Becoming Your Best | The Principles of Highly Successful Leaders

Regardless of their age or how long they have been together, couples experience tension, arguments, or discussions at some point. The outcome of those moments and whether they turn that moment into a huge fight or a friendly conversation depends entirely on how they respond to their spouse's comments. If they feel attacked, they'll react aggressively. If they put their senses together and acknowle...

From all the myths and misconceptions around spies and their abilities, perhaps the most utterly inaccurate is thinking that spies are supernatural humans or extraordinary people with mad out-of-this-world skills. They are not; they are ordinary people. Extremely well trained and prepared, but regular people. In today's episode, our guest, Andrew Bustamante, will help us debunk lots of those myths...

"Stop right there! That is a terrible idea, and I'm going to tell you why." Those were the words Art Bell heard from HBO's Head of Programming just a few seconds into pitching his idea of creating a comedy channel. In the following 15 minutes of that meeting, Art heard a long list of reasonable objections to his idea, and all of them made a lot of sense. But Art had a vision; it wasn't only a craz...

Today's episode is a real treat; we are blessed with Dorothy Russell's presence on the show for the second time. She'll be 97 in April, and she just stepped away from managing her real estate properties last year. She had served as a civic, political, business, and social leader across several countries in North, Central, and South America, along with her husband, Gardner Russell. We had an inspir...

It never occurred to our guest, Jeanene Dutt, that a book she read as part of her doctoral program would massively impact her life. She got a copy of "Becoming Your Best" and applied the 12 principles of highly successful leaders to her personal development, losing 40 pounds and improving her personal and professional relationships in the process. Jeanene then decided to extend the transformationa...

One of the worst mistakes we can make as leaders is retaining control. Being responsible for the outcome doesn't mean we must control everything; it's quite the opposite. The moment we learn to hand over control, we empower ourselves and our teams, and extraordinary opportunities emerge. Leading without thinking of handing over control buys excellent opportunities for the present by selling the fu...

As Beijing hosts the 2022 Olympic Winter Games, feeling the Olympic spirit hovering around is inevitable. The athletes who spend four years training to compete for a couple of minutes, in some cases just seconds, are, at minimum, inspiring. The phrase "Citius, Altius, Fortius" pronounced by the Dominican priest Henri Didon before a school competition in 1881 was adopted by the games and slowly but...

It took almost 30 minutes of a presentation for our guest, Micheal Pope, to realize she had lost her audience at the beginning of her exposition. The experience taught her a valuable lesson; she had to listen first, be humble, and never assume audiences are willing to receive her grandiose knowledge about a subject. Her grandiose knowledge must match the needs and ideas of the audience, and not th...

A random act of kindness can completely change someone's day, and it doesn't have to be something huge; a simple thing will do the trick. We can make a positive comment about someone's outfit or skills, let a person behind us in line take our place, or we can let someone in and take the higher road in traffic. The best part of it is that kindness is a choice, and each one of us can choose to be ki...

Every day of our lives is an invitation to take a step closer to our life's purpose, find it if we haven't yet, reassess and correct the course of our direction towards our goals if needed, and challenge ourselves to become better than the day before.    Having an inspiring and motivating purpose is a life enlarger; it makes us want to improve, learn new tricks, and set and achieve new p...

Brandon Steiner received his first lesson in entrepreneurship when he was 12; it was free and given by his own mother. He was after a prize of a candy bars box for whoever opened up the most accounts on a paper route. After days of not getting any new clients and seeing him devastated by his repeated failure, his mother gave him a piece of advice he would carry his entire life and make p...

Early in his career, Dr. David Burns asked his mentor, Aaron Beck, what to do with hopeless patients, the ones medicine didn't have an answer for. Beck's answered he never gave up on a patient, and that David should build his own policy in that regard. As a result, Dr. Burns adopted that philosophy and never gave up on a patient; he happily assisted thousand...

Watching her mother create beautiful pieces on a white canvas and her father, a self-made real estate agent, flipping houses with ease, Ariel Ganter learned early in her life she could create whatever she wanted and live her life without having "a real job."    Pursuing her desire to help people have a better life, Ariel got in touch with a brain-computer interface system, EEG, capa...

This year has been a roller coaster full of unexpected turns. But 2021 is just about to end, and what we need to ask ourselves is, “How will I go into 2022 focused, ready, and aligned with my inner self so that it can be a great year, regardless of what comes?”     Focusing on what matters most empowers you because now your attention goes to the things that are within your control,...

As we get close to the end of December, one of the most celebrated holidays in the world approaches; we celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ. Still, regardless of the beliefs or traditions we might have, Christmas is about respecting and loving each other, creating meaningful memories, and sharing.     In this special episode, we reunited some of our guests to the show, friends...

Casually reading a magazine in one of the hotels she managed, our guest, Minda Zoloth, discovered several ways of helping locally and thought: gosh, I could do that. Right away, they put together 50 bags of food and donated them. That was the first step of "For The Kids," an organization that donates thousands of hundreds of bags with food every month.     Minda Zoloth&nbs...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation that exploded in your face, and when you look at what caused the problem, you realize it could've been avoided with a simple action some time ago? Whenever these things happen, they sprain the relationships between people, whether they are professional or personal.     These time-bombs might have dozens of origins, like forgetting to make a pho...

Whether we are conscious of it or not, many of the most significant changes we experience today in our lives result from many small actions in our past. That means every decision we make today, even if it looks small, has a massive impact on our future. In other words, we are the product of our choices.     In this episode, we talk about the impact of being intentiona...

The week of Thanksgiving is a great time of the year; it is an excuse to gather the family together, share some time with people we don't see very often, and why not, eat delicious food. It is the time of the year we take a step back, look around us, and appreciate the people in our lives, we thank what we have, what we achieved, and the things we learned along the way. It is a time for being grat...

Celebrating success makes sense only if we look at the path we went through to get there. It is not about the victory itself; it is about the breakthroughs, the sensation of overcoming setbacks, of crushing challenges, the sensation of gratitude for not having given up in the darkest moments.     Today's episode is about not giving up; it is about discovering that our best often is reali...

Our decisions in our darkest moments distinguish who we are and the legacy we will leave behind. When things get really challenging, our next decision will set who we really are and what we will be remembered for. Ben Kjar learned that early in his life, thanks to his mother, who told him to step up and make a difference in the world. She told him to make his situatio...

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by something you knew was coming, like an important business meeting, a presentation, or a job interview? What if we told you there is a powerful visualization tool that can help you navigate those situations mentally before they actually happen, letting your mind and body be perfectly tuned for it and, using fighter pilots' terminology, ahea...

We know that successful leaders lead with a vision, and there is no better example of it than our guest for today's show, Crystal Maggelet. When FJ Management had to change and restructure back in 2010, after seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2008, Crystal knew she had to find a way to tie different businesses together. She and the company’s executives decided that FJM's new mission...

Running a business is about a lot of things; every industry has its particularities, and all differ in countless details that make them unique. Still, the most crucial part of any company is the same in any industry: their people. Therefore, investing in human relationships at any level in any company is the best kind of investment any leader can make. That is one of the many lessons our gues...

We are all exposed to unexpected events, setbacks, or even accidents; things like getting caught in torrential rain or a flat tire in the middle of nowhere may happen, and there is nothing we can do to prevent them. What we can do, however, is to choose how we respond to them. Fortunately, it is possible to learn how to react positively to adverse situations and get the best out of them: develop t...