InspireME: Push Yourself and DARE TO BE GREAT!

“It had long sense come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them… they went out and happened to things.”

Good Morning Folks,

This is Friday, InspireME Friday to be exact, the day of the week day when MitchWeiner.com sends you off to your weekend on a high note. Because, achievement begins with an inspiration. 

For the past few weeks we've gotten great response selecting and sharing with the world some very special motivational messages that our own employees, from all walks of the company, publish internally every day.

Yesterday I did a roundup, Linking YOU UP to an archive of the best of these best posts. But we are just getting started.

To cap off an amazing week today's author, New York Sales Rockstar Taylor Miller, returns for her second guest blog. Her first share, "If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You, They Aren’t Big Enough" —in just three weeks— because the most viewed post in all of the first year and 300 posts we've done since launching the blog inJune of 2013.

I love Taylor's message that follows:

Today I want to start everyone’s day with this simple, but very powerful quote: 

“It had long sense come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them… they went out and happened to things.” 

As a kid I remember my parents pushing me every single day to be the best athlete, student, daughter, friend etc. that I could be. At times, when it came to putting in the extra work, whether that being homework, extra track workouts, or going out of the way to help someone else, I remember resisting to go that extra mile. 

Being the daughter of a professional athlete, I remember one thing my Dad always said to me that truly struck a chord. “You know Tay, I wasn’t always the best. Sure I had some natural talent, but from the age of 14 I realized to be great and to fulfill my dream of playing in the NHL, I would have to work harder than everyone else every single day to get there. I pushed myself on the track until I couldn’t walk anymore, I drove hours out of my way to play on the best teams and to get the best training when my friends were playing outside. I studied like crazy to and from practice and you know what I have never once let that work ethic slip away through high school, college, my NHL career and even now. No matter what it is you do in life, do it with everything you have, because you only have one shot.” 

As I got older, something inside me changed and I truly understood the meaning of hard work and my Dad’s stories. I understood that greatness doesn’t just simply happen, but greatness is made. Greatness is reached by training, running the extra mile, studying an hour longer than everyone else and truly pushing yourself to your limit each day. I realized that someone else can only encourage and push you so far, but your destiny is truly up to you and your life is what YOU make it! 

I started pushing myself on the track until I fell over, driving hours out of my way to play on the best soccer teams and to get the best training, putting countless hours of studying in to and from practice and truly putting in the extra mile at everything I do no matter if it is relationships, school, soccer, work etc. That work ethic resulted in a college soccer career and now has turned into a great opportunity at FSO where I continue to push myself each day! 

So today I encourage you to be great. No matter what your role is in this company, Mitch can only push you so far. You must find your inner drive on your own and push yourself to make that extra phone call, visit that extra client site, go out of your way to make someone’s day, smile even though sometimes you may not feel like it and always extend a hand because every new opportunity and person you meet could be a road to a beautiful journey. 

Take chances, push yourself and always remember you have a team behind you every step of the way in FSO.

DARE TO BE GREAT!

Taylor! 

Congratulations and thank you Tay. We are all very proud of you and honored to have you in our company. For those clients and prospective clients reading this, you can't get a better feel for the spirit and integrity of FSO then the impression you takeaway when you hear how our folks think.

At FSO we are ready to embark on more great weeks. From our great front end machine to our delivery system and everything in between, we are continuing to make excellent progress in all areas of our organization. 

I know as your CEO, and as Taylor's message addresses, that each and everyone of you have it within. You have the power, the passion. The desire and the know how to get it done and get more done. 

THINK TODAY. How do I come to my glorious career differently tomorrow than yesterday?

THINK about the people who you interact with each day and get to know them and engage them so you can take them along with you…sometimes it is the obvious staring us in the face that we don’t see…what are the perceptions, habits, beliefs? 

Acknowledge and show your appreciation to your team…trust me, catching someone doing something great and letting them know how much you value them will make their day!

I know that I am very much inspired and look forward to continuing to make a difference. 

I hope you are excited too…we are a company truly driven by a Vision.  

Lots to be thankful for and excited about….have a wonderful day, make it personal, and (re)imagine! 

Have a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Refreshing Weekend,

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer  

Inspire ME Friday: Taylor Miller— "If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You, They Aren’t Big Enough”

"You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can't do is ignore them."

Good Morning Folks,

I often refer to the wonderful motivational messages that are being communicated throughout the week internally at FSO by folks from all walks of the company.

Today I'd like to share a recent message from Taylor Miller, one of our sales rockstars and the hardest working advocate of outsourcing and FSO that I know. Taylor....

Dreams. Today I want to talk about Dreams. Having a dream, turning that dream into a vision, turning that vision into a possibility, into an opportunity and finally into a reality. 

Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Reagan, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs…When you think back to the most influential figures in history, you will notice they all shared a common trait. They all had the ability to dream. They all had the ability to look outside of the box and feverishly test the status quo. They refused to take no for an answer and they made a decision to push the human race forward. Whether these great heroes stood for equality or creating a world of fantasy and imagination, they changed our world.

Someone we all know also had a dream. A dream that started with an idea in 2008, turned into a vision, a possibility, an opportunity and finally a reality in 2014. A vision in which the hourly demographic is given a CHANCE to make their dreams a reality. A dream that hospitality and customer service must be brought to life, as it is truly a dying art in our society today. “All I need is 6,000 good people”, he says, “6,000 passionate people and trust me kids those 6,000 will begin to change our world”. All he needed were people to believe in his vision, his creativity, and his competitive edge. While some call it madness, I think we can all agree we all saw genius.

The 2,000 employees, 60+ cities and 225+ client sites speak for themselves that dreams are truly possible. If you work hard enough, stay positive, push the status quo and most importantly DARE TO BE GREAT every single day, good things start to happen.

I can personally attest that success starts with a mindset. A mindset to push yourself to be the BEST you can be each day.

Sleepily walking into a crowded airport terminal and finding my place amongst the noise, I never thought I would discover a piece of my destiny that day. As I sat, I browsed my notes on the week’s interviews before pulling an over sized textbook out of my bag that read “The Art of Sports Broadcasting”. I was a senior in college, the world before me, skills at my finger tips, but not able to recognize exactly what it was I should be doing. Not until I met Mitchell Weiner anyway.

I’ve never had anyone have a 15 minute conversation with me and look into my soul the way Mitchell did. He saw my drive, goals, optimism, ambition, tenacity, ability to talk to just about anyone, ability to engage, my honest interest in the lives of others and on and on… He made me realize that both my natural, perfected and unique skills I’d acquired over the years went hand in hand with sales.

To him, I am eternally grateful for believing in me, for taking a chance on a kid who had a dream to be something great and was willing to work even harder to get there. I, like the rest of you, believed in Mitch just as much as he believed in me. I believed in FSO, the journey and the vision of not only the FSO that is already standing, but the road of triumph and tribulations it would take to build it even further.

With that being said…

“Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent. They imagine.
They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world,
are the ones who do...” ~~Jack Kerouac 

This is from Apple's "Think Different" ad campaign that launched the brand in corporate graphics departments while the world around it worked on MS Office whose WORD compatibility with OSX made it all possible. Actor Richard Dryfuss narrated there spots you heard, but as a special treat, here is a RARE version of the spot narrated by Steve Job's himself. It's called a "scratch track that is used as a placeholder until the narration and edited sequences are finalized.

As Forbes wrote about the campaign, "For any investor assessing innovation, creative destruction and disruptive technologies it’s a must to find the outliers. The standouts are not the technologies themselves but the zealous missionary people who conjure up the big new ideas and champion them to everyone else.

One strategy to find them early is to find the people who seem like their brains are on fire. Passion can be the best predictor of success in venture capital, where so much else is uncertain.

The same intensity celebrated in Steve Jobs can be seen in artists and musicians that straddle the thin line between eccentric genius and insanity.

It’s been said that genius is recovery of childhood at will. And Aristotle said that no great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness."

At FSO, our ability to (re)IMAGINE a future very different than exists today and surround ourselves with passionate, open minded people who always have our client's future success at heart, make FSO the Apple of its industry. The disruptor. The innovator. The better alternative.

Competition: Hear us loud and clear. We are coming for you.

Bravo Taylor Miller. Amazing message and THANK YOU FOR BELIEVING.  

Do you have the courage to change things? Think different. 

Here's to you Mr. Jobs... Peace be with you...

Have a Happy, Healthy, Safe and Refreshing Weekend,

Love Life!

Mitchell D. Weiner

Chief Happiness Officer