguese and my goal is to be fluent in the language by the end of this year.
I honestly believe that I can achieve fluency in Portuguese because I have seen others achieve fluency in a short amount of time.
So in reality, it is never too late to learn a language late in life.
The only question is, “Who Will Join In On Learning Another Language?”
Life Is Not Harder Than Death
By Cheval John
Nicole Welch (left) interviewing Pat Flynn (right) at Podcast Movement 2015 Courtesy of Vallano Media
A customer came in to order some supplies after work.
After his order, I asked him, “How was his day?”
He said, “It was a Monday, but it is not the same after working the weekend.”
Then, I followed up with his occupation.
He mentioned that he was a lawyer.
I had a feeling that he was not happy with his work granted that he had spent a huge amount of time in college to achieve the law degree.
So I asked him what his dream goal would be.
He mentioned, “Not working and sitting on the beach and watching his kids grow up.”
He added that he would not be able to “enjoy” life until he reaches the age of 75.
And when he was about to leave, he said, “Life Is Much Harder Than Death.”
That statement was a dagger in my heart.
He had accepted the old dogma that he had to work the long hours in order to be successful.
At the same time, I was not surprised because he is among the many Americans who are unhappy at their work according to this Forbes article by Susan Adams.
He did not see that he had the power to make the life of his dreams come true by finding his true calling.
The truth is that anyone can change their situation and make it better.
I had the fortune to spend the weekend at the Omni Hotel in Ft. Worth for Podcast Movement’15, organized by Jared Easley, Dan Franks, Mitch Todd and Gary A. Leland.
Though it was a national conference, which was the first of it kind, it felt like a small gathering of like-minded people who were either podcasters, about to start a podcast or was learning more about the medium.
They have podcasts about different subject matters like sports, books, self-help, video games, etc.
The podcasters that attended are authors, entrepreneurs, sales people, etc. and are all rock stars in their own right.
The best part was meeting fellow podcasters who I had developed great friendships with online and meeting others who I met for the first time.
What is more impressive is that they did not settle for the status quo like the majority of people that was mentioned in the Forbes article.
They knew that they were meant to do more to make their lives better and also to help people to achieve their goals of making the world a better place.
People like Kimanzi Constable, who worked as a bread delivery person for 12 years before breaking free after he self-published two books that sold over 45,000 copies before getting a book deal with Sound Wisdom.
Now, he is is an accomplished speaker, coach and a contributor to large websites like Entrepreneur, the Huffington Post and Mind Body Green.
And because he did not settled for the mediocre, he was one of the co-founders of the Self-Publishing Success Academy, where they teach about being successful as a self-published author and has helped a lot of people to be accomplished authors.
And Patty Elizee, who has a podcast called, “The Brand You Economy.”
I had written about her story in the previous article, “Making An Investment In Yourself.”
She was energetic and was introducing everyone at the conference.
She brought a lot of life to the party.
Another person I will mention is Nicole Welch, who hosts a podcast called, “Real Time, Real Men Only.”
She was really awesome because she brought a lot of value to those who spent time with her.
Mrs. Welch also was one of the few who had the opportunity to interview Smart Passive Income’s Pat Flynn at the conference.
She showcased her personality and asked really good questions.
Another thing that stood out to me was the fact that Katie Krimitsos, of Biz Women Rock and the energetic, South Florida Podcast Group, wrote an excellent post on how to arrive at the Omni Hotel using the TRE Railway if attendees were arriving either at Dallas/Ft. Worth International Airport or Dallas’ Love Field Airport.
That thoughtful post made a big difference for those who were visiting Ft.Worth for the first time.
All of these podcasters showed that if you really want to enjoy life, you must create your own destiny and not settle for the mediocre.
The truth is, “Life Is Not Harder Than Death.”
What will you do to achieve the best life that you want to fulfill your calling to make the world a better place?
You can leave your comments below.
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