EP#128: Welcome to Season 4 of Paper Napkin Wisdom (with Rob Simons, Entrepreneur, Coach)

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Two years ago Rob Simons challenged me to by flipping around the Paper Napkin Wisdom podcast and turning me into the subject and he’d play the interviewer. To launch season 4, he came back to turn the tables once more by interviewing me in today’s podcast. I’ve been thinking a lot since the release of my book, “Your Five Step Plan For Life and Business Success”. As business owners and entrepreneurs, many times we worry about reaching our highest potential, often because we don’t think we are good enough. So, my paper napkin for today reads “Make it bad, then make it better … just make it.”
[Tweet ““Make it bad, then make it better … just make it.””]
This initially came to me when I created the first draft of my most recent book. I produced it before a keynote I did, and it was just my thoughts on paper. My friend and organizer of the event gave me one requirement in order to speak: they wanted me to give away 100 copies of my book. Having that first draft provided me with the opportunity to improve upon the product.
Let’s go back even further.
In 2009, my personal and professional life was eroding and I was looking for a magic wand to wave over everything. While I didn’t find the wand, I did find something better. And in 2013, I launched Paper Napkin Wisdom. At the beginning, I had no clue what I was doing. It took me almost a year to get the first paper napkin and I recorded everything with $19 equipment. However, while it wasn’t perfect, the conversations we had were still riveting. After doing a few hundred podcasts, of course it improved. Once the process got going, I did 70 podcasts in three months and collected nearly 100 paper napkins. Throughout this process of creating the podcast, I discovered ways to make it better. For starters, being genuine curiosity ended up being the key to great podcasts interviews. Over-preparing took away a part of the authenticity of the podcast. But I had to do it first in order to improve upon it.
[Tweet “Over-preparing took away a part of the authenticity of the podcast. But I had to do it first in order to improve upon it.”]
“So, Govindh,” you may ask, “how do you go from having a goal to doing it and making it better?” The answer for that lies within the first napkin I ever had on the show, which read, “If you want to learn and grow, you have to do what scares you and do it in public.”
I’ve interviewed hundreds of people over the years and came upon a revelation: many people who achieve great success only do it once or twice in their lives. Because of this, they often unintentionally overlook the process that enabled them to achieve these successes. In Your Five Step Plan, I highlight the commonalities I’ve discovered after talking to the most brilliant minds over the last few years.

  1. Multitasking is for computers, not for leaders. In fact, you get an 8x better ROI when you focus on one task at a time.
  2. There’s no such thing as priorities. There’s typically only one thing that you can focus on at a time. Deal with that and the rest will fall into place.
  3. Your worldview affects your business decisions. To the aforementioned point, when deciding what those priorities are, keep in mind that how you view the world affects how you prioritize.
  4. Distilled wisdom is key. If you can’t explain something simply, you don’t understand it well enough.
  5. Be accountable. A study showed that people who wrote down their goals are 36.7% more likely to achieve them. However, those who wrote down their goals and provided progress reports to peers were 76.7% more likely to achieve their goals.

[Tweet “While timelines are important, they shouldn’t be used to be hard on yourself.”]
I often see time and deadlines becoming barricades to entrepreneurs starting on a specific goal. While timelines are important, they shouldn’t be used to be hard on yourself. As a professional business coach, Rob encourages entrepreneurs to learn from their process, even if deadlines need to be adjusted.
One of the big challenges I had in the past was not having a subsequent goal after achieving a big milestone. However, in 2016, my biggest goal is to  get this book into your hands in an effort to “save an entrepreneur, and save the world”. I want to inspire each and every one of you to take your ideas and your business further, faster.
Are you ready to embark on this journey?
Listen to the whole conversation:

Check out this episode!

Paper Napkin Wisdom: Your Five-Step Guide to Life and Business Success

 

The Paper Napkin Wisdom book is an amalgam of knowledge extracted from some the world’s most successful leaders and CEOs. Forged by two Sages of Success with a passion for helping others reach their full potential, the book has served as a guide for anyone on the quest for more. Govindh Jayaraman and Jack Daly have worked tirelessly to compile the musings, failures, and lessons of the world’s top performers

What they found were five common traits among the people they interviewed.

Paper Napkin Wisdom condenses virtually every lesson you need to know to replicate and produce your own vision of triumph. The book will challenge you to identify your own patterns and the blockages holding you back from your best life. Those who are ready to take themselves on will embark on a 52-week journey that will change their lives and levels of prosperity.

If you want to be a stronger leader, run a profitable business, or serve your family and community in a meaningful way, the juicy tidbits and chunky takeaways within these pages can get you on the path.

Get inspired.
Look inward.
Take Action.

You’ll be glad you did.

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