A note from Daniel

Within five weeks of my founding the company, Aegon, a $400 billion industry giant, filed a lawsuit against me. It had one simple goal: to put me out of business before I even began. Aegon's leaders and lawyers didn't care about how hard I'd worked to save the money to launch my business. They didn't care that I had just gotten married. They certainly didn't care that I had convinced sixty-six loyal agents to give up their careers with established companies to join this crazy dreamer on a mission. For Aegon, suing me was just business (and it was also just business years later when the CEO who had sued me ended up joining my advisory board). I didn't take it personally, even though my entire life savings was on the line.

Daniel Your Next Five Moves, page 78 · August 23, 2024 Save to shelf
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If you walk through our offices, you'll see screens and data streams everywhere. By displaying our data in the office, we are creating accountability and highlighting radical transparency. Because everyone sees everything, it's an amazing way of using the carrot and stick simultaneously—without having to say or do anything. Because the numbers are in plain view, performers feel recognized just as nonperformers feel uncomfortable. If the latter feel too uncomfortable, all the better; they will either up their game to avoid further embarrassment or leave the company. Transparency is the ultimate performance-enhancing drug. And when it doesn't work to motivate your poor performers, they will weed themselves out—which is exactly what you want.
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Ultra Successful p. 60

The False Constraints That Limit Your Potential: - How Quickly You Can Scale Whether it's your business or your career, there are unspoken timelines that people accept as gospel.They are all untrue: "You can only really grow at 10% a year." "You need to pay your dues for a decade before getting promoted." These artificial limits keep people moving at a crawl when they could be sprinting or pushing for more. The most successful people I know refuse to accept conventional wisdom about timelines, and oddly enough, they break them all the time.
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