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Peak Performance: How To Achieve Breakthrough Results With Michael Altshuler

LBL Michael | Peak Performance

 

How can you achieve peak performance in your life and your business? Push yourself beyond your comfort zone to stretch, reach, and get better. Ben Baker’s guest in this episode is Michael Altshuler, speaker, peak performance & sales expert, and Job Gladiator. Michael talks with Ben about how the most successful people in the world are comfortable being uncomfortable. External motivation won’t be strong enough for you to achieve this. You need to go inside you and start with your why. Tune in and learn how to reach your peak performance!

Listen to the podcast here:

LBL Kevyn Rustici | Human Resources

Peak Performance: How To Achieve Breakthrough Results With Michael Altshuler

Thank you for coming back, my wonderful audience. Every single episode, you guys are amazing. You’re reading, you share, you reshare, and I love your correspondence with me on LinkedIn. You come to Podcast Host for Hire or Your Brand Marketing. I post in both places. Tell me what you guys like. Every Wednesday at 10:00, we drop another episode and there’s always something new to talk about. Tell me what you like and tell me what you don’t like. Tell me who you want to talk to and I’ll bring them to the show. Thank you for being an amazing audience. In this episode, we’ve got Michael Altshuler. You guys are going to love Michael because he talks about peak performance for businesses and individuals. He’s talked all over the world. He’s an incredible keynote speaker and an amazing sales coach. Michael, thank you and welcome to the show.

There’s lots of pressure and big shoes to fill but it’s a pleasure to be here. I want to thank your audience for reading. My goal is to entertain you a little bit and to leave you better than I found you, so you leave with some actionable ideas that will make you and your organization better.

I got off your website. I always like to look at people’s websites before we talk and I love your sizzle reels. I love the story about your son. We’re going to leave it at that. His son is a natural-born salesperson. We’ll leave it there. Michael, why don’t we start with a little bit of history about who you are, where did you come from, where are you now, and what motivates you?

First and foremost, I operate by a core set of values. My faith, family, and friends mean the world to me, that’s what guides my life. Besides that, from a business standpoint, I hail from Atlantic City, New Jersey, the monopoly in this America. I had a copier business that I started at 21 years old out of my 650 square foot apartment. I grew it to a multimillion-dollar company by the time I was 29. I became a millionaire. I made millions and lost millions along the way on my entrepreneurial journey. I have great lessons learned both ways. I sold my company to a multibillion-dollar company.

LBL Michael | Peak Performance
The Dash by Linda Ellis

If you sell your company and you live in New Jersey, and it’s in February, the dead of winter, most people don’t know this. There’s a law in New Jersey in New York that if you sell your company dead of winter that you must move to Boca Raton, Florida, so here I am and who am I? Who am I to break the law? I’m in Florida and when I sold my copier business and I moved here, I became a motivational speaker and a sales and peak performance coach. That’s what I do. I love people and more importantly, I love changing, improving, and transforming their lives.

You and I have a lot in common because I spend a lot of time in the copier business. I’m an ex-rox guy. I worked for Xerox for a number of years. You and I could talk speeds and feeds at a different time but it’s an amazing business and where we’re at was where it is and where it’s going is a digital transformation on its own. Let’s talk about peak performance because that’s where your jam is. Your sweet spot is looking at it and says, “What does it take for individuals and teams to consistently operate at peak levels?” We can all be there for a day or an hour. We have days that are up, down, don’t even want to get out of bed, and there are days that we can shoot the moon. It’s leveling out the highs and bringing up the lows to be able to make sure people can be consistent year after year and decade after decade. That’s going to be a skill. Tell me a little bit about that.

First of all, I got into that field of peak performance when I was mostly in sales and enterprise sales training. What perplexed, challenged, and upset over it was the fact that sales teams would all be in the room, learn the same sales methodology, and twenty of your buy the 80/20 rule or 20/60/20. Twenty percent would apply it the middle 60% win sometimes and sometimes not the bottom 20% wouldn’t do anything with it. I didn’t understand why the same information would fall on deaf ears. That was one thing.

The second thing that challenged me was even in my personal life. Why do we know we should do certain things to live a richer, fuller, life and we don’t do it? Why don’t we do the things we know we should do? We should work out. We should eat healthier, have better relationships with our significant others, work harder, smarter, and have a better morning ritual or routine. Why do we still have bad habits? We know that they’re bad habits. Why can’t we break them? That always puzzled me. We’re intelligent people. Why can’t we do that? If we want to lose weight, go online and google it. It has 30 million views and responses on how you can lose weight, pick one and go. Why don’t we do that? Why don’t we stay on track?

Those things challenged me so I went to the top sources. I have my own experiences of growth, failure, and the momentum shifts in life. This I know, for a fact life and business are hard, challenging, and filled with obstacles that we have to get around through and over. To stay consistent and operate at a peak level of performance is difficult. What I found are some core elements that fall way beneath the surface and most people don’t examine that hold them back from operating at their peak level performance and that’s what I coach on.

Let’s get into that. You’re right. Everybody makes these wonderful New Year’s resolutions, “I’m going to lose weight.” “I’m going to be healthier.” “I’m going to be a better spouse.” We all make these wonderful, grandiose ideas of things that we’re going to do. By January 10th, they’re in the toilet and they’re gone. How many people buy gym memberships on January 5th, and by January 30th, they forget where the gym is, let alone when they’re going to be there next time. What are the things that are the demotivators for people that keep people demotivated and how do we overcome them?

It goes beneath the surface of motivation. If motivation were enough, we’d be able to do it but it goes deeper than that. Let me share what that means. First of all, homeostasis is part of our makeup that everything is an equalizing system in our body. If our blood pressure rises, our body is constantly trying to equalize it to make it normal, so our temperature goes up in our body. Everything wants to get back to normal. That even happens with our habits. If they say, “First, we make our habits, and our habits make us.” For us to grow and get better for us to transform and be a better version of ourselves to change in essence, that’s going to require us to move out of our comfort zone and to do that, we have to be comfortable, being uncomfortable to stick with it.

The great ones, the world-class, the elite, those that are most successful in this world are comfortable being uncomfortable and uncomfortable being comfortable. How do you do that? Remember that we’re human beings, we’re not human doings. We have to be more before we do more before we have more. What does that mean about being worth? You can’t do it on external motivation. You have to go internally and the first thing is the mindset. I spoke to Dr. Carol Dweck, arguably the top thought leader in mindset. I want to bring my audience the best information. She’s a professor of psychology, Stanford University, and wrote the book called Mindset. Mindset is either you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Normally, you’re 99% of 1% or 1% of the other. A fixed mindset believes that the skills, talents, and abilities you’re born with, well, that’s going to define you, along with your circumstances and conditions in life. You say this is as good as all ever be. It’s my genetic, genetic makeup, my DNA. A fixed mindset never reaches its full potential.

Have a set of core values that guide your life. Share on X

Is it fatalist versus optimists or does it go beyond that?

It goes beyond that. There are a few things they did. They believe that because they’re born a certain way, they put no effort into getting better because they don’t believe they can’t get better. They believe that they’re fixed in how they are and how they’re made.

“If I’m fat, I’m always going to be fat. It doesn’t matter what I do. I’m going to be fat so why should I even try?”

“If I didn’t get good grades, I’m always going to be dumb.” If I’m always dumb, I’m going to be dumb. They hang out with people and there are some traits there. They hang out with people that are less talented, less skilled, and less knowledgeable than they are because they would be a slam on their personal esteem, their self-esteem if they hang out with people better than them. They wouldn’t be able to take that, so they hang out with people less than their capability. They never reach their full potential. Growth mindset, on the other hand, is folks who certainly understand they’re born with their genetic makeup, their skills, talents, and abilities are what they’re born with. This is the first key of a growth mindset and the huge differentiator between growth and fixed is they believe that through sheer effort and with the right roadmap or blueprint they’ll accomplish the objectives.

You heard a book called 10,000 Hours. The lesson was that for 10,000 hours you put into something the right blueprint, the right effort commensurate with that will be how good you get at something. The first way to change and to get better at something is to say, “I’m going to put the effort in.” That’s easier said than done. Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympic athlete of all time won 23 gold medals and he was crazy good. If he was born genetically blessed, and people can say, “He’s long and lanky,” there’s plenty of people born long and lanky. He wasn’t doing the backstroke in his mommy’s belly and freestyled on the way out.

LBL Michael | Peak Performance
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

The bottom line is Michael Phelps had a coach when he was a teenager, Bob Bauman, and he worked six hours a day for six days a week, to be the best in the world, by far. That only comes with effort and not only comes with, how you do that? How do you stretch beyond your comfort zone and stay there consistently? That is a coach, accountability in the charger. Somebody’s charging the battery and it’s your why. As Simon Sinek said in the book, Start With Why, “The bigger the why, the bigger the try. Attach pain to the why but I’ll do it. This will happen to me and it has to be super painful. If I do, do whatever this goal is and work towards this goal. This is what I’ll achieve.” That’s going to be the driving force to push you through the discomfort of working out as hard as you need to work out and staying consistent.

I love the fact that you quote Simon Sinek. I love the why because you’re right. Too many people focus on the what and the how and they don’t focus on the why because the why is the motivation. What’s the end goal in mind? What are we trying to achieve? We all have to go through pain. I was telling somebody that in 2018, there were 500,000 podcasts. As of now, there are 2.5 million and growing. 90% of those podcasts fail in ten episodes or less because people don’t have a why behind what they’re doing when they’re creating the podcast.

They get frustrated and they give up and they go, “This is way too hard,” because they don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. They don’t see where they’re going with it. They don’t see how it’s going to benefit them in the long term. I agree with and disagree with one thing that you’re saying. People sit there and say, “If I only work harder, I’m going to get better. If I put in more effort, I’m going to get better.” I take it one step further and I want to know what your thoughts are on this. There are certain things we don’t have innate talent to do but we can always bring people in that do have those talents and make them our partners. I’m a big believer that just because you personally can’t do something, it doesn’t mean you can’t surround yourself with great people that can enable you to do great things. That’s where a lot of people fall down. They say, “If I can’t do it myself, I can’t do it.” I’m a big believer of if you can’t do it yourself, surround yourself with people who can help you do it and I’d love to know your thoughts on that.

We are not independent people. We are dependent people. We grew up and say, “Be independent.” The truth of the matter is life and business are too hard and I’m a believer. I depend on the Lord, friends, colleagues, and coaches for strength. You never saw a pro football player come off the field after a bad play with his head down, come off the field, and immediately not be greeted by other players pumping him up. He changes his mindset and attitude immediately, so on the next play, he’s playing in a peak level performance. None of us can go this route alone, business or life, and operate at a peak-level performance consistently without having what I call encouragers in our life, not discouragers. Battery chargers, but not battery drainers. I want to qualify something and I agree with you. I always have when you have a company, you always hire around your weaknesses, so I totally agree that we’re not good at everything. There are things I am terrible at like IT. I can’t even spell the word IT.

You forgot to put the dots in between, so that’s okay.

At the end of the day, you definitely want to bring people in but if you say, “This is what I want to do when my this is my passion, this is my purpose.” If it’s your passion, your purpose, then find the coaches and information. Put the effort in with the right blueprint, roadmap, and the people supporting, encouraging you, and holding you accountable, then I believe you’re on the right path too but the qualification there would be, “This is passion and my purpose. I’m going to do my best at this.” You’re going to have to put in the time I read a book called Peak Performance. It’s stress going beyond your comfort zone, plus rest equals growth. The rest is, and I never knew this, the rest is understated.

Ask any hockey player, football, or any athlete. You’re going to. You’re as good as the amount of time that you rest. As much as you operate at the threshold when you’re on and performing, you need to have that period of rest to be able to recover and be able to do it again.

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Let me give you the scientific numbers on that because I learned something. I’m going to say them A) I remember, and B) This is a takeaway. For everyone reading this, this is scientific evidence of what we need to do to operate at an optimal level of performance for you and all your employees for the long haul. How do we get that we all want that in our personal professional lives, we want that for our team members, our associates? This is how you do it. It’s scientifically based. You do 50 to 90 minutes. The reason why there’s arranged there is it’s based on the individual and what you’re working on. It can be deeply intense work or it can be something that’s a little more superficial, grind work, you’re deep into it, a lot of headspaces that you’re going to use or not use.

It’s 50 to 90 minutes of intense work, or whatever you’re working on mentally, physically, spiritually, whichever it is, doesn’t matter. It’s 50 to 90 minutes of intense work and a 7 to 21 minutes break. There’s a range there. You pick what feels right for you and what you’re working. It’s 50 to 90 minutes based on science. That’s how long you should be intense with whatever you’re working on, push yourself beyond your comfort zone to stretch, reach and get better, and 7 to 21 minutes of rest. How you rest is up to you. They cited examples in his book, Peak Performance. They cited examples of marathon runners, Einstein and some like to take a walk in the woods in nature to recharge. Some would listen to music or meditate. Whatever your rest is, whatever feels right for you and recharges your battery. That’s what you do.

I agree with that. When I’m doing leadership training, before COVID, it was two days of intensive training. It started at 8:00 AM and you’re going until 5:30 to 6:00 PM for two days straight but I’d never go more than 90 minutes. I’d never go back to 90 minutes for either a coffee break, go stretch, or whatever. I said, “Go take fifteen minutes and refocus. After 90 minutes, you look into their eyes and they’re done. They’re full and you can see that these people are completely full. They’ve lost focus. They can’t concentrate and bring any more information in.” Take that time to get away from it to mentally do something else. They all came back fifteen minutes later and we’re ready to go again, so I absolutely agree with you.

This was great to have scientific evidence. I was more of a grinder push, push, push, and proper sleep. There’s so much scientific evidence how powerful eight hours of sleep is that you think you’re missing out on something, you’re not getting stuff done when you’re taking these breaks. It showed in the metrics and the KPIs people got more done and more productive when they took these breaks after working intensely for 50 to 90 minutes. I always like to share new information with audiences like yours, Ben. This is new. You may not have known this but they opened up a new restaurant on the moon. I’m here that the bearer of great news, the food is great. There’s no atmosphere.

You’re my way to get along with those types of jokes. You can call my dad. It’s a bad joke. It’s definitely a dad joke. You said something that stuck with me and I’ve been thinking about it. It comes down to detractors. We’ve all talked about motivators in our life. We have to have coaches, team leaders, we have to have people that can bring and help us along the way and lift us when we’re not able to lift ourselves. The world, unfortunately, is full of a lot of detractors and that could be family, that could be friends, that could be a boss, that could be a bad client.

LBL Michael | Peak Performance
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action

There are lots of people in our lives that either purposely or not purposely bring us down. How do we deal with those people? Some of these people, we can shove into a corner. Some people, we can sit there and say thank you, but no thank you and be able to remove ourselves from the dread badly. There’s a lot of people that for whatever reason, they’re going to continue to be part of our lives so how do we mitigate that? How do we rise above the detractors and the people that are negative with our lives to be able to allow us to have our peak performance?

Normally, the answer to that would be you cut them loose, if they’re not family members, you have to get rid of the battery drainers and surround yourself with battery chargers. People are going to bring you down or they’re going to elevate you. If they don’t elevate you, they’re downers in your life. Have really transparent, open conversations about how this is how it makes you feel, and try to get them to see a different way to communicate more positively and also go a little deeper if you want as to why. Maybe that’s part of their upbringing or their belief system. You want to dive into that. The other thing is, remember, we can and it’s much easier said than done, I talked about self-talk.

We have 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts that go through our head every day 65% of which are negative. I had someone communicate. I got back from New York. I live in Florida now and I had someone a woman in line, I kid you not and this is a perfect example of this. She’s one of those negative people, she turned around. I’m three feet away from her. It’s a line to get into to check in. She said, “Please don’t stand so close to me. Why are you approaching my space?” She almost yelled at me and I apologized, but I remember that the New Jersey in me wants to come out and say, “There’s a nicer way to say it.” What I did was we have a choice as to how we respond to situations and how we internalize.

When you think about it, regardless of what a person says to you, it’s up to you to internalize it and say, “I feel sorry that person felt that way but I’m not going to let that become my reality and attitude.” I remember I was on the parkway when I lived in New Jersey. I came back from New York. This is a true story. It was 3:00 AM and I gave the toll taker $5 and there was change. I said, “How are you tonight?” He looked at me and said, “You don’t want to know how I’m doing. You want me to make a mistake on the change. I know people like you.” As stunning as that is, I was stunned. The knee-jerk reaction, I’m an intense person as you can tell, I was waiting to slam him. I was like, “What are you talking about? I figured that you were in a 6×6 booth, it’s 3:00 AM. What an existence this must be. It sucks. I’m trying to make your life a little better and show you some love, compassion, and kindness. That’s what I was doing.”

He treated me exactly the opposite. It’s always going to lambaste him. I got done reading a book by Deepak Chopra called The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, the Law of Karma, and Dharma for pure potentiality. I remember in a moment. I had a decision to make. My immediate knee-jerk reaction and how I felt were super negative in the attack mode. I went from anger to empathy. I felt sorry for him. Anyone that would respond in that manner to that comment that I made must be going through a lot of here and here. I felt sorry for him. I said an internal prayer for him. I hope whatever you’re dealing with, gets better and that you live a more peaceful life because he certainly wasn’t peaceful with how we reacted. I left that situation and shifted my thinking.

My processing of what he said, which anyone would be pissed off at that. When I shifted how I was thinking about it and I went from anger to empathy, it shifted and changed everything in my world. I wasn’t negative. I wasn’t feeling negative. I wasn’t feeling anger. It was a conscious decision. James Mapes, in a great book called Quantum Leap Thinking, said this, “Every situation in life is either a CVS or BVS, current view of the situation and you have the ability to make it a better view of the situation.” That’s your choice at that moment. I made it a better view and he benefited because we didn’t have a fight and I benefited. Everyone I came in contact with afterward, not at 3:00 AM but normally wouldn’t have a positive result because my energy and my mojo were positive.

As the expression goes, “You can’t control how people act but you can control how people react.” I agree with you in terms of empathy but I want to go back to one thing. You talked about having conversations with people, being able to have dialogues with people that are challenging this, that, and the other thing. What happens when it’s your boss or your boss’s boss when it’s a position where it’s unequal amounts of power and you have somebody that sincerely goes, “My way or the highway?” We need to sit there and realize, where is our ability to react and what should we be thinking about in our lives? If we’re in a situation where it’s an equal amount of power, we can’t do anything, we’re not going to get this person to change. Is it time for us to walk away?

Push yourself beyond your comfort zone to stretch, reach, and get better. Share on X

You have to weigh that and we’ve all heard this thing on weighing things before that you weigh the pros and the cons. Whatever is greater, you weigh them also. You not only weighed them but you not only weigh what you’re weighing. One has ten and one has three pros and cons. How important is that one? It’s like picking a significant other. You have deal-breakers. You have the must-haves, to like-to-haves, and, “This would be a cherry on top of the sundae if we have this.” You have to look at this. When you weigh the pros and the cons in that situation that you’re talking about, you have to understand, peel back the onion and say, “You’re working more than you’re doing anything else in your life.”

If you’re not feeling a sense of fulfillment, gratification, and value, that’s the difficult part when you get a job. You’re not just working, you’re working more for the person than the company, so the company has a culture and standards but if you have a bad boss, it’s a bad company. To your point, Ben, at the end of the day, if you have a bad boss, a bad leader, or leadership in your company, and you can’t get any change, effectuate any change in that by asking good questions and sharing your point of view. Since you’re working and that’s affecting your daily level of happiness and joy and satisfaction, then you should, you should make a move.

Let’s flip that around and realize that most people that come into management positions are tacticians that are good at what they do and they are promoted. They aren’t given leadership training, coaching training, listening skills training, coaching training, and they don’t have a lot of skills. A lot of it’s not their fault. They don’t have the skills needed to lead. What are the things that leaders should focus on, and I’m talking everywhere, from frontline managers, all the way up to CEOs, should focus on in order to be able to help their teams operate at peak performance?

I am a big proponent and not everyone is led by example. If I tell someone it’s important to be healthy and be in shape, it would be difficult for me to say that and mean that if I’m not in shape. I want to be authentic. I’m far from perfect. My wife’s in the other room. We could ask her. She tells me all the time. I said, “Am I high maintenance?” She’s like, “Yeah, but you have many redeeming qualities.” I’m constantly working on how I get better in what areas. In terms of leadership, people are promoted based on what they’ve done and not given the proper training on what they need to do to be good leaders. I’m a big modeling person.

Model other great leaders in your organization, or training. It needs to be mandatory for companies that we’re going to put someone in a leadership position that they know, have to understand what a great leader is and does. There are certain common denominators. Success leaves clues in any part of a business. That is what all great leaders do. They look at them, find out what they do look at the training that they offer, and go deep into that and that has to be mandatory, especially because leadership is affecting all the troops. It’s huge in terms of a company’s culture and how customers are being treated.

This is probably one of the last questions I’m going to ask. How do you help people get the best out of themselves? Everybody’s an individual. Everybody walks into the office with their own hopes, wants, needs, fears, desires, goals, aspirations, and you need to help both the individuals become better versions of themselves. You need to help them work with the other members to become a better team so where would you start to be able to help those individuals become better versions of themselves and also to help them become better versions of the team?

LBL Michael | Peak Performance
Peak Performance: Regardless of what a person says to you, it’s up to you to internalize it.

 

I’m going to give you a checklist. From all my readings and my personal, professional experience, this is what you have to do. Number one, what do you want to be? Why do you want to be it? Understand your why. What do you want? Who do you want to be in your life? Why do you want to be it? Why do you want to do that? What do you want to do? What do you want to be, do, and have? Attach a strong why to that. Put things around you. There are two huge forces in the world, the outside forces in the world, which are pervasive, telling you what the value, what’s important and social media, buy this and that. You never saw a horse pulling a U-Haul. The bottom line is about people and it’s about relationships. Keep your value, be centered, have values, keep your eye centered on those values, and know why you want to be the person you want to be attached pain. If you don’t do it, pleasure if you do. You’re keeping the outside enemy outside these outside influences.

You also have some negative things inside your own head like habits and things like that. You want to surround yourself with people and things. You heard, “The sum total of our five closest friends.” That’s only partial to what you need to do. You need to surround yourself with your five. You are the sum total of your five closest friends. Let’s say they’re encouragers and supporters and people who hold you accountable to who you say you are and want to become. Also, have things around you that constantly remind you and trigger you as to what you want to be. I have water here because water is essential for health so I’m always keeping water in front of me. I have healthy chickpeas in front of me to keep that, so I eat good, healthy snacks, I have weights in front of my desk, my way says you’re going to trip over them. I said exactly. Out of sight, out of mind. In sight, in mind.

You’re getting all these messages from the outside world. You need to combat them with things that you want to do and have by putting them in your view all the time and that’s what I do. Wherever you go in my house, you’re going to see Peloton, weights, steppers, everything from health, healthy food. You’re going to see pictures of my Lord and you’re going to see everything that I say my values are around to remind me of who I am and who I want to be. You need those things because we all fall off the wagon. You need people, people, and things to constantly remind you of who you are, who you want to be, and what your why is.

Michael, people can get ahold of you at MichaelAltshuler.com. That’s probably the best way for people to get in touch with you, correct?

Yes.

You’re dropping some gold here and people are going to want to get in touch with you.

If you'll put someone in a leadership position, then they have to understand what a great leader is. Share on X

Can I share one more thing?

You can. I’ve got one last question for you so go ahead.

It’s how I close. It’s meaningful. I can close with if you want to ask your question.

I’ll ask my last question and you can close with it. Here’s the last question. I asked everybody as I let them out the door. When you get off the stage, come out of a meeting, get in your car, and drive away, what’s the one thing you want people to think about you when you’re not in the room?

“This guy deeply cares about helping me become the best version of myself and wants to make my world, my sphere of influence, my family, my personal world, everything better. He genuinely cares about that and he brings everything he has to give us that is his energy, heart, mind, soul. I feel his genuineness and sincerity and he gave great information from the head and the heart.”

What’s the last thing you wanted to say?

LBL Michael | Peak Performance
Peak Performance: Be less quick to anger and show appreciation more.

 

Years ago, I had a woman in the audience. The speech that I delivered was called making a difference, leaving a legacy, how to live on the right side of life in an upside-down world. A big part of that, of course, is living your values with the outside world being pervasive to say no, but my values No, you got to live yours and her grandmother passed away. She wrote me a letter and said, “Your speech made an impact on my life. My grandmother passed away and she left me this home and I wanted to reciprocate. Hopefully, this poem will uplift you. Your speech uplifted me.”

I close all my programs with this poem that she gave me. The poem is by Linda Ellis called The Dash. “I read of a man who stood to speak at the funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on our tombstone from the beginning to the end. He noticed it first came to the date of birth and spoke to the second date with tears. When he said that would matter, most of all, was that dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time that she spent alive on earth and now only those who loved her know what that little line is worth. For matters not how much we have, the car, the house, the cash, what matters is how we live in love, and how we spend our dash. Think about this long and hard. Are there things you’d like to change?”

“You never know how much time is left because it could still be rearranged. If we could slow down enough to consider what’s true and real and always try to understand the way other people feel. If we could be less quick to anger and show appreciation more, and love the people in our lives we’ve never loved before.” If we can treat each other with respect and more often wear a smile, remembering that the special dash might only last a little while. When your eulogy is being read with your life’s actions to rehash, will you be proud of the things they say about how you spent your dash? It’s my sincerest hope, wishing prayer that each of you spend your dash in a way that will make a real difference and realize your co-workers, colleagues, and friends, but most importantly, your loved ones.

Michael, that’s pure magic and I absolutely want a copy of that because that is an incredible piece and way to live your life. Thank you for being an amazing guest. Thank you for inspiring me, inspiring my audience, and making this time even more valuable.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, Ben. I appreciate it.

LBL Kevyn Rustici | Human Resources

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About Michael Altshuler

LBL Michael | Peak PerformanceMichael Altshuler is a nationally recognized keynote speaker, peak performance expert and career coach. He has positively impacted hundreds of thousands of lives across America. After selling his company to the multi-Billion-dollar industry giant IKON Office Solutions, Michael committed his life to helping others unlock their full potential so they could be more, do more and have more! His newest venture and passion, Job Gladiator, will help millions of people who are out of work land there dream job in record time.

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Silver - one episode plan $4395.00

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  • Four 30-60 second audiograms designed to enable pecple to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social meda.
  • Six images that you can use through your social media on an on-going basis.
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GOLD - four episode plan $10998.00

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  • Three additional 60-minutes recorded interviews that can be testimonials with clients, case studies, best practices or top questions of your clients answered. The goal is to provide value to your audience that creates trust with them and gives them reason to buy from you
  • Sixteen (4 per interview) 2-3-minute videos that come from that interview that help you tell specific parts of your story that you can put on your website and used through social mead and email campaigns regularly,
  • Sixteen (4 per interview) 3060 second audiograms designed to enable people to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social media
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  • Four 25-35-minute podcast episode on the Find Your Pro Show with a marketing page that looks like this

PLATINUM- twelve episode plan $27750.00

  • One 60-minute recorded interview to understand who you are, what you do, why you do it, who you do it for and why they should care. This interview is designed to show your true value and enable you to shine.
  • Eleven additional 60-minutes recorded interviews that can be testimonials with clients, case studies, best practices or top questions of your clients answered. The goal is to provide value to your audience that creates trust with them and gives them reason to buy from you.
  • Forty-eight (4 per interview) 2-3-minute videos that come from that interview that help you tell specific parts of your story that you can put on your website and used through social media and email campaigns regularly.
  • Forty-eight (4 per interview) 30-60 second audiograms designed to enable people to have a quick understanding of your value and why they should search you out to find out more through their use on your website and social media.
  • Seventy-two (6 per interview) images that you can use through your social media on an on-going basis.
  • Seventy-two (6 per interview) tweets that can be sent out regularly.
  • Twelve (one per episode) edited transcripts of the interviews that enable you to garner even more market materials and have approximately 6500 words on your website that provides SEO benefits.
  • Twelve 25-35-minute podcast episode on the Find Your Pro Show with a marketing page that looks like this.

The SILVER option is designed for companies on a limited budget or who would like to try the power of the Communicate Your Why program before committing.

It provides you with a reasonable amount of shareable content and access to our network. However, for most companies, this may not provide a full year's worth of marketing materials. If you purchase a SILVER package and decide to upgrade within 30 days of the airing of your episode, we will credit 90% of the SILVER package towards either a GOLD or PLATINUM package.

Our expectation is that we will release your episode within 30 days of the recording date.

The GOLD option is a basic yearly marketing package.

Optimally, you would release an episode quarterly and use the content that accompanies it to update your marketing on a quarterly basis. It is literally four times the amount of marketing materials as the SILVER option and allows you to not only tell your story but create a case studies with clients or talk about specific ways you add value to your clientele in a non-sales way. We would suggest that you have us interview other employees, suppliers, strategic partners and/or clients with additional episodes in order to add additional value and tell a richer and a more robust version of your brand story.

Our expectation is that we will release your episodes quarterly.

The PLATINUM option is designed as a monthly marketing package

It gives you the content you desire to stay top of mind with your clients and prospects, talk about ongoing developments and tell a more robust story. Again, if you purchase a GOLD package and decide to upgrade to a PLATINUM one within 90 days of starting the original GOLD package, we will credit 90% of the original purchase price towards the price of the PLATINUM option. We would suggest that you have us interview other employees, suppliers, strategic partners and/or clients with additional episodes in order to add additional value and tell a richer and more robust version of your brand story.

Our expectation is that we will release your episodes monthly.

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