The power of vulnerability.

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Being inspired after listening to Lewis Howe’s latest episode with Brene Brown. Check out her ted talk below.

I will put myself out there even more so and be more vulnerable.

I do believe that leaders are able to speak about their vulnerability to random people and people they have never met before.

What does vulnerability mean?

vul·ner·a·bil·i·ty
noun
  1. the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally.
    “conservation authorities have realized the vulnerability of the local population”

I think of it as being able to express yourself freely without fear of judgment. The power of self-actualization and self-realization is important because we live in a society full of judgments. The media, Victoria Secret fashion show. There are literally billions of dollars being spent every day telling us how we should act, how skinny we should be, or smart we ought to be. It is kind of ironic right because I do all of these things like attempt to read 1000 books and go to Crossfit, etc. But I do see value in being able to speak freely and express yourself in a roomful of random people. The goal isn’t to try to impress anyone but really to help people realize that there is no such thing as right or wrong. It’s just a matter of opinions, facts, and interpretations.

People often question this and say no there is no such thing but its really just our interpretations based off of what society or our parents telling us that something or someone is right or wrong.

I really respect Lewis Howes because he talks about his life very openly and it allows people to really connect to him on a deeper level. I have recently been much more open about my life and some of the struggles that I deal with on a regular basis. As a result, people have been more connected to me than ever. I have random people reach out to me saying they really appreciate my open and honest nature.

Like with anything else, it is just a matter of practice. Of course, in the beginning, it’s not comfortable. Do I like that potentially tens of thousands of people are going to read about my personal life? I am not saying you guys should broadcast everything about your life. It just the fact that there a lot more trust when you open up first and then people see that you are a normal human being like everyone else.

Lately, I have been exploring and going into this amazing self-development journey the past two years and would love for all of you to support me. If you are curious to learn more about coaching. I have 21 other fellow amazing coaching teammates that would love to offer you a complimentary session. It all starts with one call. Feel free to reach out to me to reconnect if you have any questions or if you are curious about the power of coaching and how with systematic practices making the uncomfortable more comfortable is what we do on a daily basis. Cheers! Thank you once again for taking the time to read my reflection.

My hope that you do one thing today that you normally wouldn’t do to help you live the life that you want instead of on somebody’s else terms.

My Crossfit journey so far and what I have learned from this incredible process

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Exactly a year ago. I bought a Groupon on September 16th. I was nervous but excited at the same time. I told myself. I am in pretty decent shape why not? Boy, was I wrong. (Everything is relative right?) 😛

It’s been quite the journey. As I walk into the CrossFit gym on 28th and 6th I see burly men who look like they were born with 6 packs. I am not going to lie. I was pretty intimidated but equally excited at the same time. Luckily, in the beginning, we went over our form and there is a gradual process and two levels one for beginners and one for more advanced folks.

Fast forward almost a year later. I am so grateful that I took the plunge and as many of you know. I love talking about Crossfit. I am genuinely super excited to wake up at 5am, meditate, and then to go to my 6am class. The community, the friendship, the laughing, sweating and suffering in pain for a whole hour. It’s all worth it in the end when you stare at each other thinking man that was pretty crazy huh. Everyone is high fiving each other and we all wait around until the last person finishes and everyone claps for you. The high is amazing. It is such a surreal feeling knowing that every week you are pushing yourself to the point of failure. Your relationship to failure is so much more abstract and is easily changing on a daily basis when you do CrossFit every day.

I love the feeling and the showers are that much better when you are so sweaty you can barely take off your shirt because it’s drenched in sweat sticking to every inch of your body.

I recently started taking creatine and have been eating healthier as well.

This small step and start almost a year almost has really changed my life for the better.

I actually care about my health now and I am much more mindful about what I put into my body. It’s starting a snowball effect with how I treat myself and the relationship I have to my mental health is so important to me now.

It’s quite amazing to see how just one impulse decision such as buying a Groupon and then a year later you cannot imagine what life would be like without Crossfit. For those of you who are afraid you might get hurt. There is really all levels of athletes and they really emphasize doing the proper form/technique. (Shoutout to my box at Solace on 32nd and Park). I have noticed a ton of ex-collegiate athletes at our box but overall it’s definitely a process. I am not even close to being average or being able to do the prescribed weight. I do enjoy the challenge of bumping up even if it is a little bit every week.

I am extremely grateful and happy to have challenged myself. I look forward to tomorrows class. I can truly just be myself and have fun in the process.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I challenge you to do one thing today that you normally wouldn’t do. Whether its text a friend you haven’t spoken to in awhile that you miss them or just hug a random stranger on the street. You never know how much impact you truly have.

What I have learned from proactively reaching out for mentorship

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To give you guys some context. I was listening to Scott Ingrams Sales Success Stories and really wanted to meet Trong for a number of reasons. 1. He is a Vietnamese male in the high tech sales industry.(There is not that many of us). 2. Clearly, he is doing extremely well for himself being the #1 cloud sales rep at Microsoft. 3. He just seemed like a guy that was having fun during this incredible journey of his.

So here is what I have learned from reaching out to him and grabbing dinner with him at a Vietnamese restaurant last night.

  1. Stay committed.When you are committed to your goals. You set high goals for yourself and really have a strong understanding of your self-awareness and what you bring to the table. He is clearly committed to his career and family. Communication is so important especially when you are traveling for weeks at a time.
  2. Be a world traveler when you travel outside the US you realize that our pace of life especially in the cities is not how the rest of the world lives(take a look at the European countries). There is so much power in just being present and not having to worry about the future all of the time.
  3. Giving back to the world. He didn’t have to say yes to me. He didn’t have to spend a couple of hours with me. A random guy who reached out to him just to pick his brain and learn more about his amazing career and he was kind enough to share his wisdom with me.
  4. Even mentors have mentors. He was talking about always seeking and looking for people that are the best at what they do. He proactively searches for mentors especially early in his career and really makes it a commitment to surround himself with the best of the best. They always say you are the average of your 5 closest friends.
  5. Stay in touch with the people that you care about. Even with a busy life, getting an MBA while traveling to Chicago, Toronto, and NYC every week and on the weekends finishing his MBA from Booth. He always challenged himself and still made time to keep in close contact with the people that have made a difference in his life.
  6. Challenge yourself. He still finished and received his blackbelt in Karate even being much older than the rest of his classmates and really pushing himself mentally and physically.
  7. Get an MBA if you want to do complex consultative sales in Enterprise environments. We were talking about how much you can really learn about a large Fortune 100 bank. The analysis of what you during your MBA can really help you add value and be able to do a deep dive analysis of a company’s business model and profitability.
  8. Stay healthy. We stressed the importance of taking care of your health. While it is important to take your clients out and make sure they are happy. You need to be aware of your health and even if you are on the road all of the time. Nutrition and staying active is important. If you are making all this money, what’s the point of it all if you can’t even stay healthy to be alive to enjoy it all with your family and friends?
  9. Treat your clients like your best friends. One of his secret sauce is that he treats his clients exactly the same as his close friends. They communicate and text each other all of the time. That is something that was really profound to me because I typically do not see people do this.
  10. Take your job seriously but do not take yourself seriously. Be committed and dedicate yourself but do not be so hard on yourself. Life is all about having fun and if you are not having fun in the process maybe you shouldn’t be in sales.

Let me know if you have any questions. The reason and purpose of sharing this is because I know how important it is to learn from high achievers. My hope is that you guys took something from this as well.

The value of early morning routines

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Lately I have been waking up early at 5am every morning to do my routine of 30 minute mediation, Crossfit, cleaning out my emails, meal prepping, ironing my clothes, and planning for the rest of the day. I also try to get my creative things done in the morning when its still quiet.

I am so grateful to have the morning to myself and be able to have me time. There is so much noise but the peacefulness of 6am in NYC is quite calming.

What does your morning routine look like? What could you not live without? For me, I have found mediation to be such a powerful step in my life to clear my mind and be able to focus right afterwards to set a purposeful day ahead of me.

 

What I have learned from my 18 years of being in sales so far

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What I have learned from my 18 years of being in sales so far

I started my sales career working at flea market selling whatever the trend was pokemon cards, furniture.whatever the trends were. I paid for my high school student spending money by selling Cutco Knives to being in college waiting tables and selling door to door Verizon Fios.

I am now doing a much more complex sales with Fortune 500 organizations. I have done about 7 years of technology sales now.

Here are some of the things I have learned along the way.

  1. Figure out your voice and sell something you are passionate about. People always chase the money which is fine but you should really enjoy what you do because you are going to spend most of your day and life is going to be spent doing it. I talk to a ton of people that try to follow the money and it isn’t sustainable most of the time if it’s a product you do not care about.
  2. Be nice to everyone. There is no reason to be mean. There is really nothing positive that can come from it. Karma is real. Altruism is real. Check out Adam Grant’s Give and take if you want to learn more about how the top sales performers are all givers.
  3. Learn from everyone and anyone. You will meet so many amazing people along the way with such interesting stories. Even people that I would never expect I would learn from. Actually helps me learn more about myself and my misperceptions on life and how I generalize people.
  4. Read a ton. I read sales podcast articles,forums, blogs. Listen to a ton of sales podcasts. The learning never stops, The moment you think you are expert you should be careful. There is always something you can learn from someone else even in a different vertical than you.
  5. Invest in yourself. The best thing you can do with your hard earned money is to double down on your education. Whether its take a seminar you always wanted to but you weren’t sure because none of your friends want to do it with you. Always invest in either attending mastermind groups or surrounding yourself with interesting people from all kinds of other fields. It will expand your horizon and you will be able to get along with a lot more different kinds of folks.
  6. Have fun along the way. Some people take life so seriously. I was one of those people until recently. We spend so much time at work we should at least be having a good time and laughing about our mistakes or mess ups.
  7. Make friends with people in other departments. You will have so many more interesting conversations.
  8. Embrace your story. There is no good or bad. There is your own unique story. Embrace it with open arms. I was embarrassed about a lot of things in my life. How I grew up some of the awkward haircuts and funny pictures of me doing silly things. I wouldn’t say I complete embrace it now but I accept much more than I did even just a couple of months ago.
  9. Eat healthy and treat your mental health well whether it’s a mediation practice or seeing a therapist/ life coach. Any job that requires a ton of mental power and people skills you really have to make sure you are healthy. You can be the best sales person in the world but if you cannot even make it into work. That’s really going to impact your month to month performance.
  10. Take breaks every once in awhile. It is important to recharge so that you do not burn out. I feel so relaxed now after taking some time to do a ton of mediation, walk the highline, go sightseeing, walk the Brooklyn Bridge, central park, read a book at the park, and just taking a break from everything. It is important. We are all human after all.

I hope this was a helpful reminder for you all. Have fun and let’s connect if you guys ever want to chat about anything in particular.

What it feels like to hit 30 so far.

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I have been 30 for a little bit over a month. I have had people ask me what it feels like to 30.

This is going to be a long one just to let you guys know.

First of all, I want like to thank everyone who I have already cross paves with so far.

I know that is a ton of people out there that helped shape who I am today. I would to thank all of the amazing people and mentors I have made along the way.

I would like to thank my beautiful girlfriend for showing me what unconditional love is. Her love and state of being when she is with me is amazing. She always supports me no matter what crazy venue or business idea I have and want to do.

I love all of the teachers I had have at Rosa International Middle School and Cherry Hill West. That was really cool being the first class to go to a school that just opened up back in 2002. The IB and MYP program was really interesting and fun. There are so many ambitious people and really taught me the value of hard work.

Cherry Hill West was some of the most interesting and fun times of my life. All of the teachers are amazing. Thank you so much for teaching me the value of education and the curiosity for learning. I am blessed to reconnect with you all every once in awhile.

This amazing coaching journey so far with 23 other super cool and inspiring leaders out there literally changing the world and doing this work themselves. The leadership team especially Mark and Christine who taught me that literally anything is possible. My mentor Coach Alex who pushes me every week all of the tears and sweat I put in every week but still standing for me even though I complain about how hard the work is sometimes.

My family for being themselves. They are so true and authentic to themselves with no apologies. The support and unconditional love no matter what. I am starting to understand the value of family and how powerful support can really be if just trust is given.

The crazy ride and sales journey. I can write a whole another blog post about that alone.

To the folks who told me I can never been a good salesperson. The energy I get to prove you wrong and the life long dedication to becoming better at this craft of working with people. It is so much fun and rewarding. The challenges and heartaches of it all.

My spiritual journey is an interesting one. I went to churches when I was younger but would not consider myself spiritual to right now really seeing the energies and the connectedness we all have. Being able to spread the love and joy for life gives me so much pleasure and profound sense of purpose.

Sammy’s family who treats me like one of their own. I cry sometimes from the amount of happiness, joy, and love I get from my new family.

All of the people who took time out of their busy day to help me even with what at the time seems like harsh critiques. Really pushing me to think a different way. I appreciate that as well.

I love my college days and joining a brotherhood full of leaders and like minded individuals pushing the boundaries of life and achieving such greatness.

What is different now than 2 months ago was I was still in 20s?

I do see my identity shaping. I am less about trying to please others and really have started to develop a sense of my identity and what I care about in life.


Making a difference and leaving a strong footprint on the world. Every life I interact with, I am much more intentional about my words and actions. My interactions and the way I view life. It can really have a big impact because there is so much greatness around. The world is so interesting and amazing.

The journey of Crossfit on my health has helped me realized how important it is the things I put into my body.  I’ve dedicated thousands of hours of fitness, Is it worth to drink that beer to negate all of that work?

Being a Nutrition major has helped me learn so much about my physical limits and what is truly capable.

My work as a life coach and being in sales has helped me figure out mentally what the major roadblocks are for people. Why our words do not align with our actions.

The type of work we do is so rewarding and there is so much more to learn.

I would like to thank Davis and Regina for their commitments and being doctors literally saving the world.

Rick and Hannah for showing us how relationships and love can form naturally and organically. What an example and foundation for true love.

The coaches at Solace on 32nd St. for pushing my mental limits every week when I feel like my body is going to break and I can’t even walk up the stairs. Now I know that there is so much more out there.

All of the fascinating folks I have met at Ivy so far who is changing the world on a Macro scale.

Rutgers Pdpsi where fun, play, and brotherhood came so easily. Those basketballs days playing for 5 hours a day until 1am during the summers. I will never forgot those days where we would work out for literally ten hours a day.

The hundreds of hours of waiting tables meeting interesting people traveling from all places and corners of the world, thousands of cold calls battling it out to help add value in every single touch point.

I am extremely grateful for this amazing journey called life. It’s been really profound to see the difference I am making. So whenever any of you writes to me saying thank you for your 5 things I am grateful for or even take the time of your busy lives to read this. It means a lot to me that you care.

 

What I have learned from 10,000+ Linkedin Connections

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I have spent my whole life networking and meeting others. I just love meeting people and learning something new everyday.

I would it’s a crazy Obsession the want and need to meet people. I do get energy from it. I was at an Ivy event once and people say man you are the most extroverted person I have ever met I in my entire life.

It is interesting to see when I do sit down by myself in a park. I do get a ton of energy and satisfaction from that as well. I love how I can be with myself. I recently found to love myself as much as I love other people but that’s a story for another day. Anyways, here are some of my takeaways from the amazing people I have met along the way on my journey.

  1. The learning never stops. All of the most successful people I know are life long learners.They read a ton of books and they are never complacent. They are never comfortable there is no such thing as a final destination. It’s all about the journey baby!
  2. They are givers not takers. All of the most successful people are always willing to help others out. They do not expect anything in return. They are not matchers. Although I would say most people are matchers. They are willing to help others out always and willingly of course they still take care of their own needs first. You cannot help others until you put your own oxygen mask on first.
  3. They are a mentor or having mentors. The high performers are always willing to seek mentors even at the top of their game being a C level executive at a fortune 100 company. They are actually even more likely to have multiple mentors.
  4. Everyone is truly amazing. No matter what your story is and what you have “accomplished in life”. People are amazing, being a wonderful mom, or loving son, or just the best partner you can with your wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend. You don’t need to win a ton of awards to have a strong sense of purpose.
  5. People have that a vision go much further. I have noticed that the most amazing managers, directors, and VPs all have such a strong vision. Their optimism or the ability to have people believe in something other than themselves is super powerful.
  6. Just love everyone. You never know and most people can’t predict the future. The more we try to predict something, the ability to be disappointed will happen.Love is the single thing that holds us all together and connects us on a deeper level. Love cannot be understated. Love trumps everything always and it will forever.
  7. Just enjoying the journey. People are accomplishing the most amazing things right now and the ones that stop and smell the roses inspire the heck out of me. It is easier to play the victim card and talk about a ton of the negative things in the news but there is so many amazing things everyday everywhere that we choose not to talk about it because it doesn’t sell as many papers. Be more grateful. We all can. Even myself even though I call myself the gratefulness coach.
  8. Just be yourself. We all have our own unique voice. The more you try to be like someone or something else. The more likely, you will fail. So much of our happiness is tied to our sense of identity. This is a truth. If you don’t believe try to be someone else for a week and notice how exhausting it is.
  9. Don’t take life too seriously. So what if you messed up or screwed up a speech? The world is not ending. People tend to overthink things and everything is going to be okay. That is number one most common thing a lot of millionaires and billionaires say to their 21 year old self is. They worried too much in life or how life is going to turn out. The quicker people realize. Many things in life are out of our control. The more you start focusing on what truly matters.
  10. There is no wrong or right. This a tricky one for a ton of people. There is never just one path. There are so many paths to success. Don’t be like everyone else. There is only one Davidson.

I just wanted to say thank you so much for everything you guys have all taught me. It’s been an amazing journey and ride. I love you all and am so grateful for all of the many interactions. I have had so far.