6:12am here in Dallas and I just finished reading my 2nd book for the month.

The author generated over $500 million through his companies before he passed away about ten years ago. Much of his success, he claimed, was due to the power of his relationships and his thirst for knowledge.

My big takeaway? 3 factors that determine your success:

“Your success is dependent on what you know, who you know, and who knows you.”

There are, of course, others like your consistency and work ethic. But for today, let’s stick with these three.

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True story: How 6th Grade Football Defeat Taught Me Success

When I was in 6th grade, I played football for The Cowboys in the youth football league in Lubbock, Texas. Our coach was amazingly smart. He had played football in college and was a real student of the game.

He taught us all kinds of advanced “trick” plays… double reverses, double passes, fake punts, fake snaps, on-side kicks, and others I can’t even remember. We would spend hour upon hour attempting to master these trick plays and, as kids, we were super excited to learn them.

We were actually a force to be reckoned with. If memory serves, we won every game and made it to the playoffs. We won the first game or two and then had to play The Panthers. The Panthers were undefeated and, being a great coach, our coach scouted them out to learn their plan of attack.

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Last night I did a zoom training for a group out of Brazil.

It was one of those where I got flooded afterward with messages and thank you’s about how the training impacted them. In fact, I woke up with about 15 new messages that came in overnight.

As a speaker, it feels great to know that your training made an impact.

So as I sit here in my writing chair sipping my morning coffee, I started thinking about why I’ve been able to become a great trainer. Because the truth is, I’ve never had any formal speaking training.

I have heard a few talks over the years on public speaking and I did spend $10,000 for a one day coaching on closing from the platform but no toastmasters… No public speaking certifications… No national speakers association events or anything like that.

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Ever have one of those days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed?

Ever get so overwhelmed you just want to hide away?

Ever have someone piss you off so much you just feel mad at the whole world?

Well, that’s how I woke up today.

Normally I’m up around 5:30, sucking down a liter of water, making coffee and excited to write you a blog post and conquer the day.

But not today.

I told Devon I feel like I have male PMS.

Yes I’m a motivational speaker. Yes I’m an influencer and people count on me to inspire them and help coach them to the next level.

So why am I sharing this with you?

Because it’s real.

I don’t care who it is… Tony Robbins, Ed Mylett, Brendon Burchard…

EVERYONE has their down moments.

But what separates the peak performers from the rest is that the peak performers refuse to stay down!

How?

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At 28 years old, running my own network marketing company that had just quadrupled in revenues in the past year, I was suddenly thrust into a role that was pushing me to my limits.

From a leadership standpoint, I had led tens of thousands of people as a distributor and I had run marketing companies with a handful of employees. But as our staff continued to grow, I was managing so many things it was making my head spin.

I made a decision to start studying management (corporate leadership) with a near obsession. I read everything I could get my hands on from corporate management experts like Jack Welch, Ken Blanchard and Peter Drucker, among others.

I could give you a ton of lessons from that study, but there’s one I want to highlight today that’s been a foundational component to my success in running companies, and even more so, in building an organization.

It can be summed up from a quote from Peter Drucker…

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