No More Excuses with Sam Silverstein

Sam Silverstein presented a fantastic program that provided amazing insight about the importance of discovering our Power Core. Your Power Core is the intersection of what you are great at doing, what you love to do, and what allows you to make money while you’re doing it.

Once you have identified your Power Core, we need to ask three questions:

1. What benefits did the attendees receive?
2. Who do you best deliver the value to? What audiences do you consistently hit it out of the park for?
3. How do you deliver it?

The whats and the whos stay consistent. What changes is the how.

Sam instructed us that when you’ve answered these questions you are ready to start a movement. Your movement is where your energy and passion reside. The hardest person to get to join a movement is the second person. After that, each person becomes a little easier.

Sam has a powerful movement in the works to teach 1,000,000 students to be accountable. As he said, when you can move young people to hold themselves accountable at a young age, the opportunities they will enjoy are enormous.

As he said, it’s not about giving back, it’s about giving.

After dinner Sam discussed NSA’s Four Competencies:

Eloquence: The only way to get better in the speaking business is by getting up and speaking. We need to have training investments

Enterprise: You need a system. What happens when you book a gig? What happens after you speak? What do you outsource? Do what you do best, and outsource the rest.

Ethics: You better be using your stories. Success in the speaking industry is based on relationships with speakers, speakers bureaus, and clients.

Expertise: What is your area of expertise? You need to know what it is when you get on the platform. Experts are more respected and sought out than novices, and therefore, get paid more.

Sam summed up the evening discussing The Five Accountabilities:

• Do the right things consistently. Both morally and tactically. You need to know where you want to go, as Sam calls it “strategic intent.”
• We need to be accountable to manage our space. People only grow in a vacuum. You need to create space from which to grow.
• Manage the process. Persistence and creativity make it happen.
• Establish the right expectations. Expectation drives the level of effort.
• Contribute to our relationships. Contribute by finding out what is important to others, and then contribute to them.

People see accountability as a consequence. Sam sees accountability as your competitive advantage.

Throughout the program, Sam asked the question, “Are you all in?” Well Sam, I know that you provided many powerful ideas, now it’s up to each of us to be accountable so that we’re All In!

Sam, thank you for giving so much to NSA-WI.

This post was written by Rob Bell.