3 Factors of High Performers

Got a special, powerful message for you today.

I discussed this concept back in August (on the 8^th), but held it so we can wrap 2024 with a bang and get you pumped for all you WILL accomplish in 2025.

It’s a lesson on the 3 factors of high performers.

This isn't your run-of-the-mill pep talk—it's a masterclass on harnessing your mindset to fuel success and resilience.

Inside, I hit…

Attitude as a Catalyst: Attitude shapes not just your experiences but also inspires those around you. It's about manufacturing optimism from within and letting that optimism ignite inspiration in others.

The Power of Passion, Vision, and Commitment: These three pillars are what all (truly) successful individuals share. It's about discovering your passion, nurturing it, and committing to your vision relentlessly. (BTW, these are not the 3 factors of high performers I mention in the title.)

Framing and Priming: Understand the art of framing your thoughts and priming your emotions to align with your goals. It's about the internal dialogue you feed yourself—ditch the “fake it ‘til you make it” mindset and embrace authenticity.

Crafting Your Success Story: I share personal stories, including my journey from engineering student to executive recruitment, and how I built a successful career coaching business. The story is a testament to the power of strategic vision and unwavering commitment.

The lesson is about empowering you to conquer challenges and achieve your impossible (just like I say in Out of Reach but in Sight!).

Here’s to making 2025 your best year yet!

If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:

1. Check out the milewalk Academy, my coaching and training site, for freemiums and premiums.

2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.

3. Grab any of my four books related to interviewing, hiring, goal setting, and career development. All can be found on my Amazon Author Page.

4. Follow me on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter (X), TikTok, Threads, and Facebook.

5. Stay in touch with me in your email inbox by joining my newsletter here!

--Andy

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Attitude itself is not a it's not a banal platitude about having a good attitude and how
that can actually change the way you experience whatever it is you're going to experience and
perform whatever it is you're going to perform and Inspire others as well and I have this
quote in the book that optimism is something you manufacture from your attitude but inspiration is

(00:28):
something somebody else manufacturers from your optimism and those all work in Tandem and in in
in Out Of Reach but Insight using goals to achieve your impossible this this this speech that became
a book that I gave in 2013 it was actually when I gave the speech I talked about uh to to to the to

(00:51):
the uh to the audience that as I thought back and I looked at all the people that I had consulted
to the companies I consulted to the people that I had managed as a corporate practitioner as well
as all the people that I interviewed recruited as an executive recruiter and I said to stay true to
that and to stay true to the zebra code uh book as well I said there are three things that I notice

(01:17):
about all successful people they have passion vision and commitment they're passionate about
what they're doing I'm not saying I want you to pursue your passion I don't think passion
works that that way you don't we're not born with passion it's something that we discover a love for
something from the time we were born till now and you need to be able to nurture that in different

(01:42):
formats over your career my passion has always been about helping people except I used my talent
in engineering and a mathematical and a scientific mind to go into an engineering field that brought
me into an IT and management consulting profession but my passion was still around helping people but

(02:02):
I was talented in engineering related analytical related business process engineering related stuff
so I got a job that would pay the bills and then I found a way to focus in on leveraging my talent
to focus in on my passion and then it evolved into my executive recruitment firm where I took
one step closer to focusing just on helping people and now I'm a career coach who exclusively focuses

(02:30):
on helping individuals but I had a vision at each stage of that that helped me understand where I
wanted to take that passion and a commitment to never stop doing it now I talk more about
this in the book and I would encourage you to read that but I wanted to give you something
a little different today something I've been working on that I really wanted to make a whole
talk about this and I think I mentioned this to the book clubbers a few weeks back maybe even a

(02:54):
whole month but I wanted to give you another way of looking at something that I think I I
I wanted to say how do I look at people that what what's the magic that they have in common that I
could I could share with you that I think in addition to Passion Vision commitment but to
give you something more tangible and I think I think everybody that I've met and I want to put

(03:19):
myself in this bucket because I want to share a personal story with you uh about about about the
myok academy but I think that people that really got it all going on they they work in these frames
they have a framework they understand the framing and I'm going to explain what these are and they
have the right frame of mind okay so number one they have a system a strategy or an approach to

(03:45):
anything that they do and this this is likely the least important thing it truly is the story they
feed themsel so I talk to you about framing right priming is moving someone's emotional state to the
place you want it framing is getting someone to look at and interpret your message the way you

(04:08):
want them to interpret it but guess what the same goes for you the internal talk the internal talk
that we have what's the story you tell yourself and so I will tell you the story I tell myself but
the story you tell yourself matters the rhetoric matters and so if you tell yourself well I'm going

(04:30):
to fake it till I make it don't ever do that because this skull-shaped Kingdom knows every
deep dark secret of yours you could lie to a lot of people including me but you'll never lie to
yourself so if you think you're faking it till you make it you're going to be a faker forever you'll
never make it if if you're trying to tell yourself well I stink and I I I'm always a bum and I'm

(04:51):
always going to fail you will but if you believe you'll succeed and I'm not just saying just cuz
you think it and you want to manif f it into your life that it's going to happen no it's hard work
it's hard work but I know if I put the hard work in I will succeed because I have always succeeded
and if I give myself enough time to succeed you can damn well bet I'm going to succeed but then

(05:14):
the state of mind is how do I feel at any moment in time and this is where attitude comes in am I
going to experience it and whatever I'm going through am I going to gain the benefits of the
EXP experience I also have told you in the zebra code among many other places that experience is

(05:34):
not what's happened to you it's the meaning you attach to what's happened to you and I think this
is the magic these three things so now I want to tell you now I want to tell you a story that
gives me a chance to clean up something I said on Tuesday that when I checked the tape I don't think
it came out exactly how I intended it and so I wanted to clear it up so you all are you know

(05:57):
you you all have found me later in my career and in 2015 I made a commitment to be a career coach
in this capacity the capacity that most of you know me and when I started in 2015 it was July 1st
literally I made a commitment on July 1st of 2015 I said I need I need to figure out a way to coach

(06:22):
individuals and not just coach individuals to help them with 100% of their life as it relates to
their career but I want to reach people around the world and I have to figure out how to do that but
I'm going to figure out how to do that and I need to reestablish or basically at this point create a
new brand for myself I was an executive recruiter at the time so obviously I knew how to run a

(06:46):
recruitment firm I knew how to recruit I knew how to sell recruitment services so I I knew Marketing
sales service and a number of other things from a consultative standpoint and I knew how to hire
and I knew how to interview and I knew a bunch of these other things but I I was a businesso
business um organization I sold Business Services to another business in this case was recruitment

(07:11):
services so between July 2015 I and in in November of 2016 I reestablished that brand so 15 16 months
whatever whatever it was but the thing that I had to decide was what is my overall strategy going
to be for my new business and let me tell you what I mean about the strategy I didn't have

(07:35):
to have it all figured out and I didn't need to know exactly what it looked like I needed
to know I knew that I could teach on if I was going to help individuals job searching I could
teach them on Career Development high performance success and those kind of things and I probably
was better equipped at that time to teach you about leadership development but I didn't teach

(07:56):
you about leadership development and I didn't brand myself that way what did I do I said I want
to think about if I gave myself forever at that time right this is 9 years ago so I'm I'm 49 at
the time or whatever I whatever I was if I gave myself 30 years to do this right which forever

(08:19):
what would I do and I thought job searching stinks it's an acute pain and people they need help and
if if I could solve that acute pain for them then that would make me that would make me happy and
I'm equipped to do that so instead of teaching the leadership development first let's teach

(08:41):
job searching but not because it's acute pain I thought if if I really had forever to do this
if I teach them about job searching first and I build them programs and they get to know me and
they and and I can do it in a manner that shows them I basically can help them with their entire
career I could then second build a leadership development program so that somebody I could help

(09:06):
somebody find their job and I could help somebody thrive in it and that'd be a One-Stop shop to be
a career place for them to go to get basically anything that they needed that that's my that's
my vision my strategy to grow into that is to do the job searching first and then build build a
relationship with you gain your trust expose you to a lot of the career development stuff so that

(09:31):
the entire mile walk Academy Universe Works in harmony with each other the job searching stuff
creates a halo effect and that trust for somebody who enters into my community that way is going to
and the person who wants to put in the effort to develop their career is my kind of person I don't
want to just fix them in their job search and let them run away and never see them again although I

(09:53):
know I'm going to have to sacrifice the first few years to do that because I can only do so
much at at a single point in time so I'm going to give myself 3 to four years to do nothing but
job search coaching which is what I did and I I said once I get the job search coaching in a
format that I want not every piece together but in a format what that format was was I

(10:14):
didn't know what it was going to look like there was online training there was individual resume
reviewing there was individual coaching there was group coaching there was online support
that to me that was the complete tool set where they individuals would have every modality once
that's up and running which it was and then in 2019 March I implemented the leadership coaching

(10:35):
program and the other day I said well I I didn't really have a strategy that's not entirely true
I had a strategy I knew I wanted a subscription model I knew I would be teaching every month I
knew I would be providing workbooks like this and creating of a library what would probably have
been more accurate for me to say is I didn't know exactly what the whole thing would look like as it

(10:55):
evolved over time but guess what I didn't know I was going to write this book I just knew I needed
to get in motion but I was always in motion inside this framework it is never changed not in nearly
10 years it looks no different I drew a grid 10 years ago that had this line and this line and

(11:19):
I've just been filling it in ever since now things might have changed within the little grid but the
grid itself hasn't changed some of the little deliverables that I create for you have changed
but the lanes are still there the major assets are still there the modalities are still there and I'm
going to continue to do that so there were some dark days people there were some dark days there

(11:43):
was no balance in my life but then again if you want to be a 1center how do you think you're why
would you think you're going to have balance in your life if you're going to be a 1center you're
not going to be a 1center by working 40 hours a week right punching the clock and then spending
every other minute outside of work doing other stuff that's okay if you want to do that but if

(12:05):
you want to become a 1center there's going to need to be a little Obsession involved but that's okay
but the story I kept feeding myself is I'm going to do it I because I've done everything else in
my life and I'm going to fail a whole bunch of times but in the long term it's going to be a
success and then at every moment in time I never let myself get frustrated with the outcome based

(12:26):
results we talked about this the other day because when you have expectations you know
when I sold my first online training program and 50 people bought it in November and early
December of 2016 I could have said gez you can only sell it to 50 people instead of I made my
first business to Consumer sale and 50 people had faith in me enough to actually reach into their

(12:51):
pocket and pull out their credit card and swipe it that is a big freaking deal and so the story
I keep feeding myself and the state of mind that I constantly remind myself to have because it's
not automatic it isn't you have to slow down your thinking otherwise it'll run at the speed of your

(13:12):
emotions so you have to constantly intercept yourself to give yourself the right frame of
mind and feed yourself the right narrative who's tracking this if you turn the camera if you just
clicked me off right now but you got this you won today cuz this to me is the trick for all
of you you get this right you can do anything and then the rest of what I'm about to tell you

(13:37):
it's pretty good stuff too but it all starts here give me I'm tracking in the chat you see
what I mean so when I say attitude optimism inspiration this is what I'm talking about