AI Enablement: Finding Your Extraordinary
Today’s extraordinary book summary comes to you from Jessica Herrin’s book, “Find Your Extraordinary“.
Jessica Herrin is a remarkable woman. She’s the founder and CEO of the direct sales company Stella and Dot, which is currently on pace to do about $500 million in sales in 2016.
In the 10 years since Jessica launched her business in her family room, Stella & Dot has sold more than $1 billion in products and has paid out more than $300 million in commissions to its partners (aka “stylists”).
Not bad for a costume jewelry company.
On top of that, she’s transforming an old and misunderstood industry – direct sales (also known as MLM) – to work for women who want to create and build a business in today’s fast-paced world.
In fact, 80 percent of the people who join Stella and Dot operate their business alongside other jobs they do outside the home. This is a trend that we are going to continue to see as corporate jobs become less stable, and as more and more people turn to “sidepreneurship” to create more income.
In her book, Find Your Extraordinary, Jessica Herrin shares her 6 P’s for entrepreneurship.
Don’t make it about the money.
Maya Angelou once said:
“Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.”
Maya Angelou
Similarly, Jessica Herrin believes that if you want to live an extraordinary life, you need to be personally invested in your work. Your passion needs to be driven not by money, but by what moves you on the inside.
Jessica learned this extraordinary lesson the hard way.
While in college she dropped out of Stanford to start her first business – an online wedding registry during the first Internet boom. The business grew like crazy, she found herself featured on the Oprah show, and the business eventually sold for millions of dollars.
While most people would deem this a huge business achievement, Jessica wasn’t fulfilled what she had achieved. She realized that because she wasn’t personally invested in the mission of the business, she only had the illusion of success and therefore didn’t feel fulfilled by her success.
Fast forward a few years later…
During a chance meeting with a group of elite Mary Kay saleswomen in a hotel elevator Jessica becomes inspired to build her next business. She said their enthusiasm for what they did was so infectious, that she left the elevator knowing exactly what she wanted to do next.
Jessica wanted to create a business where not only did everyone have the same passion for what they did, but she wanted to democratize entrepreneurship for extraordinary women around the world.
It’s important to remember that discovering your passion doesn’t have an ETA. Sometimes you need to experience or try different things to determine what you love or don’t. Eventually, if you pursue and believe in it enough, it will hit you out of nowhere and then you’ll know.
Once you’ve found your passion, you need to create an extraordinary path towards making it happen. Finding your path likely won’t be a straight one and it won’t be easy to navigate. It will likely be filled with several setbacks, failures, and self-doubt. But don’t let that stop you because as Jessica Herrin points out, “You don’t have to be perfect to start, you have to start.”
“You don’t have to be perfect to start, you have to start.”
Jessica Herrin
Most people will find an excuse not to start or will wait until the time is right, but you don’t need to wait. Even if you don’t think you have enough time (i.e. another job or a family to take care of) or money to get started, you can make it happen. You can work on your dream after the kids go to bed at night or find another side hustle like waiting tables or serving coffee to make a little extra money. Don’t let your circumstances prevent you from finding your passion.
Danielle Redner, Vice President of Training for Stella and Dot, would tell you that you need to ask yourself the following three questions to determine whether or not you really want to find your extraordinary life:
1. Do you know why you want to do this?
2. Do you accept that this won’t be easy?
3. Are you ready to work?
If you can answer “YES!” to these three questions, you are ready to start carving your path.
If you have a willingness to learn, a positive outlook, a bias toward action, and the ability to make mid-course corrections, there’s almost nothing that can stop you from achieving your dreams.
And finally…one last point. Creating the life of your dreams is a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you can maintain your momentum over the long run by being smart about taking care of yourself along the way.
One thing is for sure – you need to have a positive mindset if you are going to stay on your path.
As Winston Churchill famously once said, “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
As human beings, we have anywhere from 12,000 to 60,000 thoughts per day, 80 percent of which are negative. You can be sure that the little voice in your head is going to be giving you plenty of reasons why you won’t succeed.
Jessica Herrin says in her book that “your thoughts are not you, and they are not all true.” The sooner you can acknowledge and accept this, the easier it will be for you to weather the roadblocks you will inevitably encounter along the way.
One technique you can use to calm your mind down is to practice mindfulness. Mindfulness can take many forms, but you don’t need to meditate like a Buddhist monk to reap the benefits.
For instance, Jessica takes a mini-mental vacation three times a day where she simply unplugs, and focuses on being in the moment. She also finds it helpful to attach this to events already happening throughout the day such as her morning coffee, lunch, her drive home from work, or right before she goes to sleep.
There are many benefits of practicing mindfulness on a daily basis. Here are just a few and what you’ll start feeling and experiencing:
– Curiosity instead of anger
– Appreciation instead of frustration
– Trust instead of distrust
– Willingness instead of resistance
– Hope instead of doom
When you remember that your journey is going to be incredibly difficult, having and maintaining a positive outlook can mean the difference between success and failure. If you struggle to stay in a positive mindset, try to start practicing mindfulness daily.
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”
African Proverb
No matter what your hopes and dreams are, you will never get there alone, so it is important to surround yourself with the right people. Choose the people you associate with carefully and thoughtfully.
For instance, make sure you let go of anyone in your life who is dragging you down and contributing to a negative mindset. These types of relationships and people can be very toxic to your health and well-being because of how easy it is to get sucked into their vortex of negativity. Instead, surround yourself with people who love and support you, and will help you grow.
For Jessica Herrin, one of those people was her father. He pushed her to be the best she could be and while not one to be easily impressed, he was always supportive. He taught Jessica that if she wanted anything in life, all she needed was to crack open a book and learn a new skill that would get her closer to her goals. You also want to make sure you surround yourself with “A” players in your business.
Speaking of your business, how you develop yourself as a leader will have a great deal to do with how successful you are because as Jessica says, “become the leader you want to follow.”
Here are her “five traits of an extraordinary leader:”
- Be benevolent. Have an authentic interest in helping people be their best.
- Have more than a work ethic – show a true love for your work.
- Be audaciously goal-oriented.
- Be positive, be confident, and diminish drama.
- Be authentic and self-aware.
- Care more about making it right
Do these things and you’ll be well on your way to becoming a leader that everybody wants to follow.
Building the life of your dreams is a long hard road, and you’ll only make it happen if you have extraordinary stamina. Getting to where you want to go will require sacrifice.
One of the first things you need to do is to decide what’s on your “do not quit” list. For some people, it might mean spending time with their family on a regular basis. For other people, it might mean a sport they are incredibly passionate about. Whatever it is and once you’ve got your list in order, everything else in your life becomes expendable.
This is exactly what Jessica did in the early days of the business (when it was still called Luxe Jewels). Even though the success of the business wasn’t clear to most of the people around her, she had eliminated giving up as an option. She had to quit other less important things in her life such as her guitar lessons to make space in her life for her business and her “do not quit” list. When you do this, your ability to persevere in building the life of your dreams becomes an unstoppable force.
Here’s an analogy to bring this point home.
Danielle Redner, the VP of Training for Stella and Dot we read about a few minutes ago, decided that she was going to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, the world’s largest freestanding mountain.
When she began her trip up the mountain, she was given an emergency card to fill out where she had to check off the conditions under which she would want to be airlifted off the mountain. Among the items to choose from here are panic, nausea, and cardiac arrest. The only box Danielle checked was “cardiac arrest.” She panicked and got nauseous, but dragged herself to the top of that mountain.
When the option to quit is eliminated, persistence is the default, and success is almost always inevitable.
Let’s not kid ourselves – if you want to achieve your dreams, you are going to have to get really good at getting a lot of stuff done. The right stuff.
One of the things that you must master is managing your time. While most people spend their time trying to squeeze more time out of their day, this is really about getting great at deciding what absolutely needs to get done and what can wait (or not get done at all).
This is hard, because “being busy” is a great excuse for a lot of things in your life. It’s a lot easier to tell yourself that you don’t have enough time to work out than is to admit that you choose to spend an hour a day mindlessly browsing your Facebook account. It’s also easier to tell others that you didn’t respond to their email or call because “things are crazy right now.”
The point is that we all have 24 hours a day, and we choose how we spend our time. So, mastering your time is really more about managing yourself, not your schedule.
The flip side of this is that you need to value your time in order to have it yield value.
Throughout the day you’ll be making choices and maybe thinking should I be spending my time doing what I’m doing right now?
As a business owner, you need to focus your time on the highest-value activities possible for that given moment. Sometimes it will be working with your team, sometimes it will be following up with prospects, and it will almost never be watching reruns of your favorite show on Netflix.
Here are 5 things you can do to start mastering your time:
1. Block your time. You will be amazed at how many 10-15 minute windows you have for important tasks like personal development and a quick exercise session.
2. Schedule unscheduled time. This will give you the space to think about long-term strategic issues that have a hard time finding their way onto your calendar.
3. Assess your time: Track and review it. Understanding where you are actually spending your time is critical.
4. Get real with your schedule. Don’t feel guilty about not being able to “do it all” – nobody can.
5. Don’t let other people hijack your time and priorities. People don’t have bad intentions, but they will use your time however you let them use it. Make sure you are in control of your schedule, not the other way around.
Jessica ends the book with a call to action that I’m hoping you can’t ignore:
“Are you ready to leave ordinary behind? To say goodbye to the part of you that sees limits instead of possibilities? To the side of you, that says no before yes? To the thought that extraordinary is only for someone else?”
***
The fun part about these book summaries is applying them to what matters to me and what matters to you. In this case, I created a nanocourse that shows how you and I can use the principles of this book to enhance our coaching practices using AI.
Title: AI Enablement: Finding Your Extraordinary
Proof: This playbook is inspired by the principles laid out in “Find Your Extraordinary” by Jessica Herrin, adapted to the context of coaches utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance their businesses. Herrin’s success in transforming the direct sales industry showcases the potential of leveraging innovative tools for entrepreneurial growth.
Principle: Coaches can harness AI to create extraordinary growth in their businesses by aligning technology with passion, crafting a strategic path, maintaining a positive mindset, collaborating with like-minded individuals, demonstrating perseverance, and optimizing productivity. By integrating AI tools, coaches can streamline processes, enhance client engagement, and focus on their core passion for coaching. The journey may present challenges, but with determination and strategic use of AI, coaches can elevate their practice. Herrin’s principles serve as a guide for coaches to seamlessly integrate technology into their coaching business.
Promise: By strategically implementing AI in your coaching practice, you can enhance client engagement, streamline administrative tasks, and create a fulfilling and extraordinary coaching business.
Playbook:
- Discover Your Passion: Reflect on how AI can align with your coaching passion. Ask, “How can AI enhance my coaching practice?” For example, consider using AI for scheduling or data analysis to improve client experiences.
- Create Your Path: Begin integrating AI tools that align with your coaching goals. Ask yourself, “How can AI streamline my current processes? Am I ready to learn and adapt?” For instance, explore AI-driven communication tools to enhance client interactions.
- Maintain a Positive Mindset: Embrace the learning curve associated with AI. Practice mindfulness to stay positive. For example, take short breaks to refocus, thinking, “AI is a tool that can empower my coaching practice.”
- Surround Yourself with Supportive People: Connect with other coaches or professionals who have successfully integrated AI. Seek advice and share experiences.
- Develop Perseverance: Identify your “do not quit” aspects of coaching and ensure AI aligns with these priorities. For example, if personalized coaching is non-negotiable, find AI tools that enhance rather than replace this element.
- Master Productivity: Utilize AI to manage time effectively and focus on high-value coaching activities. For instance, use AI-driven analytics to gain insights into client progress and tailor your coaching accordingly.
Prompt: Reflect on a situation where integrating AI could have enhanced your coaching practice. How could the principles of passion, path, positivity, people, perseverance, and productivity influence your decision to integrate AI in the future?
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If you find this use the principles of the book summary to apply to your role as a coach, you can learn more about nano courses that take it even further here.
P.S. If you need more support in creating positive habits in work or in life reach out to me or one of the many other amazing coaches on coach.me to get support.