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Blog Posts

Bold Questions Can Create Opportunities

10/26/2020

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We are often told that questions are more important than answers. This is because you can quickly get answers from so many places such as Siri, Google, Internet, Quora, LinkedIn, and other expert sources. Today, you can get answers to just about anything fast. If you want to succeed individually or organizationally, you have to become good at asking questions.

Asking questions is good, but what is better is to ask bold, provocative questions that make people think. They are often not asked for fear of how others will react to them. But they must be asked if you want to come up with breakthrough ideas. If you want to think like an entrepreneur, solving customer needs that they may not even know they have, starts with a question. That's what entrepreneurs or those with an entrepreneurial mindset do. 

In his book New to Big by David Kidder, he writes that the idea of his company Bionic started when he asked a provocative question to GE's CEO, Jeff Immelt, at their annual conference in Boca Raton, FL.

Here is the question David asked when he was part of a panel, and Jeff Immelt was sitting in the front row:
"Jeff, how many fifty-million-dollar startups did GE launch last year? ... I bet the answer is zero ... And if that's true, I would be terrified if I were you. With ninety billion dollars in the bank and three hundred thousand employees, how does this not happen all the time?"

Instead of David Kidder becoming a persona non grata at future GE events, he was surprised when Jeff Immelt said at the end of their annual conference: "That was the most important question in the history of this leadership conference."

Suddenly, David realized that his idea of creating an entrepreneurial mindset within large companies had to be pursued as a business.  Many large companies had to become good at New to Big (taking an idea from concept to growth business) rather than being just good at Big to Bigger (taking a growth business and scaling it). 

He and some of his team members he worked with at the startup Clickable that David had co-founded decided to start Bionic. Bionic's mission was to help bring entrepreneurial mindset within larger companies using Growth OS (methodology they created from their startup experience, so the large companies are not only Big to Bigger machine, which they do well, but New to Big machine too. Becoming a New to Big is not something companies can and should outsource. They have to learn to develop that core competency if they want to thrive in the digital world in which we live. Bionic went on to work with many companies, including Microsoft, P&G, Citigroup, Nike, Exelon, etc.

The idea of starting Bionic would not have happened if David did not have the guts to ask that bold question in a high-stakes environment at GE's leadership conference. Sometimes the risky thing to do is to ask a question that many people are thinking about but not asking. If you want to have an entrepreneurial mindset, ask a provocative question as David Kidder did, and you can change the world for good.

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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for $9.99 for a limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to discuss how you can work with him even if you are budget constrained due to the pandemic. If you are interested in inviting him to give a Zoom talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking, you can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Fake It So You Know Whether You Should  Make It

10/13/2020

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PictureTesla Model 3 (taken from Wikipedia)

Do we build products, services, or courses, and then find out after launching it that there are not enough paying customers to make it profitable? This is an "Oh sh*t" moment that many go through. Some will grudgingly accept failure and learn from it. Others will continue to plod along, hoping for a success. But the market is brutal. It is telling you that they don't like what you have to offer. By the time you figure it out, it will prove to be a very costly lesson in time, energy, money, and confidence.

Alberto Savoia, author of "Right It," knows this well from his experience. He writes, 
"Most new products, services, businesses, and initiatives will fail soon after they are launched—regardless of how promising they sound, how much their developers commit to them, or how well they execute them." 

(You will also find my interview with Alberto Savoia in the blog post "Five Questions for Alberto Savoia: A Man on a Mission to Prevent Failures Among Entrepreneurs.")

So how do you eliminate failures right from the get-go? You have to pretotype that Savoia popularized and writes about in his practical book. The idea of pretotyping applies to all of us, not just entrepreneurs. Why fail when you don't have to? All you have to do is pretotype, gather data, make a go-no-go decision. It's not that complicated. 

What is Pretotyping?

Pretotyping is pretending you have a prototype of a product, service, or a workshop (in my example below) so you can find out whether customers are willing to pay. If customers are not willing to pay, you will fail. If you still decide to go forward, you will be taking a huge risk.  Great customers are those who pay before you even have a product.   

You can think of pretotyping as similar to what they use in manufacturing called build to order. In the beginning, you are building a customized product, so you have to build based on customers' willingness to pay. And that is what you have to do when you are trying to get valuable information from customers.

Tesla's Example of Pretotyping
Before Tesla built their Model 3 car, they pretotyped the concept to gauge customers' interest in the car.  They wanted customers to make a commitment by preordering it online by putting down $1,000 deposit. Over 115,000 put down $1,000 before even seeing the what the car would look like.  That showed Tesla that they can now build the car since there is not just passing interest but people were expressing it with cold hard cash.  It was time to build the car and they did.  Not only did I not preorder the car, I did not see this as a sign to purchase Tesla stock.  

My Simple Example of Pretotyping

Idea 
Have a one day workshop to teach people how to interview for a job.

Generating Interest
I gave a talk and asked people at the end how many would be interested in attending a paid workshop. 
Out of fifteen people who attended, I think close to ten raised their hands. So I thought I had customers. But raising a hand at a free talk costs one nothing. 

Test the Workshop Idea
I sent an email with one-pager advertising the workshop and the agenda. I priced it at $299, which I thought was very reasonable and would accommodate up to ten people. I knew that I needed at the minimum five paid customers to make it work. 

Response from Customers
I got only one response from someone who was ready to attend the workshop and was willing to send me the payment. Well one is better than none, but not sufficient to conduct a workshop, so I had to move to the back up plan if doing the workshop made no business sense.

Back Up Plan
I contacted the client and told him that the workshop idea will not prove very useful to him since clients have different backgrounds. Instead, I have decided to conduct two 75 minutes of one-on-one coaching sessions for the same price.

In fact, this client was getting an excellent deal. He would now get two one-on-one coaching sessions for $299, which would have cost him $499. The client gladly took the two sessions and liked it so much that he has become one of my best clients.  

For now, I have dropped the plan to do a workshop for now.  I may pretotype it again in the future before committing to it. 


 Lesson Learned
You have to pretotype to see if customers are willing to pay for your product, service, course, etc. If you don't get the numbers you need, you have to have a backup plan to take care of those who were ready to pay or already paid for it. You may lose a little, but it is better to lose a little by learning a valuable lesson than to lose a lot by not knowing whether you will get any customers.  You have to fail very fast. 

So pretotyping is something we should all do before we build anything. It can be as simple as my conducting a workshop or building a product or service. You need some data to justify building a prototype. Without customer data, you will be flying blind and crash. Pretotyping is a simple way to mitigate failures.
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for $9.99 for a limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to discuss how you can work with him even if you are budget constrained due to the pandemic. If you are interested in inviting him to give a Zoom talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking, you can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Finish smart and strong

9/22/2020

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"It ain't over till it's over." - Yogi Berra.
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In professional golf, technically, you are not done until you sign the scorecard. We rarely see that on TV. What we always see on TV is a player finishing his round by holing the putt.

Usually, a professional golfer does not make mistakes on the 18th hole, resulting in a big score or outrightly losing a tournament. So when it happens, it becomes a teaching moment not only in golf but in what we do as professionals.

So let's take a look at two examples of collapses on the 18th hole at the U.S. Open at Winged Foot. One was at the recent U.S. Open, and the other one was at the last U.S. Open. 

In the third round of the 2020 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, one player did not finish well on the 18th hole. Danny, from New Zealand,  six-putted the last hole to get a nine on a par four 18th hole.  

If you watch the video, you will see that Lee completely lost his concentration when he missed the first putt that was only four feet away for a par. Pros usually don't miss a four-foot putt. Lee then proceeded to miss a few more putts. At worse, he should have walked away with a bogey, which is a good score on the difficult 18th hole. With a bogey, he would have finished with an excellent score of 74.  That is a very good score at this venue since only a handful will shoot par or below. Instead he ended up with a score of 78. These were not hard putts for a pro of Lee's caliber, but he just lost his concentration and subsequently his cool. He like Roberto Duran probably said as he was leaving the putting green "No Mas, No Mas," and withdrew from the tournament. 

You rarely, if ever, see a pro like Lee miss six putts when the first putt is only four feet away. He is a professional golfer and knows how to finish a round well. We can all learn from his experience in the importance of finishing smart and strong. You are close to the finish line, but you have not crossed it so you have to stay in the game with your game face on.  And this is no different when we are working on a project or a business deal. You have to close it out well.

Lee realized later that he let himself, his fans and sponsors down with the way he exited the tournament.  He apologized saying, "It was very unprofessional and foolish... My frustration took over me and combined with injury I had to fight with it all week. … I shouldn’t have left it like that.” That was the right thing to do, as a start.  But he has a lot of work to do before people forget this incident.  Yes, we are all humans, but people don't expect that from professionals.  You are paid to get the job done as best as you can no matter how you are feeling or how well you are doing. 

Not finishing smart can even happen to great golfers like Phil Mickelson. Mickelson had a major disaster on the 18th hole in the final round of the 2006 U.S. Open played at Winged Foot. He double-bogeyed the 18th hole to lose the tournament. All Mickelson had to do was par this hole with a good golf club selection to win the tournament. But he elected to use a driver and sliced it that started his problem on that hole that you can see in the video.

Mickelson was having a hard time keeping his drives on the narrow fairways at Winged Foot, so the smart decision on this final hole was to use a long iron or fairway wood to keep the ball on the fairway. Then hit another long iron to put the ball on the green and two putts for par and win the tournament. But that is not what happened. Mickelson did not finish well and lost. He was cool, but he made a terrible decision off the tee. And he paid dearly for it. 

In 2020 Mickelson did not get a chance to redeem himself since he did not make the cut. You must capitalize on your opportunity when it presents itself since you don't know whether you will ever get another chance again. 

Both these examples show that whatever you do, you have to keep your focus and finish strong. These two players are professionals, and we can learn that being a professional means having good concentration and keeping your cool since a lot of money is riding on decisions you make, whether it's golf or business.
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for a limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to discuss how we can work together even if you are budget constrained due to the current economic situation. If you are interested in inviting him to give a Zoom talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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How to get fired in hours?

9/16/2020

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This inappropriate tweet got Justime Sacco fired before her plane landed in South Africa.

​Not a day goes by that I read someone famous getting fired or go on a so called medical leave for some inappropriate tweet or social media post they sent out. 


Here is how long it typically takes to lose jobs for egregious behavior or offenses:
Sexual Harassment -- Years
Racism -- Years 
Insubordination -- Years
Incompetence -- Years to Never
Ageism -- Never
Inappropriate Tweet -- Hours

Social Media shows us who we really when we are all by ourselves and have no one to stop us from getting what we think off our chest fast by letting the whole world know. It is empowering, but  can be very destructive.  For this post, I will focus on Tweeter since it is the easiest.

And guess who made tweeting what we are thinking popular: President Trump.
He loves it.
He could not survive without it.
It's his drug of choice.  

Fortunately for him, he can't get fired from his job until November 3rd, 2020.  

Unfortunately, we can get fired in hours.

Just think of this for a second. You are out of a job in less than a few hours for expressing your well-guarded thought that no one would have ever known you had if it weren't for Tweeter.  People now know your innermost thought on topic that is unrelated to anything illegal you are doing.  

No one tweets I am sexually harassing this person.
No one tweets look what a racist thing I did at work by not hiring a person of color.

It rarely, if ever, happens.

But if you tweet about something offensive that is sexist, racist and homophobic, you are justifiably fired from a job. There are no excuses. There is no he said, she said thing here.  You will have a hard time proving that someone hacked your tweeter account. You are on your own to face the consequences for showing what you really think and believe. 

f you can't afford to lose your job, then don't post anything on social media. It's that simple. 

We naturally think it's a joke when we get fired for an inappropriate tweet.  We think who follows us anyway and even have time to read our inappropriate tweets besides two chickens and a pig in some barn in Idaho. 

But when we get up in the morning and turn on the news, we are the news. We have lost our job. How did that happen? What did we say to deserve this notoriety? We all like to be famous but not for being a world-class Tweethole.

And we immediately send a customary apology tweet --- thinking, hoping, praying --- that it will undo the damage. It never works. Next, we go on our favorite cable news shows to apologize. That does not work either. The cable shows love Tweetholes since it gets them good ratings. Some audience members will support you if you show some contrition with a tweet saying that you were unfairly treated. 

Damage is done. You are not likely to get a second chance soon since no company wants to hire a Tweethole if it knows how to do a quick Google search of our name. 

Tweeter is dangerous.

No one knows for a long time when we are drinking excessively in private, taking drugs, stealing, or even having affairs, but everyone knows very quickly and make a negative judgment on how we think and what we believe in when we send out an inappropriate tweet. And if enough people feel that way, you are toast. 

What to do?

Get off Tweeter and other social media. It's very addictive. If you can't, then become the President of the United States. Then you can tweet anything you want with impunity for four years and have lots of fun doing it. Otherwise, limit your use of Tweeter if you want to keep your job, maintain your livelihood, and not risk becoming a certified Tweethole.  

Simple Rules to follow to keep your job
  • Hold a tweet for at least 24 hours. It is safer to be last when it comes to tweeting.
  • Be happy with having a few followers so you don't want to be controversial.
  • No one cares what you think or believe so why share your thought in a tweet? 
  • If you do feel the need to share a thought, post a blog. It is hard, but you will only post it if you are scared. Tweeting requires no courage, and that's what gets people into big trouble. 


​                                                                                                         #####
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for a limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to discuss how we can work together even if you are budget constrained due to the current economic situation. If you are interested in inviting him to give a Zoom talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Building Trusting Relationships

8/21/2020

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In his book, "Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose," Joe Biden writes about the first time he met Barack Obama. This meeting tool place right after Obama became a junior senator from Illinois. Obama wanted to meet with Biden to pay his respects and express his interest in being on the Foreign Relations Committee.​

Biden was the top Democrat, and since there was an open seat, he could make it happen. Biden was already considering Obama for that seat because he felt that Obama would be a good asset to have on the committee. 

Since they did not have much time to talk when they met, Biden suggested they ought to get together soon for a meal together after work. Biden said he knew an excellent Italian restaurant nearby. And he further added, "It was not too fancy." Obama probably latched on to the word "not fancy," and said that we can go to a nice place, and added, "I can afford it."  

Biden latched on to the word, "I can afford it."

We have a future president and his future vice president developing a negative first impression of each other. And this is based on how both interpreted the phrase "not too fancy" and "I can afford it."

We all run into this misunderstanding when we are meeting someone for the first time. We latch on to every word or phrase and then develop a first impression that is very hard to change. Often, relationships start or end with the first impression. 

Biden initially felt that Obama was arrogant for saying, "I can afford it."  Obama probably thought that Biden thought that he could not afford to go to a fancy restaurant. 

So how did this first impression change? By getting to know each other a lot better.

But after Biden got to know Obama a little better, Biden was able to better understand why Obama would say, "I can afford it." Biden felt that Obama might have been offended that Biden took him for someone with limited resources to afford a fancy restaurant. But he points out that Obama probably did not know that he was indeed a man of limited resources that's why he said the restaurant he had picked out was not too fancy.

How often do we meet people, and things get said, and we develop a wrong impression? 

Biden and Obama invested time in getting to know each other better such that Obama picked Biden as his vice president and developed a strong friendship that he goes on to describe in his book. 

So learn from these two successful leaders that trusting relationships are hard to start and even harder to nurture. It takes a lot of work. And no one knows how to build and nurture relationships better than Joe Biden. That is his superpower. 
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                                                                                                       #####
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for a limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking. If you are interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Don't Assume, Just Ask

8/17/2020

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PictureJerry Lewsis as Stanley the Bellboy. Source: Amazon.com
In the comedy movie Bellboy, Jerry Lewis is in a double role. In one role, he plays himself, and in the other role, he plays Stanley, a bellboy, who runs into trouble by making mistakes. While Stanley is causing trouble, you don't see him talking to anyone. We find out why at the end.

At the end of the movie, the hotel manager, Mr. Novak, barges into a meeting that the bellboys are having to discuss what action to take against some hotel policy they are not happy with. 

Mr. Novak confronts Stanley since he was standing, and about to say something. Mr. Novak assumes that Stanley is the ring leader and starts yelling at him for being a screw-up. Stanley denies it by violently shaking his head. Mr. Novak has had enough of Stanley's shenanigans and asks, "What's a matter with you? Can't you talk?" 
Stanley, after a brief pause, calmly replies, "Certainly I can talk. I suspect I can talk as well as any other man, Mr. Novak."
The manager is surprised and asks Stanley, "In that case, how is it that we have never heard you talk before?"
Stanley replies, "Because no one ever asked me." And he leaves the meeting whistling, and the movie comes to an end. The message is clear that we can all look very silly when we don't ask. (You can view the video of that scene on YouTube.)

In the movie, Stanley did not see the need to talk since no one ever asked. Now the movie Bellboy is a comedy, and we can have a good laugh since we know this can only happen in movies. 
Are you sure about that? 

This often happens in life and business. We are all guilty of it. And we look silly when it happens to us.

I will give you one example from business that David Cote, former CEO of Honeywell, writes about in his excellent book, "Winning Now, Winning Later." He cites a story of not asking when he was working at GE.  

GE had developed Advantium ovens that combined the capabilities of a microwave oven and heat lamps of a conventional oven. But the question is how to make it work in the same size as a microwave oven. The marketing people came up with a way to do it with two doors, but it would have been clumsy for users.

Cote, who was running GE's appliance business, asked a technology guy if it was possible to have one cavity in the oven that could emit both microwaves and heat lamps using a switch? After thinking briefly, the technology guy said, "Yeah, we can do that."

The marketing guy was taken back and asked the technology guy, "Why the hell didn't you tell us months ago when we were first concepting this product?" The technology guy said, "You never asked." Cote gives this example to make a point that many companies struggle with communication between marketing and technology.

So we are all like people who interacted with Stanley in the movie, Bellboy.  They just assumed he could not talk. They were wrong.  They never asked.
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The first rule of communication is to: Just Ask, Don't Assume. 
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                                                                                                              #####

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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on higstakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking. If you are interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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What makes you win at the highest level in anything?

8/13/2020

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Collin Morikawa hitting his great shot on the 16th hole at the 2020 PGA Championship Source: golfdigest.com

​If you want to win at the highest level, you must produce excellent stats that show that you are gaining on your competitors at each step toward a win. However, stats don't always predict a win. Still, it will undoubtedly tell you that you were in an excellent position to win. 


You must also be bold and need some luck. You can't play it safe when the competition is fierce. At the highest level, everyone has the talent and is driven to do whatever it takes to win. This is what you see on the PGA Tour every week. 

It is very difficult to make it on the PGA tour and even harder to make the cut in a tournament. Half of the players who play in a tournament do not get to play on weekends; hence, do not collect a paycheck. You not only have to have the game to be on the tour but not think that one shot could end up determining whether you make a paycheck or go home and try again.  No one deals with instant rejection way golfers do.  And remember players who play on the tour are top golfers in the world.  They all have the game to win any tournament. 

Each year, roughly 30 to 40 players win a tournament. At most, only four players can win major tournaments like the Masters, US Open, British Open, and the PGA Championship. Winning a major is a big deal since it puts a golfer in a very special category in golf. 

This is what I observed watching the 2020 PGA Championship won by Collin Morikawa. He led in key stats used in golf called strokes gained, but that alone did not lead to his win. It put him in an excellent position to win. To win, he had to make a bold decision and get a little lucky.

He pulled out his driver on the risk/reward 16th hole and said: "Screw it, let's make something happen." Indeed he did. He hit the shot of the tournament as the ball stopped 7 feet from the hole. He eagled the hole and went on to win the tournament by two strokes over Dustin Johnson and Paul Casey.

But when you look deeper, you see how close this tournament really was. And the hole that was pivotal in deciding who won the tournament was the 16th hole. We all are going to face a risk/reward 16th hole in what we do. Are you going to play like Morikawa to win? Or are you going to play it safe?

Luck trumps good stats and boldness
I will use two players who hit an excellent shot on the 16th hole. One was Bryson DeChambeau, and the other was Collin Morikawa.

Bryson Dechambeau hit a terrific drive, but the ball bounced and veered to the right and stopped on the fringe of the green pin high. Since the ball was on the fringe, it made the eagle putt difficult. DeChambeau missed by a little and birdied the hole.

Birdie is good, but eagle is better. 

A group later, Colin Morikawa hit a drive of his life that bounced on the fairway near the green and luckily got a good bounce, and the ball stopped 7-foot from the hole on the green making the eagle putt easier. Morikawa made the eagle putt and parred the next two holes to win the tournament.

Watching golf on TV lets you clearly see what we all need to do to win majors in our field. 
  • You have to be very good. 
  • You have to play well such that it is captured by an equivalent stat in your field to strokes gained in golf.
  • You have to be bold and take calculated risks. 
  • You have to be lucky. 
If you don't win, don't despair. Just do it again as golfers do every week. You are a pro at what you do, and as the Lotto commercial says, "You have to be in it to win it." This mindset not only helps a golfer like Collin Morikawa win the PGA Championship, but it can help you win in majors in your profession too.
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking. If you are interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Great advice from Tom Joad in "The Grapes of Wrath" if you are stuck in life and job

7/23/2020

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Henry Fonda playing Tom Joad in the the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" (great-characters.fandom.com)


The book "The Grapes of Wrath" is a classic because it has many lessons to teach. The author John Steinbeck tells a great story of the trials and tribulations of the Joad family. The Joad family is forced to leave their life of farming in Oklahoma because of the dust bowl. They decide to head to California to get a job and start a new life. In this post, I want to focus on the advice Tom Joad gives to a man working at a junkyard who is very bitter about life and work.

With the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is natural to feel a little down, especially if you are out of a job. And those with a job may feel lucky they at least have a job but may not be happy being stuck in a job with a bad boss. What to do? Tom Joad's advice may help you.

Tom Joad stopped at the junkyard with his brother Al to find a part to fix his truck so the Joad family can continue their journey to California. Tom did not expect to run into a man who was close to being down and out. Tom offers this man the hard truth and puts some sense in his head that the man is to blame for his situation. And it is he who must do something to change it.

Tom Joad is the right person to tell this man since Tom had it tough. He just got paroled from prison for killing a man in a fight and finds out that his family's farm has been taken away by the bank. He joins them on a long and arduous journey to California to start a new and, hopefully, a better life. 

Along their journey, their old car breaks down. Tom and his brother Al go to a nearby junkyard to get a spare part to repair the truck so they can continue their journey. When they arrive at the junkyard, they are greeted by a one-eyed man working there. He is not very friendly. The man is bitter since he has lost an eye. He hates his job because of an abusive boss whom he would like to kill. The one-eyed man is stuck in his life, and it shows in how he approaches his job, especially customers.

The one-eyed man complains to Tom how bad his situation is at work and is even contemplating killing his boss with a wrench. Tom had enough listening to his complaints and offered this simple advice.

"Whyn't you roll on? Got no guards to keep ya here."

The man says to Tom that it is not easy to get a job when you have one eye.

Tom tells the man to focus on what he has and take care of himself instead of waiting to go after his boss with a wrench.

"Now look-a-here, fella. You got that eye wide open. An' ya dirty, ya stink. Ya jus' askin' for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself.' Course ya can't get no woman with that empty eye flap-pin' aroun'. Put somepin over it an' wash ya face. You ain't hittin' nobody with no pipe wrench."

Again the man brings up that he has limited his options because of one eye.

Tom had enough of this man's complaints and told him to stop feeling sorry for himself. To get in his head, Tom tells him a story about how a one-legged prostitute turned her disability into a financial advantage.

"Ya full a crap. Why, I knowed a one-legged whore one time. Think she was takin' two-bits in a alley? No, by God! She's gettin' half a dollar extra. She says, 'How many one-legged women you slep' with? None!' she says.' O.K.,' she says. 'You got somepin pretty special here, an' it's gonna cos' ya half a buck extry.' An' by God, she was gettin' 'em, too, an' the fellas comin' out thinkin' they're pretty lucky. She says she's good luck."

Tom's advice is getting through the one-eyed man, but the one-eyed man is still not sure he can change.

Tom tells him to fudge a little with "Tell 'em ya dong's growed sence you los' your eye." 

Sometimes in life, you need to make yourself look good. You don't need to tell people the absolute truth since they don't want the truth. They want a story that tells the the truth they want to believe. You want to keep it general so it can't be a lie.  And that is exactly what Tom is telling the one-eyed man to do to own his narrative. 

Tom tells the man that he can get a job even with one eye since he can work with one eye. The man was persuaded and wanted to know if there was any room to join them. Tom told the man that there was no room, but if he really wanted to make a change, he could fix one of the wrecks in his yard and go on his own. The man said that he will do that.

Tom told the man not what he wanted to hear but what he needed to hear. 
​

Tom Joad does a few things in this interaction with a one-eyed man that we can all learn from:
  1. Convinces the one-eyed man to look at the positives in his life instead of dwelling on the negatives
  2. Find your uniqueness
  3. Take action now rather than talking yourself out of it
  4. Take risks since what you have to lose
  5. Own your destiny, and good things will start happening since people are attracted to those with a positive attitude
"The Grapes of Wrath" is a great book. If you want to get the most out of this book, I recommend you get the audiobook from Audible to better appreciate the dialect that's used. 

Disclaimer: I don't get anything from recommending you purchase the audiobook from Audible. 
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of a practical  book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. You can get this book on Amazon for 99 cents for limited time. Please download the free speech checklist that you can use to help you create a winning speech for any situation.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking. If you are interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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President Teddy Roosevelt's leadership during a major health crisis that Made America Great

3/20/2020

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Presidential leadership is critical to success during a major national or international crisis. We are in major international health and economic crisis with the Covid-19 Pandemic. President Teddy Roosevelt is an excellent example of how he handled the health crisis during the construction of the Panama Canal.

People probably have long forgotten how close America came to failing like France in building the Panama Canal. Because of Teddy Roosevelt's leadership of Roosevelt and a critical decision, he made that turned things around and made America Great.

We are at a point where if this crisis is not handled well, America may no longer remain a global power. I don't want to be an alarmist, but just look at how things have changed in a very short time. In less than a month, the policies of two Democratic presidential candidates (Yang and Sanders) are being pushed by the Republicans. 

All power, according to history, comes to an end sooner or later. Will 2020 be the beginning of the end of America's greatness? 

Executive Decision

The key decision Roosevelt made was to provide full support to Dr. William Crawford Gorgas. Gorgas' job was to rid of malaria from the Isthmus of Panama to reduce deaths, so the construction of the canal can take place. People were scared to go to Panama and work on this project. 

The decision was not simple since Roosevelt believed that malaria was caused by garbage and filth, and not mosquitoes. When the cost of ridding tropical diseases went up significantly, the leadership team within the Isthmian Canal Commission wanted to replace Gorgas so they can allocate more resources toward engineering. 

Roosevelt had to make a critical decision. So how did he make this decision?

1) He listened to Chief Engineer John Stevens, who sent a letter telling Roosevelt that the success of building the canal goes through Gorgas' work of reducing deaths from tropical diseases. 
2) He listened to his friend Dr. William Henry Welch of Johns Hopkins, who told Roosevelt that he had the right guy on the project. And he also told Roosevelt Gorgas is correct about the mosquito theory for the cause of malaria.
3) He listened to his hunting buddy Dr. Alexander Lambert. Lambert told Roosevelt that give Gorgas his full-throated support if he wants a legacy of building the Panama Canal.

Roosevelt realized that Gorgas was critical to building the Panama Canal and told the Commission to get off his back and let him do his job. That is the high stakes President Trump and America face today. Pandemics can make or break global powers. We need someone like Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of NIAID,  to help us get through this health crisis. President Trump should learn from President Teddy Roosevelt to guide him through this crisis and Keep America Great. 
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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist that you can use to help you with your next high stakes speech.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking or interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking at your event. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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Gain an edge during the Covid crisis

3/17/2020

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After you have taken care of yourself and your loved one's health and basic needs, you must focus on your development during this crisis.

You need to put together a plan to learn since you are going to be locked down for the next few weeks or months. No one knows how long this crisis will last. No one knows whether the virus will burn itself, disappear and come back again in fall, or burn itself out for good. Let's hope the latter is what happens.

Since we are all doing our part in defeating this enemy, but you can't ignore your development during this challenging period.

Learning has never been easier than it is today. We have so much stuff online like YouTube, Coursera, Edx, Khan Academy, etc. that you can turn to. And most of it is free. 

Here is what I am doing that I want to share with you:
  • Read
  • Write
  • Speak
  • Publish

Read
If you are home and not going out and about or have to take care of your kids, you should have some time to read. I plan to take advantage of getting a lot of books to read during this crisis. 

Write
Reading is good, but you can plus it by writing your thoughts from what you read. You can either keep your writing private or public by publishing it. Writing will help you crystallize your thoughts.

Speak
Writing is good, but you can plus it by preparing a speech, preferably a short one. Speaking will help you have an interesting conversation with people.

Publish
Writing is good, but you can plus it by publishing your thoughts as a blog post on your website or LinkedIn or post a video on YouTube. Once you have enough of content in a specific area, you can take this to the next level and publish a book, create an online course or a workshop. Producing content every day adds up quickly. 

You can also learn technical skills by taking courses online from Coursera, Edx, Udacity and others.  My go to place for learning is thegreatcoursesplus.com. This is a yearly subscription under $200 but well worth it based on the wide variety of courses they offer.

It is easy to get overwhelmed, distracted and lose focus with all the news regarding the Covid-19 crisis. As I said, if you have taken care of yourself, your loved one's health and basic necessities, then you must focus on your personal development. You are unlikely to get a better time to invest in yourself. Take advantage of it now so you can thrive on the other side of this crisis whether you are employed or unemployed. ​


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Jay Oza is an author, speaker, executive coach.  He makes people thrive on high stakes stage whether it's for a job interview, a sales presentation or a high-stakes speech. He is the author of the book Winning Speech Moments: How to Achieve Your Objective with Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere. Please download the speech checklist that you can use to help you with your next high stakes speech.

Please contact him if you would like to have a two 75 minute coaching session on job interviewing or high-stakes speaking or interested in inviting him to give a talk on job Interviewing or high-stakes speaking at your event. You can reach him at joza@winningspeechmoments.com.

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