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[Assistant] Why not set up an environment or an atmosphere of expectation? Alright.


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[Assistant] Don't allow circumstance, don't allow it to control the way you feel about you. You determine your mental ruling state. Now would you switch back please to page 31, I wanna finish this so we can stay on time here.


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[Assistant] There is one line just below the first paragraph on page 31.


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[Assistant] What are you doing to increase your relationships?


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[Assistant] What are you doing to increase these things? To improve them? Well if your answer to this question is nothing,


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[Assistant] Or if you are just beginning to think seriously about what you could do, you have probably not yet grasped the ideas presented in the previous chapters.


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[Assistant] You should be aware that the chapters in this book resemble the individual pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and each chapter is related one to the other in such a way that if we put them together we can see the entire picture. The entire picture.


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[Assistant] But he said, you realize that by the time I reach this goal, I want to set, he said, I'm 50 now. He said, and for me to reach this goal, I'd be 58. I said, well how old will you be if you don't reach it?


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[Assistant] Einstein said that all conditions and all circumstances in our lives, he said they are a result of a certain level of thinking. Now he said if we want to change the conditions and the circumstance, we got to change the level of thinking that's responsible for it.


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[Assistant] Since you are now well into the heart of the book, I would ask you to pay particular close attention to the ideas which follow. So you can use them to successfully tie all the pieces together.


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[Assistant] You will soon discover that if the ideas in this chapter are applied with intelligence...


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[Assistant] That expectation can be a triggering mechanism which attracts into your life every good that you desire. Do you know if you have something you desire today, would you do? Do you know that puts you in touch with it, you're hooked up to it, you're in harmony with it right now? But it's your expectation that moves it into your life. We will always gravitate towards that which we most secretly love, be it base of beautiful or a mixture of both.


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[Assistant] For into your hand will be placed the exact result of your ideal, your vision. Into your hand will be placed the exact result of your vision and your ideal.


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[Assistant] So expectation is the triggering mechanism. However, if you do not exercise extreme caution, expectation can also turn just as rapidly into a destructive lethal enemy. People go around expecting bad things to happen to them. Oh, I don't want to do that. What if this happens?


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[Assistant] Therefore you must be cognizant of how you are exercising this invisible but powerful force.


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[Assistant] We believe then that you already understand that you cannot have wealth in your material world until you first visualize the wealth in your mind. Have you ever considered that the highest, the most noble, and the most excellent thing about you


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[Assistant] That the highest, the most excellent, the most noble thing about you is formless in nature.


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[Assistant] But what does this really mean? It means that before any one of us can ever begin to overcome the poverty which surrounds us in our external world, we must first conquer the impoverishment that is buried deep within ourselves. Impoverishment meaning many areas of our life. Some people are emotionally bankrupt. Emotionally. Now what we're going to do


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[Assistant] Is Bob is going to come up and take you through the rest of this chapter. And that will start on page 32.


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[Assistant] And this will show us exactly how this expectation releases or moves this energy into what is called form. And no one will do that better than Bob Proctor. Thank you.


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[Assistant] You guys that you guys had last year, has there been any, you know, chemistry between you guys throughout OTAs and all that?


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[Assistant] And y'all got a, y'all got another big, big guy coming back in Michael Thomas. You know, I mean, he's in y'all room. Uh, he's been a great receiver in the league for a long time. What advice and what, you know, kind of mentorship has he given to you?


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[Assistant] Yeah, well, I got a, I heard, I heard Dil turn the light off. I think, I think Dil was turning the light off. And uhm, and then, and then it was just sort of like a...


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[Assistant] Oh, panic. Why? A lot of panic. Yeah, so I was setting it back up, uhm, to go and I accidentally configured it the wrong way.


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[Assistant] I could do with a little more time, but 200 years or even like 100 years is a pretty long time.


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[Assistant] Have you ever wondered why we love to listen to certain voices like the deep resonance of Morgan Freeman or the lovely accent of Sean Connery?


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[Assistant] So in this video I thought I would try something a little different. I want to talk about


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[Assistant] And he looked at how our voice plays a role in how we are perceived. And so in this video, I want to show you how you can find your maximum resonance point. The voice tone that will get you the most confidence, the most vocal power, and help people listen to your words and love your voice.


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[Assistant] I want you to find one that you can play around with to find your perfect notes. So go to signswell.com slash voice and pull up a virtual piano because we're about to play and we're about to sing.


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[Assistant] Okay, so next what I want you to do is start playing notes on the keyboard, uhm, and I want you to try to match the note on the keyboard. And you're going to try to find the lowest note you can comfortably sing.


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[Assistant] And then the highest note that you can comfortably sing. So this is comfortably, remember, this is just to find your range. And I want you to try to count the notes in between those two. So according to Dr. Morgan, it's usually about two octave or 16 white notes.


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[Assistant] For example, here are my 16 white notes, or about actually 15 for me, so you can hear. Here's C.


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[Assistant] So these are my comfortable notes. So for me it's about 15 white notes. So you might have between 10 and 20 that you feel comfortable singing.


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[Assistant] What you want to do then is divide the total by 4. So if it's 16, then the result is 4.


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[Assistant] The number of white notes from the bottom end of your range. So for me, I had about 16 or 15 white notes, so that would be four. So if I say


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[Assistant] That these notes in here are my perfect resonance point. So that when I'm speaking I should try to hit this F.


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[Assistant] FFFFF. So when I'm speaking to you on YouTube, I should be only speaking in this range. I should go no lower than that range. That's because, think about this for a second, so if I'm in a YouTube video to you and I try to speak in C,


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[Assistant] Which I can do naturally, but it would sound weird. For example, imagine if I did an entire YouTube video in C.


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[Assistant] CCC. Hello, this is Vanessa Van Edwards. That would sound too low. Versus F.


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[Assistant] Hi, my name is Vanessa Van Edwards. Right, that's much, much closer to where I normally am.


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[Assistant] F3 through maybe D4 and I'm gonna try to stay in that range. So what's important here is to find your natural range and then see if you are typically speaking in that maximum resonance point. So here's the big challenge for you.


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[Assistant] If you filmed a video recently or if you are willing to hop on the phone with a friend or a client or a colleague, I recommend recording your end of your phone call. Record your end of the phone call and then pull up one of these keyboards and see if you're speaking more like


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[Assistant] To see if you are hitting your maximum resonance point on your own.


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[Assistant] Okay, so as an example, I'm going to use my outgoing voicemail message. You can start with this for you too. So if you recorded a personal voicemail message, I highly recommend checking it against your resonance point.


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[Assistant] Uhm, so here is mine, which you will hear right away. I'm gonna match the note to it. You'll hear it is far too high for me. It's above my maximum resonance point. So here it is.


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[Assistant] So I could then easily re-record this to try to get a little bit closer. So before I re-record it, I'm actually going to record it for you live.


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[Assistant] My name is Vanessa VanWords. Okay, let's try it in that one for me.


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[Assistant] Hi, you've reached the voicemail for Vanessa Van Edwards. Please leave me a message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Alright, so let's see if that one's any better.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's much, much closer to my FG, that Maxim Resonance Point. So what's gonna happen is people, when they hear the voicemail, are gonna hear that I'm nice and relaxed, I'm hitting my ideal pitch, I'm not going too high.


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[Assistant] So this is just a really quick example of uhm, some of the kind of trainings that we do, trying to just optimize and hack, give you some little things, some invisible forces that are driving your behavior and are changing people's first impression of you. Your voicemail might be someone's first impression of you, right? Like they might be hearing you all the way up in the high.


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[Assistant] Or they might think that you're trying too hard and you're down here and you're really trying to be forceful.


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[Assistant] Second, make sure that you, uh, re-record your voicemail message. And third, try to record your end of a conversation and see if you're hitting your maximum resonance points. I can promise you that for the rest of my YouTube videos, I will be checking them to make sure that they are right here in my perfect


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks guys, I hope you liked this video. Let me know if you have any comments or be sure to give it a like. Just show us that you like these unique kinds of videos. Thanks so much.


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[Assistant] Get in there and show the world you're gonna stand by her through thick and thin. The old bulldog spirit for the woman I love. How about it, kid?


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[Assistant] I wish to tell you all of an event that took place when I was 18 years of age. I was born for France.


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[Assistant] I was in no hurry to return from my tour. One year turned into two, two stretched to three. And when I did get back I was slow to claim her. What did I do?


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[Assistant] You're an attractive prize, my dear, but you're not for him. You must know I forbid name the house.


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[Assistant] It does have the advantage of being a cabinet post. And it is in the cabinet that real power resides.


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[Assistant] You were spoiled from your youth. It's your mother's fault.


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[Assistant] Duty is the light which has guided my life and which I recommend to all my dear children.


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[Assistant] It is the quality that can sustain happiness in the face of adversity. It is the rock on which our lives are built. Duty of subject to monarch, of king to country, of child to parent.


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[Assistant] What do you do with him, Richmond? I observe him, sir.


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[Assistant] We consider making you Master of the Horse. Would you like that, children? Eh? Children.


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[Assistant] And you, Lady Louisa, what shall you do with your life?


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[Assistant] Well, we should consider it, Lady Sarah, for you will be pretty as a plum. This one will break hearts, Your Grace.


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[Assistant] The goal was to see how far his dreams would take him, but I had no idea where life would take us next.


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[Assistant] It felt like the bigger Kanye got, the farther we grew apart. But there was more to Kanye's story that I needed to tell.


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[Assistant] I want to talk about a vehicle that has touched everyone's life.


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[Assistant] The LLV. Or as we know it, the U.S. Mail Truck.


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[Assistant] If you know the name Grumman at all, you probably know it from making things like fighter jets and lunar modules that put men on the moon.


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[Assistant] But the company is also responsible for one of the most common sites on American roads, the LLV, which stands for Long Life Vehicle.


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[Assistant] You know, if we're going to talk about the design of the mail truck, really there was absolutely nothing that was aesthetic about this. It was purely a form follows function.


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[Assistant] These vehicles need to be loaded with mail, survive and deliver. To think about it, they were built from 87 to 94. There's over 140,000 of these vehicles on the road every day. That's a workhorse. And if I were going to build one,


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[Assistant] I wouldn't keep it as a workhorse. If the mail needs to get delivered quick, let's see what we can do about making this even quicker.


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[Assistant] Alright, I've got a first line drawing, but I've drawn it so close to the edge, because I pulled the nose out. Instead of being real blunt, I'm gonna pull it back a little bit and redraw this. Maybe I'll go to a larger piece of paper.


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[Assistant] Wouldn't be able to handle the horsepower that I'm putting behind this thing. Uh, this is so we can get the mail there before it was ever mailed, I think. But, uh, this would be a complete one-off chassis, one-off body, but it's going to resemble a Grumman mail truck.


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[Assistant] So I've got the drawing done and now I'm going to throw a little marker on this and, uh, give you an idea of what


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[Assistant] A foos design mail truck might look like.


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[Assistant] When I'm finished, I want this to still look like an LLV mail truck. But the inspiration is pure NHRA, National Hot Rod Association. So somebody like John Force would be delivering your mail.


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[Assistant] Alright, well the mail has to get delivered. Grumman, this could be the new one.


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[Assistant] Well as you can see, the Grumman LLV, the long life vehicle, is done for short runs.


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[Assistant] This vehicle wouldn't run around all day. This vehicle would just go a quarter mile as fast as it can. The mail's gotta get there quick, so...


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[Assistant] You know, change the graphics, change the body, change the chassis, change the wheels, change the engine, change the windows, uh, change of course the transmission, the wheels, the tires, wheelie bars in the back, there's also a parachute on the back, can't see it from this angle, but this,


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[Assistant] We didn't use. We just built a completely brand new truck, but if I were going to build a truck, I'd want to do something that was, uh, you know, a mail truck. I'd want to do something that was pretty wild and could get the mail there quick.


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[Assistant] If I were giving any thought to the power plant, uhm, you know, it's going to be the biggest motor that we can possibly get. So my, shall we say, inspiration is going to be go visit somebody like John Force, who could be the new mailman, see what he's doing with his funny cars, and put all that technology into the LLV.


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[Assistant] Now the original LLV was a, was a right hand drive vehicle. This is gonna be a center drive vehicle. Just like a funny car. You gotta aim yourself down the track. So do it from the center instead of one side or the other.


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[Assistant] Now if we look at design changes from the LLV to here, of course I've angled the front nose and all of that would be graphics. There wouldn't actually be holes there, but I've angled it for aerodynamics. It's got a much smoother profile than the original.


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[Assistant] Uh, it's got a little scoop to keep that air from going underneath the vehicle. I've got the large exhaust because we've got a very large motor. I'm sneaking that around the front wheel and pulling it right out the front. Of course, it'd be really cool if there was still a sliding door. Otherwise, the body's gonna lift up.


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[Assistant] Now the graphics, I looked at the eagle and it had that very abrupt neckline.


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[Assistant] So it's got, you know, the same shape as the body. This was square, it works with it. If we're gonna wedge cut it, then let's wedge cut the graphics as well. And then we've got the wheelie bars in the back. And of course, if you were to peek around the corner, you're gonna see a parachute there. So, we're not relying just on brakes, but also air to stop this thing.


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[Assistant] Hey everyone, thank you for watching this episode on Hagerty, and I hope you enjoy what I did with this vehicle. A vehicle that we see every day, but I hope that we never see it the same way again. And thank you Pep Boys for being our sponsor, and for helping car lovers go further since 1921.


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[Assistant] No, no, I don't mean my husband. I mean Sir Henry. Is he safe?


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[Assistant] Thank God! Oh, the cruel devil. Look what he has done to me.


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[Assistant] But he has hurt me more in other ways. While I thought he loved me, I accepted many things. But he doesn't love me. He doesn't love anyone except himself. He has used me.


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[Assistant] He also had the house ready in case he needed to escape.


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[Assistant] He knows that no one can walk into the Grimpen Marsh except himself. I am sure he is there now.


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[Assistant] This video is part of an audiobook series featuring Winning by Jack and Susie Welch, written in 2005. For more audiobooks, please visit my YouTube channel, find me on Spotify, or visit my website for downloads.


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[Assistant] More than a few times over the past three years, I have been on a speaking program or at a business conference with one big strategy guru or another, and more than a few times I have listened to their presentations in disbelief.


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[Assistant] It's not that I don't understand their theories about competitive advantage, core competencies, virtual commerce, supply chain economics, disruptive innovation, and so on. It's just that the way these experts tend to talk about strategy, it's as if it is some kind of high brain scientific methodology. It feels really off to me.


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[Assistant] I know that strategy is a living, breathing, totally dynamic game. It's fun and fast and it's alive.


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[Assistant] Forget the arduous intellectualized number crunching and data grinding that gurus say you have to go through to get strategy right. Forget the scenario planning, years long studies, and hundred plus page reports. They're time consuming and expensive and you just don't need them.


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[Assistant] In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.


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[Assistant] Yes, theories can be interesting, charts and graphs can be beautiful, and big fat stacks of PowerPoint slides can make you feel like you've done your job. But you should just not make strategy too complex. The more you think about it, and the more you grind down into the data and the details, the more you tie yourself in knots about what to actually do. That's not strategy, that's suffering.


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[Assistant] Now I don't want to write off strategy gurus. Some of their merits have concepts.


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[Assistant] I'm certainly not alone in this view. In speaking with thousands, many thousands of business people around the world, I can count the number of strategy questions on one hand.


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[Assistant] Virtually every other topic, from managing a temperamental employee to the dollar's effect on trade, gets more interest by orders of magnitude.


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[Assistant] Obviously everyone cares about strategy. You have to. But most managers I know see strategy as I do, an approximate course of action that you frequently re-revisit and redefine according to shifting market conditions.


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[Assistant] It is an iterative process and not nearly as theoretical or life and death as some would have you believe.


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[Assistant] Given this view, you may be wondering what I'm going to say in this chapter. The answer is, nothing that's going to get me tenure.


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[Assistant] Instead, I'm going to describe how to do strategy in three steps. Over my career, this approach worked incredibly well across varied businesses and industries in upturns and downturns and in competitive situations from Mexico to Japan. Who knows, maybe its simplicity, its simplicity was part of its success. The steps are as follows.


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[Assistant] First, come up with a big aha for your business, a smart, realistic, relatively fast way to gain sustainable competitive advantage. I don't know any better way to come up with this big aha than by answering a set of questions I have long called the five slides, because each set fits roughly onto one page.


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[Assistant] This assessment process should take a group of informed people, somewhere between a couple of days and a month.


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[Assistant] Second, put the right people into the right jobs to drive the big aha forward. This may sound generic, it is not. To drive your big aha forward, you need to match certain kinds of people with commodity businesses and a different type entirely with high value added businesses.


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[Assistant] I don't like to pigeonhole, but the fact is you get a lot more bang for your buck when strategy and skills fit.


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[Assistant] Third, relentlessly seek out the best practices to achieve your big aha. Whether inside or out, adapt them and continually improve them.


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[Assistant] Strategy is unleashed when you have a learning organization where people thirst to do everything better every day. They draw on best practices from anywhere and push them to higher, ever higher levels of effectiveness. You can have the biggest aha in the world, but without this learning culture in place, any sustainable competitive advantage will not last.


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[Assistant] Strategy, then, is simply finding the big aha and setting a broad direction, putting the right people behind it, and then executing with an unyielding emphasis on continual improvement.


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[Assistant] I couldn't make it more complicated than that if I tried.


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[Assistant] So, what is strategy? Before we look at each of the three steps in some detail, a few thoughts about strategy in general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At the time I retired from GE, the company employed more than 300,000 people in about 15 major businesses, from gas turbines to credit cards. It was a complex, wide-ranging company, but I always said I wanted it to operate with the speed, informality and open communication of a corner store.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Corner stores often have strategy right as well. With their limited resources, they have to rely on laser-like focus on doing one thing very well.


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[Assistant] In our Boston neighborhood, for instance, within a block of each other on Charles Street, two little shops have constantly ringing cash registers and a nonstop flow of satisfied customers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One is Upper Crust Pizza. Its space is cramped, completely unadorned, and noisy, with self-service paper plates and a limited selection of soft drinks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Customers can either eat standing up or sitting at one large bench-like table. The staff isn't exactly rude, but they're noncommittal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's not unusual for your order, given at the cash register, to be greeted with a bland whatever.


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[Assistant] A fleet of delivery people work nonstop until closing. At Upper Crust, strategy is all about product.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then there's Gary's Drug, about half the size of a New York subway car.


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[Assistant] A large newly renovated 24 hour CVS pharmacy is a short walk away. No matter. Gary Drug with its single narrow aisle and shelves packed to the ceiling is always busy. Its selection ranges from cold remedies to alarm clocks with tweezers and pencil sharpers mixed in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a personable pharmacist tucked in the back, and a wide selection of European fashion magazines in a corner up front. Everything the store sells maxes- matches the mix of the comp- nu-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] ...of the neighborhood's quirky residents. Salespeople greet customers by name when they walk in and happily give advice on everything from vitamins to foot massagers. The store offers instant home delivery and a house charge account that bills you once a month.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look, what is strategy but resource allocation? When you strip away all the noise, that's what it comes down to. Strategy means making clear-cut choices about how to compete. You cannot be everything to everybody, no matter what the size of your business or how deep its pockets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Corner stores have learned that survival depends on finding a strategic position where no one can beat them. Big companies have the same challenge.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I became CEO in 1981, we launched a highly publicized initiative. Be number one or number two in every market and fix, sell or close to get there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More than anything else the number one or number two initiative was a communication tool to clean up our portfolio and it really worked. Our strategy was more directional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As part of that move, we were going to massively upgrade our human resources, our people, with a relentless focus on training and development.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We chose that strategy after getting hammered by the Japanese in the 1970s. They had rapidly commoditized businesses where we had reasonable margins, like TV sets and room air conditioners. We ended up playing defense in a losing game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our quality, cost and service, the weapons of a commodity business, weren't doing good enough in the face of their innovation and declining prices. Every day at work was a kind of protracted agony.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Despite our productivity improvements and increasing innovation, margins were eroding as competitors like Toshiba, Hitachi, and Matsushita were relentless.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Meanwhile, overseeing GE Capital in the late 70s, I was shocked and delighted to see how easy it was to make money in financial services, particularly with GE's balance sheet. There were no union factories, no foreign competition, and plenty of interesting, creative ways to offer customers differentiated products and services.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I remember the excitement in that period, seeing our people develop a new private label credit card program and find niche after niche in middle market industrial financing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By the time I made CEO, I knew that GE had to get as far away as it could from any business that smelled like a commodity and get as close as possible to the other end of the spectrum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why we divested businesses like TV sets, small appliances, air conditioners, and a huge coal company, Utah International.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is also why we invested so heavily in GE Capital, bought RCA, which included NBC, and poured resources into developing high technology products in our power, medical, aircraft engine, and locomotive businesses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, in such changing times, how and why did GE stick with one strategy over 20 years?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The answer is that strategies, if they're headed in the right direction and are broad enough, don't really need to change all that often, especially if they are supplemented with fresh initiatives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To that end, over the years, we launched four programs to bolster our strategy, globalization, service add-ons, Six Sigma, and e-business.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] More than anything though, our strategy lasted because it was based on two powerful underlying principles. Commodit- Commoditization is evil, and people are everything.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Virtually every resource allocation we made was based on those beliefs.


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[Assistant] Yes, some companies can win in commodity situations. Dell and Walmart are great examples of companies that have pulled the levers of cost, quality, and service to succeed in extremely competitive games.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that is really tough. You just can't make any mistakes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My advice then is when you think, when you think strategy, think about decommoditizing. Try desperately to make products and services distinctive and customers stick to you like glue.


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[Assistant] Think about innovation, technology, internal processes, service add-ons, whatever works to be unique. Doing that right means you can even make a few mistakes and still succeed. But that's enough theory.


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[Assistant] Making strategy real. The first step of making strategy real is figuring out the big aha to gain sustainable competitive advantage. In other words, a significant meaningful insight about how to win.


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[Assistant] To do that, you need to debate, grapple with, wallow in, and finally answer five sets of questions.


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[Assistant] Going into this exercise, I'll assume that you have a strategy to begin with, either written somewhere or in your head.


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[Assistant] That said, having a strategy does not mean that it's working.


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[Assistant] The five slides we're going to look at here are a way to test your strategy to see if it's getting you where you want to go, and figure out how to fix it if it's not, even to the point of changing it entirely.


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[Assistant] I strongly believe that this questioning process should not be a wide-scale bottom-up event. While others may disagree, I know that strategy is the job of the CEO or the unit leader along with his or her direct reports.


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[Assistant] If the culture is healthy, they can see the organization in all its various interdependent parts. They know its people as well as its sources of ideas and motivation and can best determine where the most exciting opportunities lie.


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[Assistant] Moreover, they are the ones who will ultimately commit the resources the strategy requires. They get the plaudits if the strategy succeeds, and hold the bag if it fails.


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[Assistant] If you have a good team, candid, insightful, passionate about the business and willing to disagree, completing this exercise should be fun and exciting and energizing.


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[Assistant] Who are the competitors in the business, large and small, old and new?


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[Assistant] Who has what we share globally and in each market so where do we fit in? What are the characteristics of this business?


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[Assistant] Is it commodity or high value or somewhere in between? Long, cycle, or short? Where is it on the growth curve and what are the drivers of prof- profitability?


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[Assistant] What are the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor? Like how good are their products? How much does each one spend on R&D? How big is their sales force? And how performance driven is each culture?


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[Assistant] Finally, who are this business' main customers and how do they buy?


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[Assistant] In fact, it's not unusual for people who share the same office space to have widely different views of the same competitive environment.


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[Assistant] Many people have a terrible time admitting their business is a true commodity.


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[Assistant] No matter how hard we tried, it was next to impossible to get people in our motors business for instance, to accept this reality.


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[Assistant] And as I have sat through countless meetings where this set of questions has surfaced that discomfort and generated enormous heat about the level of resources to commit to R&D and marketing in an attempt to make the product more unique.


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[Assistant] Another of the many important issues that this slide surfaces is market size.


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[Assistant] Too often, people like to call themselves the market leader, so they end up limiting the scope of their playing field to make that happen.


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[Assistant] After more than a decade, we realized that businesses were increasingly tightening their overall market definition so that their shares were enormous.


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[Assistant] We fixed that by saying that businesses had to define their market in such a way that their share of any market they were in could not be more than 10%.


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[Assistant] With that restriction, people were forced into a whole new mindset, and opportunities for growth were suddenly everywhere.


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[Assistant] On the road in Q&A sessions, this is how I talk about the market definition dynamic. Since I am usually sitting in a chair, I ask audience members to imagine that they are a kind of chair manufacturer. They can define their market as the kind of chair I'm in with curved metal arms, blue fabric, and wheels.


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[Assistant] Or they can define it as all chairs. Best yet, they can define their market as all furniture. Imagine the share differences and the implications for strategy.


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[Assistant] This kind of discussion is why this slide really deserves to be wallowed in. A rich, wide-ranging conversation puts everyone on the same page, just where they have to be to ultimately find the big aha.


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[Assistant] What has each competitor done in the past year to change the playing field?


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[Assistant] Are there any new entrants and what have they been up to in the past year?


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[Assistant] Competitor A has been stealing your key salespeople. Competitor B has introduced two new products. Competitor C and D have merged and are having all kinds of integration difficulties.


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[Assistant] Some of this information may have surfaced during the wallowing of the first question set, but now it's time to dig deeper into each competitor's behavior.


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[Assistant] What have you been doing in the past year to change the competitive playing field?


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[Assistant] Have you bought a company, introduced a new product, stolen a competitor's key salesperson, or licensed a new technology from a startup?


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[Assistant] Have you lost any competitive advantages that you once had, such as a great salesperson, a special product, or a proprietary technology?


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[Assistant] Very simply, the comparison of slides 2 and 3 tell you that if you are leading the market or chasing it.


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[Assistant] Sometimes these slides show you where your, show you that your competitors are doing a whole heck of a lot more than you are, and you'd better find out why.


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[Assistant] Other times, the comparison of these paints a vivid picture of your business's competitive dynamics.


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[Assistant] The British company EMI had invented the CT scanner in the early 70s, forcing the traditional x-ray manufacturers like Siemens, Phillips, Picker, and us into an intense equipment war.


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[Assistant] Soon enough, all of us were coming out with million dollar machines six months apart, each claiming to be about 30 seconds faster in scan time than the last entry.


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[Assistant] Seeing that dynamic, Walt Robb, the head of our medical business, and his team came up with a breakthrough idea.


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[Assistant] GE would allocate its resources to design scanners that could be continually upgraded with hardware or software that would cost less than $100,000 a year.


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[Assistant] We would sell our machines by saying, buy a CT scanner from our Continuum series and our upgrades will keep you from becoming obsolete for a fraction of the price of new equipment.


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[Assistant] The Continuum concept changed the playing field. It made us number one, and has kept us there for 25 years.


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[Assistant] The main point is that these last two sets of questions work as a pair. They take anything static out of strategy and get you ready for the questions that come next.


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[Assistant] Slide four. What's around the corner? Three questions.


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[Assistant] What scares you most in the year ahead? What one or two things could a competitor do to nail you? What new products or technologies could your competitors launch that might change the game?


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[Assistant] What M&A deals would knock you off your feet?


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[Assistant] This set of questions is without doubt the one that most people miss. They don't just give it the paranoia it deserves.


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[Assistant] Most people answering this set of questions underestimate the power and capabilities of their competitors.


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[Assistant] Too often. The assumption going in is that competitors will always look the other way when they do slide one. They'll never change.


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[Assistant] Take the case of aircraft engines in the 1990s when our engineers believed that they had designed the perfect engine for the Boeing 777, the GE90.


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[Assistant] We spent more than a billion US dollars to get more than 90,000 pounds of thrust out of a brand new design based on the assumption that Pratt and Whitney could not afford to launch a new engine and would be unable to extend their existing engines at that level. We were wrong.


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[Assistant] Pratt and Whitney, with only 200 million in development, did get 90,000 pounds of thrust out of their existing engines. Because their costs were less, we had to sell the GE90 at lower prices than we planned. We had underestimated the competition because we thought we had all the technical answers.


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[Assistant] This story has a lucky ending. Several years later, Boeing developed a long-range version of the 777, which required 115,000 pounds of thrust, which the GE 90 could meet since it was a new design and could be expanded.


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[Assistant] We ended up being chosen by Boeing as their sole source, but because of our early miscalculation, we suffered through a few painful, less profitable years.


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[Assistant] Getting the right strategy means you have to assume your competitors are damn good, or at least as good as you are, and that they are moving just as fast or faster.


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[Assistant] When it comes to peering into the future, you just can't be paranoid enough.


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[Assistant] This is the moment to leap from analysis to action. You decide to launch the new product, make the acquisition, double the sales force, or invest in major new capacity.


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[Assistant] In reality, this is when Walt Robb and his team made the decision to allocate major resources to the Continuum series, the strategic move that would keep GE's medical customers sticky for decades.


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[Assistant] By the time you finish this set of questions, the effectiveness of your strategy should be pretty clear.


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[Assistant] Managers meet for months on end in intensive sessions about the company's competitive situation and direction.


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[Assistant] And then at last and with tons of fanfare, the company leaders announce a new strategy, which just sits there.


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[Assistant] Any strategy. No matter how smart is dead on arrival unless a company brings it to life with people. The right people.


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[Assistant] Forget speeches, they're just hot air. The organization knows who's important. Only if those important people are assigned to lead a new strategy will it take off.


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[Assistant] Consider what happened in power systems when our push toward product services first got announced.


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[Assistant] Immediately, all the engineers wanted to know what the heck was going on. After all, they had joined GE because they wanted to build the biggest, highest powered, most environmentally sensitive turbines.


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[Assistant] Suddenly, they were being told that the people who serviced their masterpieces were going to be the stars of the show tomorrow.


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[Assistant] Didn't service people they thought carry oil cans? Although the engineers heard the speeches, they didn't take them seriously.


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[Assistant] We eventually took Rick Artigas, a PhD in the engineering leader in locomotives, and put him in charge of a new and separate P&L devoted to power system services business.


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[Assistant] It was a real signal. Rick was a well respected player.


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[Assistant] With his new stature, he had no trouble recruiting the best engineers in power systems who were needed to design sophisticated software packages for turbine upgrades.


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[Assistant] The services strategy was underway. In 2005, Rick's operating profit of close to two and a half billion dollars will be about equal to revenues when he took over in 1997.


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[Assistant] Getting strategy right also means matching people with jobs. A match that often depends on where a business is on the commodity continuum.


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[Assistant] It goes without saying that you cannot pigeonhole. Good people are too multi-faceted.


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[Assistant] That said, I would still make the case that due to their skills and personalities, some people work more effectively in commodities and others are better in highly differentiated products or services. Let's look at the motors business as an example. It's about as commoditized as you'll ever find.


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[Assistant] Several good companies make the product and all have good service, quality, and cost.


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[Assistant] The right people for this business are hard driving, meticulous, and detail oriented. They are not dreamers. They are hand to hand combat fighters.


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[Assistant] Lloyd Trotter is the perfect example. Lloyd joined GE in 1970 as a field service engineer in its high intensity quartz lighting department. And for 30 years after that, his career was factories, factories, more factories.


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[Assistant] He was a foreman, a production manager and plant supervisor in lighting, appliances and virtually every electrical distribution and control business we had.


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[Assistant] By the time Lloyd was made CEO of those businesses in 1992, he could tell you from the parking lot whether or not a factory was humming.


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[Assistant] Two steps closer and he could tell you what it could do better.


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[Assistant] Of course, Lloyd liked thinking about strategy, but he liked implementing it more.


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[Assistant] He was in his element with people who sweated the nitty gritty details like he did, talking about ways to squeeze efficiencies out of every process.


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[Assistant] He was a master of discipline, and that's what made him exactly the right kind of leader to drive our commodities businesses.


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[Assistant] At the other end of the spectrum, it's generally a different kind of person who thrives. Not better or worse, just different.


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[Assistant] Take jet engines. Each engine is a unique, high tech, engineering miracle that requires about a billion dollars of investment to develop.


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[Assistant] The product life cycle is measured in years, and the customers are tough. The airlines themselves, perennially strapped for money, and the powerful air framers, Boeing and Airbus.


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[Assistant] For many years, the jet engine business had its own distinct culture of romance. The people who gravitated toward it weren't your usual business types. They were in love with the very idea of flying and the wonder of airplanes.


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[Assistant] Brian Rowe was perfect for such an environment. Brian started his career as an apprentice with Dee Haviland Engines in England before joining GE as a factory floor engineer in 1957.


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[Assistant] After stints in virtually every possible jet engine design project, he was named head of GE's aircraft engine business in 1979.


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[Assistant] Brian was a huge gregarious guy, outspoken, opinionated, and visionary. He loved airplanes so much that he would have worn goggles and a scarf to work if he could have.


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[Assistant] Unlike Lloyd, Brian pretty much hated the nuts and bolts of management, and discussions of operating margins and cash flow were boring to him. But, he did have the guts and the vision to place the big bets, laying a billion dollars on a single investment that would take years to pay off.


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[Assistant] Likewise, Brian's personality made him a great salesman with customers who shared his enthusiasm for every new technological advance.


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[Assistant] Lloyd and Brian were both a case of perfect fit. Right for their jobs, right for the business situation, and right for the strategy.


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[Assistant] You won't always get that lucky, and strategy can be implemented without an ideal match, but you're much better off with one. Best practices and beyond.


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[Assistant] I've heard it said that best practices aren't a sustainable competitive advantage because they are so easy to copy. That's nonsense.


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[Assistant] It is true that once the best practice is out there, everybody can imitate it. But companies that win do two things. They imitate and they improve.


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[Assistant] Admittedly, imitating is hard enough. I remember a software company executive at one Q&A session lamenting, my people don't copy very well. They just don't want to. They like the way that they do it.


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[Assistant] This reluctance is to imitate is a common phenomenon and maybe it's just human nature.


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[Assistant] But to make your strategy succeed, you need to fix that mindset and go a lot further.


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[Assistant] In fact, the third step of strategy is all about finding best practices, adapting them, and continually improving them. When you do that right, it's nothing short of innovation.


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[Assistant] New product and service ideas, new processes and opportunities for growth start to pop out everywhere and actually become the norm.


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[Assistant] Along with getting the right people in place, best practices are all part of implementing the hell out of your big aha. Into my mind, it's the most fun.


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[Assistant] It's fun because companies that make best practices a priority are thriving, thirsting, learning organizations. They believe that everyone should always be searching for a better way.


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[Assistant] These kinds of companies are filled with energy and curiosity and a spirit of can do. Don't tell me that's not a competitive advantage.


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[Assistant] Back in the old days, after World War II and before global competition, most industrial companies, GE included, were stuck in a not-invented-here mindset. The focus was on their own inventors, with plaques and bonuses reserved to the people who came up with and implemented original ideas.


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[Assistant] Once the 80s arrived, we had no choice but to radically broaden that mindset. And we did so by celebrating people who not only invented things, but found great ideas anywhere and shared them with everyone in the company.


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[Assistant] We came to call this behavior boundarylessness. This awkward word basically described an obsession with finding a better way, or a better idea, whether its source was a colleague, another GE business, or another company across the street, or on the other side of the globe.


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[Assistant] The impact of boundary-lessness thinking on our strategy implementation was enormous, and here's just one example.


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[Assistant] GE was always trying to improve its working capital usage. We were always using too much, and increasing our inventory turns would help.


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[Assistant] But try as we might, with all sorts of programs and tweaks, we just couldn't seem to get our annual turns above 4.


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[Assistant] In September of 1994, Manny Campouris was scheduled to speak at a dinner for the top 30 leaders in our company.


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[Assistant] At the time, Manny was the chairman and CEO of American Standard, the global plumbing and air conditioning supply company, and one of the largest customers of our motors business.


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[Assistant] You couldn't help but notice that Manny wore a lapel pin emblazoned with the number 15 at its center. And soon enough, we all knew why.


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[Assistant] For most of his talk that night, Manny regaled us with stories of how they had drastically improved inventory turns at American Standard, a company that produced a broad and varied mix of porcelain toilet bowls and sinks in factories in just about every corner of the world.


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[Assistant] Manny, an American Standard, were obsessed with inventory turns. The reason was simple. The company had recently gone through a leveraged buyout, and cash flow was king.


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[Assistant] Before Manny could finish his talk, our business leaders were peppering him with question after question. But that was just the beginning.


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[Assistant] What followed was an avalanche of GE people visiting American standard facilities, meeting with foremen and factory workers, all of them wearing lapel pins like mannies.


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[Assistant] There was the occasional black sheep with a ten, but many more plant managers wore pins boasting of 20 or 25 turns. We crawled all over their plants and picked their brains.


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[Assistant] They were happy to help. One thing I have learned from boundarylessness over the years is that companies and their people, if they're not direct competitors of course, love to share success stories. All you have to do is ask.


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[Assistant] The GE people who visited American Standard put what they had learned into practice in their own businesses.


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[Assistant] Over the next several years, these businesses adapted many of American standards processes to GE and continually innovated and shared with each other.


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[Assistant] It worked. By 2000, GE's inventory turns had more than doubled freeing up billions of dollars of cash.


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[Assistant] Over the years, GE borrowed great ideas with visits to Walmart and Toyota and dozens of other companies. We also borrowed ideas from one another.


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[Assistant] At our quarterly meeting of business leaders, we asked attendees to present their best practice that others could use.


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[Assistant] If a leader tried to present a practice that wasn't applicable to the other businesses, we would give him the hook.


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[Assistant] It was in that way that the junior military officer recruiting program, which started in transportation and spread to every corner of the company, and internet selling techniques that helped plastics reach its customers, made their way to medical systems and beyond.


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[Assistant] The list of these best practice transfers goes on and on.


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[Assistant] And it's hardly exclusive to GE. Yum Brands Incorporated is a case in point.


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[Assistant] Yum's CEO, David Novak, is an enormous believer in best practice transfer and considers each outlet an individual laboratory of ideas.


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[Assistant] David told me recently that he considered the major advantage to bulking up. In other words, adding chains and outlets is to share learning.


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[Assistant] The chain introduced a new process and within two years managed to bring that number down to 148 seconds, making it number two in the drive through industry.


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[Assistant] Immediately, the Taco Bell practice was transferred to KFC, and last year, its customer service time moved from 10th to 8th.


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[Assistant] I could tell you many other stories about how Yum's laboratories have spawned new processes and how they have spread to improve all of its businesses.


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[Assistant] But to make a long story short, I'll just give you the results.


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[Assistant] Even with the tough economy, in the seven years since its spinoff, Yum's market capitalization has jumped from a little over four billion to thirteen and a half billion U.S. dollars in seven years.


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[Assistant] The focus on best practices may not sound like strategy, but try implementing strategy without it.


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[Assistant] Best practices are not only integral to making strategy happen, they are a sustainable competitive advantage if you continually improve them, with if being the key word here. That's not just a mindset, it's a religion.


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[Assistant] The other evening we were eating at Torch, a wonderful little restaurant, one door down from our upper crust pizza, and from our seats in the window, we could see delivery people on bikes, in cars, and on foot, zipping back and forth in non-stop motion.


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[Assistant] We started to play with the economics of the place using rough numbers, but even with the most conservative estimates we could only conclude that upper crust is very profitable.


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[Assistant] You've got to believe that the people running Upper Crust have never held a strategy review session, let alone worked through five slides to reach a big aha.


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[Assistant] Their big aha is all in the sauce. Look, I don't want to oversimplify strategy, but you just should not agonize over it. Find the right aha and set the direction. Put the right people in place and work like crazy to execute better than everyone else, finding best practices and improving them every day.


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[Assistant] You may not run a corner store, but when you're making strategy, act like you do.


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[Assistant] In the last liberation war during our strategic retreat, the American hyenas occupied the land of Sinchon. They arrested Min-young Shi


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[Assistant] They also took the flesh from her thighs using a bayonet, dipped it in salt, and ate it.


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[Assistant] If there's any consolation, she does it with all of Angela's finds. Oh? Guys like you, uh, she knows what's going on. Not that she'd admit it. What are you getting at? Relax. I'm not gonna play the heavy brother. We're all after the same thing. Even Angela.


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[Assistant] You can't go wrong if you serve an Italian wine with pasta. Right, Scott? I always drink local wine. True blue, I see you.


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[Assistant] That's why we're breaking the yearlings. Get them used to rains, saddles and so on.


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[Assistant] I don't take any notice of the other day. If I didn't snipe, she'd wonder what was going on.


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[Assistant] Her mother rides too. She's not that keen on horses, but, uh, she likes keeping trim.


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[Assistant] If it's any consolation, she does it with all of Angela's finds.


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[Assistant] Don't be silly, we'll drive you. Good, aren't they?


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[Assistant] We'll see you tomorrow then. Are you sure we can't drive you home? Thanks anyway. Nice to see you again.


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[Assistant] I don't want you having another fall. That's fine, Nicola, you can rob it down now. I don't think you can ride it when I'm not here. I've given Wayne instructions you're not to be let near it.


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[Assistant] Steel buildings rose and fell, making way for the more modest structures of our time.


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[Assistant] Soon the laboratory walls built up again around me.


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[Assistant] I saw my house cleaner, Mrs. Watchit, again enter the room, but this time walking backwards.


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[Assistant] Then I stopped the machine and found myself once more in the laboratory among my tools and glass containers. For several minutes I did not move from my seat.


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[Assistant] For I now knew the terrible fate of mankind.


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[Assistant] I knew what a lonely place the world would once again become. And of course, I missed Weena.


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[Assistant] I got out of the machine and, still quite unclear in my brain, began to wander around the laboratory.


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[Assistant] I thought of how that room of windows would someday replace my home, and how the Birdman statue


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[Assistant] I looked at the people walking about the streets and struggled with the idea that they would one day be reduced to the pitiful beings that were the Eloi and Morlocks.


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[Assistant] I then felt an overpowering sense of helplessness and began to cry.


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[Assistant] After several minutes, I regained my composure and walked painfully to the hallway, for my feet were still in horrible condition.


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[Assistant] On one of the tables just outside the dining room


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[Assistant] I saw a newspaper with today's date on it and behind me ticked the clock on the wall, which read 10 minutes to 8 o'clock.


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[Assistant] Then, I could hear your voices and the sounds of forks and plates. I was not sure if I was ready to face you all.


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[Assistant] I was feeling very tired and ill, but then I smelled meat and had to enter the room to see it with my own eyes.


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[Assistant] And everything else after that moment, you know yourselves.


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[Assistant] Believe me, I know how crazy all of this sounds," the scientist continued.


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[Assistant] I am surprised to be here in this room telling you such strange stories.


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[Assistant] But upon my word, they are absolutely true.


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[Assistant] Go ahead and assume that I have just told you a story. And so tell me, what did you think of my story?


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[Assistant] Feeling a little nervous about having to express the first opinion of the group,


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[Assistant] Emptied his pipe into a dish on the table next to him.


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[Assistant] The sound of people moving uncomfortably about in their chairs could be heard.


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[Assistant] I looked around at the other men in the room to try and guess what they were thinking about.


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[Assistant] The editor was trying to look unimpressed, sitting back in his chair with his legs crossed.


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[Assistant] The journalist was not doing as good a job at this, however, for he could not seem to sit still as he tried out many different sitting positions.


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[Assistant] Everyone else seemed to be waiting for the doctor's response.


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[Assistant] The editor then broke the silence by getting to his feet and saying,


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[Assistant] I would recommend that you hang up your lab coat and seriously consider a career in story writing. Placing his hand on the scientist's shoulder.


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[Assistant] You certainly had my attention from beginning to end. So, you doubt the truth of it. Well, you must understand. Of course, you doubt it.


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[Assistant] Then turning to the others, the scientists asked, does anyone have a match?


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[Assistant] Puffing away at a pipe he had just stuffed full of tobacco, he relaxed further into his chair. I don't know.


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[Assistant] At this moment, he was looking down at his poor feet and shaking his head.


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[Assistant] I can't say that I recognize this particular kind of flower. Good Lord! cried the journalist. Look at the time. It's almost one o'clock in the morning. My wife will kill me. Which way are you going? asked the psychologist. Maybe we can share a cab.


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[Assistant] Excuse me, but may I take these flowers with me? asked the doctor. I would like to take a closer look at them.


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[Assistant] I'm sorry, but you may not answered the scientist. Well, at least tell me where you found them.


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[Assistant] At this, the scientist's eyes became a little teary.


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[Assistant] He looked down for a moment and ran his right arm across his face.


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[Assistant] I told you before. Weena put them into my pocket. He seemed to be struggling with the memory. I don't know. Am I lying to myself? Is there really any time machine? I must go and see.


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[Assistant] He then jumped from his chair and ran out into the hallway, down to where his laboratory stood. We all followed close behind. The machine was indeed there.


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[Assistant] I noticed on the bottom some mud and grass stuck to the metal.


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[Assistant] Parts of the machine's exterior seem to be slightly damaged.


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[Assistant] Feeling the damaged area of the machine, smiled, and, as if relieved, said, Ah yes, it is true after all. Then turning back to us,


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[Assistant] Gentlemen, I am grateful for your time this evening.


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[Assistant] Now, if you will excuse me, I must be getting to bed.


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[Assistant] He took us back out into the hall and helped us with our coats.


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[Assistant] You really ought to consider taking a break from your work, suggested the doctor. A few weeks might do you some good. This caused the scientist to laugh quite loudly.


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[Assistant] Everyone there had no doubt that what we had been told that night was a complete lie.


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[Assistant] I, however, could not make up my mind about it.


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[Assistant] Even though the story itself was unbelievable, the way that it had been told by the scientist, full of what seemed to be real emotion and excitement, impressed me greatly.


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[Assistant] I decided the following day to pay him a second visit.


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[Assistant] When I arrived at his home, I was told that he could be found in his laboratory. However, when I entered he was not there.


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[Assistant] I did see the time machine, though, in its corner, and I examined it very closely.


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[Assistant] Under my hand, it seemed almost too easy to break.


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[Assistant] A few minutes later, I returned to the hallway, where I then ran into the scientist


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[Assistant] The smile left his face for just a moment when he said this.


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[Assistant] Then, as if awakening from some other thought, he checked the contents of his bag.


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[Assistant] I'm very thankful that you came back to see me today.


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[Assistant] I would be happy to sit down to tea with you and chat, if you will just give me a half hour or so to do a bit of work. Of course, please don't let me stop you. I'll just wait in here and read the paper. And with that, he left the room.


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[Assistant] Sitting myself down in what I thought looked like the most comfortable chair, I began to look through that morning's paper.


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[Assistant] I wondered what he could possibly do in only 30 minutes time.


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[Assistant] Then catching sight of an advertisement in the paper, I suddenly remembered that I had a business appointment in little over an hour.


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[Assistant] I knew that I would have to leave immediately if I were to arrive there on time. Setting down the paper I quickly walked down the hall to the laboratory.


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[Assistant] Upon entering, I was hit with a gust of wind, and rounding the doorway, I thought that I had caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a ghost-like figure which disappeared just seconds later.


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[Assistant] The only other entrance into the laboratory opened and in came the housekeeper, Mr. Wright.


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[Assistant] I asked him if he had seen the scientist come through the garden.


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[Assistant] He said that he had not, and that he had come looking for the scientist as well, assuming he would be in his workroom.


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[Assistant] I decided not to show for my business appointment and waited in the smoking room for the scientist to return from his travels with what I hoped would be more exciting adventures to share. However, that was three years ago. No one has seen him since.


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[Assistant] Wonderful. Thunderous applause here, if you can hear it, I'm not sure.


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[Assistant] Uh, great, so now we have time for questions, and so we're going to do this, uh, in a sort of hybrid format, so we'll try to...


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[Assistant] So we're going to pull some questions from here and then also on Zoom and so if you're on Zoom and you want to ask a question, use the raise hand feature and then we will, uh, then call on you and you can either type your question in the chat or, uh, unmute, we'll allow you to unmute yourself and you can do that.


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[Assistant] As people are trying to figure out the logistics of the online questions, are there any questions in, in person here?


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[Assistant] Nice, any other questions here? Uh, yeaah, in the back.


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[Assistant] If you can either unmute yourself, ask to be unmuted.


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[Assistant] Great, uhm, I think basically we have time for one more question if there is one here or online and I have a question too if we have time. Did you want to ask a question?


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[Assistant] Or are there kind of unique differences that we need, uh, for these different types of media?


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[Assistant] Yeah, I guess my question is maybe less about the, you know, AR or VR or mixed reality and more about the type of experience, right, the movie.


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[Assistant] Or the, the game or the tool sort of require these different interactions or different ways of thinking about it. And I wonder if, yeaah, what, you know, how much can a tool that helps you create mixed reality movies extend to a tool that helps you create a mixed reality version of, you know, uhm, yeaah, uh, tilt brush, for example.


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[Assistant] Now then, my lad, this is a railway carriage, not a playground. Go on, off you.


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[Assistant] As I pause to think about what sets most men apart, it seems to me that goals in life is a place to start.


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[Assistant] Imagine playing football on an unmarked field of green. Not a goal line to be sought, not a goal post to be seen.


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[Assistant] It would be an aimless battle with nothing to be gained without a thing to strive for and not a score to be obtained.


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[Assistant] We must have purpose in our lives for the flame that warms the soul.


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[Assistant] Every man must have purpose, every lie, every man must have a goal.


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[Assistant] The question is, why are you here today?


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[Assistant] Well, I think you're here today because you want more of the good life. Right, Nino?


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[Assistant] That's the way I was in August of 1975 when I came to this great city, when our company had a conference here.


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[Assistant] And on the last day they were introducing the speaker and they were telling what an outstanding personality he was and that he was going to speak for three hours in a row without a break.


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[Assistant] Well, there came a hush over the crowd and he really mesmerized people for three hours. Now I've heard a lot of speakers, but this man kind of charged me up. And when it was over, I said to him, could you and I have a cup of coffee together? And without a minute hesitations, Heather, he said, yeah.


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[Assistant] And one of the great things about Bob Proctor is that he's a great giver.


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[Assistant] Sometimes people give you two or three minutes, but we went off and we sat down and we talked for a long time. And I said to him, you know, some of the things that you said today kind of turned me on. I don't see myself, uh, as a loser.


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[Assistant] And I'm considered to be a, a good manager. One of the bright ones they tell me in the company today. They say I'm a motivator, I'm a good speaker, but...


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[Assistant] Things never really seem to happen in my life. Why is that? The things that you're talking about.


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[Assistant] So he talked for a while. He said, lookie, I'm coming to Kansas. This is August. He said, I'm coming to Kansas in October to do some seminars for your company. I'll see you then. I didn't want to wait till October. I said, I want to, I want to know about this now.


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[Assistant] He said, I'm traveling Indiana and Illinois next week. If you want to come with me, come on. So for a whole week I traveled with him.


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[Assistant] And there was eight parts of that seminar, and we did four of them that week. And then at night when everybody else went to home, well, he did the other four with me.


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[Assistant] Now let me tell you a little bit about how those ideas impacted my life.


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[Assistant] And then later that year why I was transferred to another district.


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[Assistant] That district had not won a citation in the company for eight years. One of Prudential's highest awards. When I got there, we were 163. The first year, using these ideas we're talking about right now, we finished 11 in the company out of 500. And then nine, and then four, and then 80 and 81.


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[Assistant] We were the number one agency in the company in First Year Commissions and that's the name of the game. Everybody understands that. First Year Commissions is the name of the game.


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[Assistant] And we did that in a town of 17,000 people as he said. But I've come to understand that it's not where you are that counts, but who you are Tammy. Now what's the difference?


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[Assistant] Well I've come to understand this, that there's very little difference in most people. But that little bit of difference is the way you think. And that makes a big difference.


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[Assistant] I do some public speaking, do some seminars, uh, for companies. I've developed some of my own ideas, laws that I call on, that I share with, with other people, and let me share some of those, uh, with you. First of all, let me talk to you about the law of repetition.


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[Assistant] And I'm gonna go through this real quickly. But I think it's the number of times that you try something that's really gonna make the big difference in your life.


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[Assistant] You see, the reason why you need to read your books and your tapes very often is because of repetition.


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[Assistant] Spaced repetition. It is the number of times. That's why the video that we're doing right now is so important for you to have.


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[Assistant] Just think about having Bob Proctor in your house every day. I promise you that if you would take fifteen minutes a day


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[Assistant] I'll give you a great classic example of that. Helen Keller is one of all the great time people.


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[Assistant] She one time coined a phrase that says every time a door closes, another one opens.


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[Assistant] But some people concentrate on the door that's closed so much that they never see the door that's open. Now when you practice these ideas, then I'm saying that you always get a chance to see the door that's open.


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[Assistant] This time he has said so many times. Today has been said so many times today.


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[Assistant] That if you practice these ideas, and this is a quote that came directly out of Think and Grow Rich, if you practice these ideas long enough, riches will come your way so fast you don't know where they're coming from.


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[Assistant] If you have a big goal in life, if there's something big that you want to achieve, then, then there's a decision that you're gonna have to make right away. What are you willing to give or give up to have what you want? You see, nature's greatest law is the law of cause and effect.


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[Assistant] Emerson calls this the law of laws. The great law that says you can't take more out of life than what you put into it. No way that that can happen. Now, why is it then?


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[Assistant] That we don't achieve big goals. Even more so, why don't we set big goals? Why is that? Well, you know why. It's the universal reason. Fear.


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[Assistant] What if I try and fail? What if he asks me a question and I can't answer?


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[Assistant] And then I'd have to walk back and all the guys would laugh at me, see, and so I didn't get what I wanted because I was afraid to try. Now let me tell you. Let me tell you how you overcome the fear of failure.


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[Assistant] That may be the most important thing I say to you all day long. It's having a goal that's worth failing for. Worth taking a chance.


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[Assistant] You see, I've come to understand that failure is a very positive part of your life.


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[Assistant] And when I talk about a goal, having a goal that's worth failing for, I'm talking about having a big goal, Tammy.


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[Assistant] Something that excites you, something that turns up. You see, there's really two kinds of goals. There's logical goals and emotional goals, John.


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[Assistant] What I'm saying to you in your life, your goals have to be emotional. They have to be something that makes you feel great when you achieve them.


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[Assistant] That's a great understanding. That's why you have to have the emotional goals because of the way it makes you feel. Now, when you have a big goal in your life, an intangible goal, emotional goal,


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[Assistant] Then you are going to have conflict. You are going to have adversity. You are going to have circumstances. This may be the most important thing I will say to you today is that there will never be a circumstance on the outside of you that will ever help you or hurt you. It's what's on the inside that counts. So as you reach out for something big,


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[Assistant] By then you're gonna have conflict, you're gonna have adversity, and that's when the greatest law, and you've heard it talked about today, the greatest power you have comes into being. That's the power to choose.


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[Assistant] That is your greatest power. I talk about that so much. And I think that pretty much the sum of your life right now is the sum of the choices that you've made. And that if you want something better out of life, it may be just as simple as changing some of the choices.


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[Assistant] But let me tell you, when you have, when you want a bigger bite out of life, then you're gonna have adversity.


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[Assistant] And I'm saying it's not adversity, but the way you act to adversity.


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[Assistant] Personal example, Bob talked about the house. I've always had a dream. When I was a little kid, I always wanted a house that sat on ten acres just outside of town. Set up on a hill with a lot of trees, a red barn on it, and a couple of lakes and a winding driveway. Always had that idea.


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[Assistant] And when I came back from the home office back to Pittsburgh, I said this is the time to start doing what you wanted to do.


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[Assistant] And so I started looking for 10 acres just outside of town. And guess what?


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[Assistant] And if I wanted 10 acres, I had to go about 10 miles outside of town. But that's not what I wanted. I wanted 10 acres outside of town.


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[Assistant] So if you go down to 510 South Georgia right now, uh, you'll kind of drive into trees and then when you get there, well it just pops up at you.


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[Assistant] It's an 800 foot driveway that snakes down through there and the red barn is there and the two lakes are there. There's trees all over the place. You see, those things were there all the time.


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[Assistant] Those ten acres, I live closer to City Hall than two-thirds of the people in Pittsburgh, Kansas. And guess how much I had to pay for that? A lot of money, right? I had to pay very little, because the guy didn't think it was worth anything. Because he didn't have the vision that I had of that.


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[Assistant] My point is, is that you, that you pretty much get what you're looking for. Now let me give you a side story that goes with that.


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[Assistant] That really ties into this whole seminar and the things that we're talking about right now. More of the good life.


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[Assistant] Ten acres is a lot to mow. So I'm cutting my grass, and there's a people that


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[Assistant] Their acreage bumps up right next to ours and they had a horse!


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[Assistant] And I'm over there cutting. The woman saws me, we have met each other, she comes running across. I get off the tractor, walked over to her, leaned on the fence. It was hot. It was wired. She said, oh, I should, we should disconnect that.


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[Assistant] But they had taken a single strand of baling wire, tacked it onto the house, over to this tree, over to that tree, back to this house right there. And inside was a horse.


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[Assistant] Now that horse could jump over it, crawl under it, tear it down. But he stays there all the time. How come? Because he thinks that wire is hot.


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[Assistant] He is fenced in, right? My question, how many of us are fenced in? How many of us are a slave to the past?


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[Assistant] How much, how many of us are not doing things that we really would like to do because of the past?


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[Assistant] You see, I think choosing is important and I'll tell you, I think a very important statement is that getting in life is not difficult, but deciding what you want. Getting what you want in life ain't tough, but deciding what you want. Choosing what you want.


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[Assistant] Let me talk to you about just a simple idea that I think it involves with and now we get around to the point that you want to talk about here.


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[Assistant] Self. You need to be an expert as a self-starter. Self-motivated. Self-control. Most important, self-esteem. Self-image. You know, he, Bob's always talking about this. But the result I was getting over here


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[Assistant] Was the same as the picture I had in here. And when I changed the picture in here, the result over here changed.


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[Assistant] Because God only made one just like you. He made you in his own image and likeness.


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[Assistant] He made you just like Him, and part of Him's in part of you, and that means you're a winner. You're one of God's ideas. Isn't that great to know that? That you're one of God's ideas.


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[Assistant] Bob used to, Bob used to tell a story when he first came to, to, uh, Pittsburgh. I don't know whether he even remembers this. But he talked about a great sculptor who hauled out a piece of granite. And he began chippin' away. And every day a little guy come to see him work.


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[Assistant] And after several weeks while he was finished and the great sculptor stood back to take a look at what he was, what he had done.


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[Assistant] And he said to the, and it was a body of a great, beautiful Greek god. And he said to the little guy, I said, well, what do you think about that? The little guy waited for a minute and said, mister, how'd you know that guy was in there?


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[Assistant] Well I'm saying that guy was in there all the time. You're a, you're a Mona Lisa. What makes a Mona Lisa so valuable?


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[Assistant] What's rare? Just one of a kind. And you're just one of a kind. But it's how you see you that makes a difference. How does the quote go? The me I see is the me I'll be. In Robert Shiller's latest book, Failure is Never Fatal, Success is Never Final. He tells the story.


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[Assistant] I'm the world's greatest baseball player. Threw it up. Miss it. Strike three. He said, wow, what a pitcher I am.


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[Assistant] Let me tell you that you hold the picture of what you really want.


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[Assistant] One of the reasons why I like Bob Proctor and his ideas is that I think that he's a great giver. And this is just a side dimension from what we're talking about.


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[Assistant] Sometimes people ask me, you know, why, why I wear that number two pin.


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[Assistant] And I got the number two pin from Bob Proctor a long time ago because he cares about people. I wear the number two pin to always constantly remind me to always put the other guy first.


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[Assistant] You always put the other guy first and he'll always have, he'll always put you first. And the great guy one time said that the first shall come last and the last shall come first.


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[Assistant] And I'm convinced that the ideas that Bob has got is great. But he practices his idea. He cares. He doesn't do this because of money. He does this because of...


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[Assistant] A feeling. And his feeling is that if you get a picture of what you really want, then it's just a matter of time until you have it.


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[Assistant] So let me wrap this up, Bob, and just with a quote that came right out of the book that he's talking about right now of James Allen, and this is what the whole seminar is about right now, where it says, the vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart, this you will build by your life, and this you will become.


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[Assistant] Mrs. Poole, said she, addressing Grace, the servant's dinner will soon be ready. Will you come down? No.


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[Assistant] Just put my pint of porter and a bit of pudding on a tray, and I'll carry it upstairs. You'll have some meat? Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that's all. Am I say go?


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[Assistant] Never mind it at present. I shall be coming down before tea time, I'll make it myself.


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[Assistant] The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs Fairfax was waiting for me, so I departed.


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[Assistant] I hardly heard Mrs Fairfax's account of the curtain conflagration during dinner. So much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of Grace Poole.


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[Assistant] And still more in pondering the problem of her position at Thornfield.


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[Assistant] And questioning why she had not been given into custody that morning, or at the very least dismissed from her master's service.


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[Assistant] He had almost as much as declared his conviction of her criminality last night. What mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her? Why had he enjoined me, too, to secrecy? It was strange.


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[Assistant] A bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman seems somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependents.


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[Assistant] So much in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life,


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[Assistant] He dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her for it.


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[Assistant] But hard favoured and matronly as she was, the idea could not be admitted. Yet, I reflected, she has been young once. Her youth will be contemporary with her masters.


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[Assistant] Mrs Fairfax told me once she'd lived here many years. I don't think she can ever have been pretty.


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[Assistant] But for aught I know she may possess originality and strength of character to compensate for the want of personal advantages.


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[Assistant] Mr. Rochester is an amateur of the decided and eccentric. Grace is eccentric at least.


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[Assistant] What if a former caprice, a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his, has delivered him into her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake off and dare not disregard? But having reached this point of conjecture,


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[Assistant] Suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts.


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[Assistant] You are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Rochester approves you. At any rate, you have often felt as if you did.


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[Assistant] Language, glance and tone seemed at the moment vividly renewed. I was now in the schoolroom. Adele was drawing. I bent over her and directed her pencil. She looked up with a sort of start. Qu'avez-vous mademoiselle? said she. Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille, et vos joues sont rouges, mais rouges comme des cerises. I am hot, Adele, with stooping. She went on sketching. I went on thinking.


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[Assistant] I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been conceiving respecting Grace Poole. It disgusted me. I compared myself with her and found we were different.


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[Assistant] Bessie Levin had said I was quite a lady, and she spoke truth, I was a lady. And now I looked much better than I did when Bessie saw me.


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[Assistant] I had more colour and more flesh, more life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener enjoyments.


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[Assistant] Evening approaches, said I, as I looked towards the window.


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[Assistant] I have never heard Mr. Rochester's voice or step in the house today, but surely I shall see him before night. I feared the meeting in the morning. Now I desire it.


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[Assistant] When dusk actually closed, and when Adele left me to go and play in the nursery with Sophie, I did most keenly desire it. I listened for the bell to ring below. I listened for Leia coming up with a message. I fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Rochester's own tread, and I turned to the door, expecting it to open and admit him. The door remained shut. Darkness only came in through the window.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Still it was not too late, he often sent for me at seven and eight o'clock, and it was not yet six. Surely I would not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many things to say to him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanted again to introduce the subject of Grace Poole, and to hear what he would answer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanted to ask him plainly if he really believed it was she who had made last night's hideous attempt, and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret. It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns. It was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far. Beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured. On the extreme brink, I liked well to try my skill. Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station,