Can you operate at a peak level? Surround yourself with A level people

Soaring with Eagles
A friend of mine has always had great ‘luck’ in her career. She was recruited early, ended up as a leader in her group, was re-recruited for a new leadership position and then promoted again. Next, came the transfer to a higher position and now is regularly meeting amongst some of her previous colleagues in an ongoing high-level leadership group. Wow.

I have always called her an All-Star, but I realized that it’s much more than just her skills that bring this level of success. When she was first recruited, her mentor was a person who played at an ‘A’ level and surrounded herself with ‘A’ people. The next big move up was initiated by another ‘A’ player who also gathered others with similar characteristics and drive. This type of pattern isn’t an accident and her high achievement isn’t either.

When a person is surrounded by top performers, they will almost always have a greater opportunity to shine. Although positions and careers are different, when great people gather, great things happen! (Just check out a TED event) It has a compounding effect on more than just the job output. These groups multiply ideas, motivation, drive, goals and dreams. More importantly, it helps create new grand ideas for what success means to the individual.

Make your own luck
If your workplace has this type of environment then you’re already ahead of the game. If not, then it’s you who must take the first step towards the goal. You must embrace a consistent yet targeted way of moving through a career – not only being attracted and surrounding yourself with peak performance but, even more importantly attracting other peak performers to you.

If you’re not getting to this level at work, then it’s time to do a review of your goals. Of course, another option is to get out in the community and find yourself a group of people who do great things. Volunteer or form a group of like-minded people. Remember, it’s up to you – no one will do it for you.

In a previous post Do You Know Your Strengths? I began my journey of focusing on what supercharges me. With this in mind, I can find the right people (at work and outside of work) who can partner with me in achieving the highest level of success.

Too often I have seen people that choose to follow only one of the above. When this happens, as expected, careers take very different paths.

• The first person, who always treats people with respect but is not good at what they do, will probably have many friends within the company; but, will not be invited onto the large important projects. People may like them, but it doesn’t mean that they want to stake their bonus on the performance.
• The second person is on who is great at what they do but they do not show those people around them proper respect. In this case, the person may seem to do very well at first, but over time, they will notice that things don’t come as easily from their colleagues as it does for others. Asking for favors falls on def ears and support needs to be requested rather than offered.

I’ve seen both of these in action and while it doesn’t sum up the entire working population – getting them both right will help move your career or business forward.

For those of you wondering how to fix the problem (should you be described above) here is my answer: if you’re the strong person who doesn’t respect those around you – ask for feedback from your superiors or find a good middle-person to help you with your interaction. If you’re the second example with great respect but no skills – quit your job and find something you love. You’ll never succeed in the long term at something you hate!

Aside from all the details of the “discovery”, the end of days scenario made me think about things that I would not have done, seen or experienced.

Here are 6 things that I would have been worth pushing off the deadline for all human-kind:

1. There goes multi-millionaire by thirty-five
2. I just finished my basement and won’t be able to enjoy it
3. All the time I’ve spent writing out my goals – wasted!
4. Pre-paid lawn service for the summer – also a waste.
5. I was really looking forward to the Mayan End of Days in 2012
6. I will never get to see The Hobbit book on film

For anyone interested, here is the website for the Great Prediction. When May 22nd arrives, have a visit and a laugh. If it doesn’t, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Night Owls Raise Your Hands
I tend to do my best work and have the highest motivation levels sometime between 10:30pm and 2:00am. As you can imagine, this does not bode well for my sleep patterns when I have the alarm set for 5:33am. (I choose 5:33 because it allows me to snooze 3 times at 9 minutes per snooze and wake up at 6:00am.) Trust me, living off 4 hours sleep can work for a while but only because I sleep on the train going to work. It’s good for me; not so good for the person sitting next to me.

Stay up all night reading my RSS?

I quit painting, working on websites, investing in real estate, going to seminars and simply getting out and meeting people! It’s not that I haven’t been doing anything, it just seems like I have been focused on the wrong things. I’ve continued to keep up my financial education through blogs, documentaries and a huge number of books (see my reading list here).

Take this blog for example; I’ve probably sat down at my computer a hundred times over the past couple of years and started writing something. Suddenly I stop, get caught in analysis paralysis and never publish the post. (I fact, hopefully you actually get to read this one – who knows what my future self is going to do!)

Although I’m starting out again with a bit of a rant, I need to get something posted or I’ll fall back into my same pattern. Time for a re-focus? I think so and I look forward to any comments that you can give for ideas on staying motivated!

Here’s what I want to do for the next 12 months:

1. Post at least seven updates, posts or reviews per week
2. Transfer even more of my income from salary based into cashflow/investment income
3. Dedicate more time to writing, research and publishing
4. Increase the size of my network both through social networks and personal network events
5. Increase my education by attending at least one seminar per quarter

I know, these aren’t all SMART Goals but I’ll keep them updated and add specifics soon!

A Quick Summary
Just yesterday I read an article on the Huffington Post called Why the Dow is hitting 10,000 and it really gave me a great summary of the current market conditions. With personal spending way down, the government seems to be making up the difference (and more) with cash-for-clunkers, bank bailouts, mortgage bailouts and a cool trillion on “stimulus spending.” The only problem is that the money just doesn’t seem to be trickling down to the public.

The only problem is that the article seems to be a little short on the so what? factor. What happens when the government can’t spend any more but the people haven’t paid off all of their debts and continue to save? All of a sudden all these gains may seem like another painful memory.

This site says that we are actually in a period of much larger deflation (according to the CPI) than reported and that the current unemployment rate is actually at about 20% (not the 9% reported in the media.)

Their explanation for this is in the “discouraged workers” who are those people who have simply given up looking for work within the last 30 days. Isn’t that a little scary? That means that 1 in 5 people (both looking and not looking for work) do not have jobs.

Reading these types of things gets me very nervous about the recent rally in the stock market. I’m still following some of the advice that Dent shared about an upcoming depression.

This video is an update to the forecasts in the book and it’s also a great information piece for people who haven’t (or won’t) read the book.

Personally, I’m a little bit on the fence. On one side, I figure that the economy must turn around at some point but this recent rally has gone up so quickly that I see a lot of down side. We still have job losses each month in both Canada and the United States. GM is on the verge of bankruptcy, Chrysler is already there and regardless of the actual declaration, there are going to be thousands of fewer dealerships across North America.

What does that mean?

Think about each town that is made up of about 1000 people, a corner/video store, a grocery store, pet store, clothing shop and a GM auto dealership. I would bet that the dealership makes up a large portion of the corporate tax base for the town. How many jobs are lost? How much income is moved to larger centres followed by residents and their famillies? Can rural North America handle the loss of these businesses?

I’m not sure we’re out of the woods yet on this one. Call me naive but don’t economies and markets recove when people actually have money to invest and spend?

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Elliot Wave Theory

In this example, the first 5 waves take stocks in a bullish direction; however, this pattern also works in a bear market just in reverse. The first Wave (#1) is then followed by a pullback (#2). The next (and longest stage) is a sustained rally up (#3). The correction comes as markets pull back (#4), finally followed by another big rally (#5).

Elliot Wave Theory Bull Market trend

Following wave 5 comes a series of bear market moves. The “5-3 wave pattern” now beings parts A, B and C which indicates a correction in price due to the run up of the market during the previous cycle.


The A, B, C above demonstrates the last 3 waves of the Elliot Wave Theory (again this will be positive in a bear market).

Elliot Wave Theory ABC Correction

Grand supercycle: multi-century
Supercycle: multi-decade (about 40-70 years)
Cycle: one year to several years or even several decades
Primary: a few months to a couple of years
Intermediate: weeks to months
Minor: weeks
Minute: days
Minuette: hours
Subminuette: minutes

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