How about dynamic, energetic, focused, passionate and REAL? A few of the words that came to mind when I had the pleasure of listening to Beachbody CEO Carl Daikeler speak recently. Sadly, it wasn't LIVE but a video of a speech he gave at a Leadership Retreat. I listened to it twice. Okay, three times...who's keeping track, anyway?!
So many things stood out to me. First of all, 170,000 units of Shakeology are sold daily. What? Yeah--incredible. If you're not on board yet, we can change that!! And secondly, there are 133,000 Coaches---including yours truly. The Coach who recruited the Coach who recruited me is #2. Yeah...you read that correctly (even if it did sound sort of "my cousin's cousin's neighbor's father-in-law's barber). How cool is that? Beyond that, what stood out to me was Carl's demeanor. His ease and confidence--his "come up and chat with me" persona. I felt like I could truly pull up a chair and chat with him for hours. He spoke with such warmth, humility and honesty about, of all things, failure.
You may be wondering why a successful CEO would talk about failure. I was. And then I listened more closely to the lesson he was sharing. We don't hit home runs every time. We don't close every sale or win every case. We just don't. But what we should do, what we must do, is learn from those failures. Learn from the mistakes and grow. As people, parents, business owners, leaders...growth is mandatory to succeed. And much of the best growth comes from failing. What did he learn from an 0-17 basketball season? That he tried his best, hustled and worked hard and had a father who recognized and applauded that. What have you tried to do lately and failed? And what did you learn? What's that expression about seeing the stars when it's darkest?
Another key distinction Carl made was between being a success versus having or experiencing success. Never quite thought about it in those terms before, but I like that nuance. To me, it is like running. I have run, but I don't call myself a runner. I took Carl's sentiment to mean that it's not as much about being a success as it is having success and understanding all that it took to do that. Being sounds stagnant to me; or complacent. I like to think we're all enjoying success---wherever we are on the road. After all, only we can define what success means to us. Right?
As I was listening to Carl speak about doing things that aren't necessarily easy, I began thinking about my career in radio. And how often I'd struggle because we were up against a giant in the market. Then I realized that by facing these challenges, I was honing my skills as a sales person. I wasn't at "the giant" station, sitting by the phone waiting for customers to call in. Nope. I was out there turning over rocks, chasing down leads, cold calling until my fingers hurt from punching keys on a phone. I was explaining value to my customers, I was delivering more than they expected. The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it, right?
And finally, Carl spoke about one of my favorite brands; Life is Good. You know the one, don't you? In any event, Carl said this. "Life may not always be good, but we can create and choose good." (I may be paraphrasing a tiny bit there; I listened while I drove, so my notes may not be perfect!!) And I actually agreed OUT LOUD with that statement. There are times when life sure doesn't seem good. There are days, even weeks, where it's raining bad news and nothing's going right and you sort of feel like either fighting the whole world or crawling under your bed and hoping it passes quickly.In those moments, when it's not easy to choose or create good, in THOSE moments we need to do just that. Those are the moments where we're truly tested. That's the time you need to give yourself a little grace, tell a friend what's bugging you, let it go and move along. Again, not easy...but so, so, so important.
Glad I had the opportunity to listen to Carl. And now I've gotta go out there and work. I mean fail. Oh, I guess I mean both!
No comments:
Post a Comment