5 Mins. @ Sunset: Ur Happy Dance

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Hello, I'm Tony McLean Brown and welcome to another Five Minutes at Sunset.

Here's the link to YouTube for visual learners. Please note: the transcript below has been heavily edited to clean up all my "ughs and hums" and grammar mistakes that come from growing up on a farm in the mountains of Appalachia.

Today we're going to talk about your Happy Dance. But before we get started, I'd like to say "thank you" to all the 30,000 people who have become a part of the HappyGuide community over the last ... gosh ... since 2007.

All your likes, your comments, your shares, all the things that you've done to increase awareness and donate financially to all the good organizations that we've been able to support is remarkable. Total gratitude from my heart.

THREE POINTS MAKE A LINE ... sometimes

Now with that being said, it's time to get to work! To give you some background and understanding for what your happy dance is ... you need to understand the three things that have converged in our lives over the last couple of weeks that brought about this video:

#1 - All the news around the space race and excitement about what's going on in space,

#2 - The upcoming Barnstock Music Festival on July 31st, and

#3 - The Netflix documentary, "The Last Dance" highlighting Michael Jordan's career with the Chicago Bulls.

How those three things fit together is sort of random, but we all know that with three points you get a line. And sometimes you get a triangle. And sometimes you get a (happy) circle ... but let's see what happens.

There was three things that I saw or thought about as I watched Michael Jordan talk about his career, his relationship with management, as well as his relationship with his teammates and fans. It became very clear to me that there were similarities between what's going on in the space race, Chicago Bulls, at PCG, and within the Barnstock organization.

QUALITY, LEADERSHIP, and HARD WORK

Individuals and organizations that excel really do focus on three major things:

• the first one, of course being quality. I don't care who you are ... if you're not doing a great quality job, then your mission, your values, everything you stand for, isn't going to stand the test of time. And so when you think about Tesla as it's juxtaposed against GM or Ford's current status, if you think about Amazon, if you think about Virgin Atlantic. Certainly, if you think about PCG. What you have are organizations who are committed to bring in quality to their clients. Not only meeting their expectations, but exceeding their client's expectations.

• the second thing, is that all these organizations need fantastic leadership. The Chicago bulls had fantastic coach. They had Michael Jordan. They had people who saw the vision, solve the dream, believed in it .... ate, slept, worked it every day. Leadership is one of the things that has a lot to do with luck. You can work hard every day. You can have the best business plan, but if you don't have the right leadership ... it ain't happening. It's sorta like Bill Mosakowski at PCG, without his excellent leadership, we couldn't have really achieved at an exceptional level for 35 years.

• And then of course, the third thing is hard work. Like Michael Jordan sorta said something like, "It's not that I worked hard. It's not that I worked as hard as I could, but it's that I was willing to work harder than everybody else."

As I go back through the last 30 years at PCG and think about the people who've been exceptional. The one thing that they brought to the firm was the ability to outwork the competitors. Exceptional leaders drive their teammates to be a step above what was expected. It's true in business, sports, and music.

And so with that: quality, leadership and hard work get it done and that sets the stage for this question: what's your happy dance?

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I hate to be the person that's going to tell you this, but it's very unlikely that you are going to be as good as Michael Jordan, Elon Musk, or, Bill Mosakowski. It's probably not going to happen. And so what do we, us mere mortals, do knowing that truth and the answer is: we become role players.

We look at our gifts, our talents, and our skills. We do the very best we can to contribute to the mission and achieve the things that we value as an organization. I think that the great leaders understand that each person brings something unique to the team. We big our unique talents to the project or organization. They allow you to use your strengths to move the mission forward.

TO PUT A FINE POINT ON IT

And so, in, in conclusion, what I ask you to do is to go watch that Netflix documentary and decide who are you on the Chicago Bulls championship story. Are you Scottie Pippin? How about the innovative Dennis Rodman? Are you that general manager that everybody hated? What is your role and how are you contributing to your organization to make it as good as it can possibly be?

That's Five Minutes of Sunset. Appreciate you joining us. I'm Tony McLean Brown. Thank you.

#leadership #DEI #tonymcleanbrown #consulting #amazon #tesla #chicagobulls #PCGCares #jkbrown14 #barnstock #quality #employeeengagement #space #buzzaldrin

Here's today's vid clip: