BIRTHRIGHT by Sean Mullens

I came across this week’s Motivational Monday video while I was browsing Vimeo over the weekend…

The cinematography and directing was done by Sean Mullens, who created the short film about his friend Micheal’s daily ritual to find his natural self through surfing. This video inspires me and brings me to tears no matter how many times I watch it…

What I love the most about Sean’s video is how wonderfully it captures Michael’s drive, determination, and love for life.

Micheal views the water as an inalienable birthright. He refuses to allow an accident that happened 30 years ago overcome his ability to enjoy life everyday.

Michael is proof that we were all born with God-given abilities to succeed, motivate and inspire every day – no matter what happens during our lifetime.

The difference between people who live a life of success, motivation, and inspiration daily is choice. Michael consciously chooses to live his life to the fullest every day.

Michael’s story inspires me to live every day to the fullest and take advantage of my birthrights everyday. How did his story inspire you? I’d love to hear your answer below in the comments section.

I loved Robin’s first book (and I just bought my first Ferrari ) so I’d been looking forward to reading The Leader Who Had No Title since I first heard about it last month. It was definitely worth the wait!

In The Leader Who Had No Title, Robin shares a training process that will condition your mind for automatic success, peak performance, AND winning results as well as game changing ideas that will drive exceptional professional, financial, physical and personal results.

In the book you will discover:

• What the world’s super-rich and real geniuses do in their private moments to get their massive edge
• How to virtually guarantee that you get to all your goals by making a simple shift in the way you think
• How to work and influence people like a superstar, regardless of your position or your current conditions.
• How to transform problems into opportunities and turbulence into success
• The real secrets that the best use to get even better
• An instant strategy to become a merchant of wow (every genius uses this one)
• Hard hitting tactics to become mentally strong and physically tough so that you work and perform like an elite athlete
• Real world ways to defeat stress, build an unbeatable mindset, unleash energy and balance your personal life
• Three simple moves you can make today to have a lot more fun in life and erase the worry habit, one and for all.

Regardless of what you do within your organization or the current conditions of your life, the single most important fact is that you have the power to show leadership where you are planted and play at peak in all that you do. The Leader Who Had No Title shows you exactly how to claim that staggering power.  And transform your life – and the world around you – in the process.

“It’s taken me 15 years of working with many of the world’s most successful, prosperous and respected people and many Fortune 500 organizations to distill all that I have learned about real leadership, winning and living at wow into the 201 pages of The Leader Who Had No Title. The process works and this book will help you become the leader and the human being you have always wanted to become.”
- Robin Sharma, #1 bestselling author of 11 books that have sold over 5 million copies in 75 languages

The Leader Who Had No Title is a remarkably powerful book that reveals a proven proprietary formula for leading the field and getting to your absolute best not only in your work but in your personal life. And it really does explain how the superstars in business and in life have reached their spectacular results. You will become dramatically more successful, happier, healthier and prosperous!

I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did! Get your copy here: The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life.

And be sure you click here to take advantage of the free bonus gifts (with a retail value in excess of $1,057) after you get your copy!

Lately, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reading so this will be one of many book reviews…

P.S. What leadership books have you been reading lately? I’d love to hear your answer in the comments section below!

Motivational Monday #19

It takes serious guts to be a leader and a dancer! For all you readers out there, here’s the full transcript – courtesy of Derek Sivers:

If you’ve learned a lot about leadership and making a movement, then let’s watch a movement happen, start to finish, in under 3 minutes, and dissect some lessons:

A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!

Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.

The 2nd follower is a turning point: it’s proof the first has done well. Now it’s not a lone nut, and it’s not two nuts. Three is a crowd and a crowd is news.

A movement must be public. Make sure outsiders see more than just the leader. Everyone needs to see the followers, because new followers emulate followers – not the leader.

Now here come 2 more, then 3 more.  Now we’ve got momentum.  This is the tipping point! Now we’ve got a movement!

As more people jump in, it’s no longer risky. If they were on the fence before, there’s no reason not to join now. They won’t be ridiculed, they won’t stand out, and they will be part of the in-crowd, if they hurry. Over the next minute you’ll see the rest who prefer to be part of the crowd, because eventually they’d be ridiculed for not joining.

And ladies and gentlemen that is how a movement is made!  Let’s recap what we learned:

If you are a version of the shirtless dancing guy, all alone, remember the importance of nurturing your first few followers as equals, making everything clearly about the movement, not you.

Be public. Be easy to follow!

But the biggest lesson here – did you catch it?

Leadership is over-glorified.

Yes it started with the shirtless guy, and he’ll get all the credit, but you saw what really happened:

It was the first follower that transformed a lone nut into a leader.

There is no movement without the first follower.

We’re told we all need to be leaders, but that would be really ineffective.

The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.

When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in. (© 2010 Derek Sivers)

What’s your favorite leadership lesson from the dancing guy? Be sure to share your answer in the comments section below!

Click here to view the embedded video.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Lifestyle Freedom: Episode 25

One characteristic of truly great leaders is that they have an unyielding positive attitude toward the success of their organization.

Have you ever heard this statement: “50% of your success is attitude. The other 50% is attitude.”?

Well, I can promise you that it’s absolutely true…

Attitude is a constant battle. Maintaining a positive attitude takes focus and extra effort but developing the ability to conquer negativity is so much greater than letting negativity conquer you!

As a leader, you must feed your mind with positive thoughts and information as much as you possibly can so you are consistently upbeat in front of the people you lead.

Leading Through Challenges

Experiencing disappointment, discouragement, and challenges that may seem insurmountable is a natural part of life for leaders. While those may be feelings in your heart, great leaders must keep those negative feelings to themselves. (I won’t lie – it’s tough to do some days but it’s your job as a leader!)

When people you lead see you visibly discouraged, they feel a greater sense of discouragement. When they see you visibly worried, they feel a greater sense of worry. Displaying your negative emotions will produce nothing but negative results for the people you lead.

A true leader will always see the solution and never focus on the problem. Your people look to you to help them overcome challenges as they arise so always be there to provide positive support!

Excuses, Excuses

Attitudes are absolutely contagious and leaders have an amazing ability to transfer emotion to their people – negatively and positively.  Negative emotions from you as the leader transfer those negative emotions to your people; which leads to negative results in productivity and loyalty.

Negative attitudes spread 10 times faster than positive ones!

People are always looking for excuses to quit or give up on their dreams so as a leader, you never want to be the culprit for one of your peoples excuse to quit!

Getting You and Your Team UP

Great leaders have an amazing ability to make people feel better about themselves. A major way to do that is through your positive energy.

When you’re positive and upbeat, you emote confidence and inspire people to move forward. Don’t worry about not looking ‘cool.’ If you’re excited about something, share that excitement and enthusiasm with everyone around you!

P.S. If you missed the first 2 laws of leadership, check them out here: Leadership Law 1 and Leadership Law 2.

Click here to view the embedded video.

An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Lifestyle Freedom: Episode 22

Over the last 14 years of my entrepreneurial career, I’ve built several million-dollar companies and lead well over 100,000 independent salespeople. I say this not to impress you, but to impress upon you just how many leaders I’ve been surrounded with over the last decade.

One thing I know for sure is that you don’t become successful before you become a great leader. You reap the benefits of success after you’ve already become a great leader.  If you’re really serious about reaching new levels of success, I can’t stress enough the importance of developing the leader within you first…

I’m blessed to say that not a day goes by that I don’t interact with an extraordinary leader. I’m constantly observing exactly what makes top leaders successful which allowed me to discover the 7 leadership laws that have become my guiding principles.

I’ve noticed that the people who don’t practice these principles have difficulty reaching success. The leadership laws I’ll be sharing with you over the next few days are not suggestions.

The 7 Leadership Laws from Chapter 7 of The Unemployed Millionaire and the upcoming Unemployed Millionaire blog posts must be followed 100% of the time if you want to achieve success as a leader.

I’d love to hear what lesson from the leadership series has been most valuable to you so far. Jot down a few notes from this episode of The Unemployed Millionaire and take a minute to look back over The Secret Character Trait of the World’s Most Successful People as well as How to Project Confidence; then be sure to share your answer in the comments section below!

P.S. Leadership is the most important quality to develop in order to become successful. For even more insight on how you can start developing your stellar leadership abilities, get a copy of The Unemployed Millionaire and over $2,000 in bonus personal development education here: http://www.MattMorris.com/book.

After generating well over $20,000,000 online with over 100,000 customers in almost 200 countries, creating the most visited personal development website in the world, traveling to 46 countries and checking off a few dozen items on the “bucket list”, I’ve FINALLY decided to create a personal blog. That’s right…

I’m no longer a blog virgin!

In honor of Richard Branson and the title of one of my favorite books in the world which he authored, Losing My Virginity, I’m dedicating this first post to him. Richard, thanks for your inspiration!

Here’s a quick story on how all this came to be…

Last year I decided to write a book. I went to a Mark Victor Hansen event and met one of the top agents in the business, Bill Gladstone. Bill was the agent for the Dummy series, Eckhart Tolle and countless New York Times Bestsellers. I told Bill my story as we were walking down the hall and after 5 minutes he said…

“Matt, no problem, I’ll get you a book deal.”

Sounded a bit too easy. But after spending a couple weeks putting together a proposal, low and behold, he did it. Although I think he could have negotiated a bigger advance.

So it was off to the races to get the book done and this website and blog created. I’ll spare you the gory details on the many sleepless nights finishing The Unemployed Millionaire before the deadline.

Well, the book is done and will be officially launched in a few days on September 22nd. The Unemployed Millionaire actually hit bestseller on Amazon a couple weeks ago while it was still in pre-orders! Not bad considering that was done from just one email.

I’ll be doing a bigger campaign on October 7th in partnership with Feed The Children where I’ll be donating my royalties for all books sold through my online campaign. Every book purchased after October 7th through this campaign is going to allow us to provide 5 meals to hungry children around the world. Our goal is to feed 100,000 children so please come back on October 7th and help out!

Enough shameless promotion. Here’s why I’m excited about the blog…

Through my travels, contacts and relationships, I’m exposed to some of the most advanced and cutting edge techniques for business and personal success. The only reason I’ve achieved what I have is by intensely seeking out the best training and marketing techniques in the world.

I’m going to be sharing a lot of those concepts with you through this blog and through my private newsletter. If you haven’t yet subscribed, be sure to enter your name and email address at the top left of this page to join the community!

So welcome – let’s have some fun together!

Matt Morris