Coming up, I'll share the number one habit of wildly successful people.
It's pretty simple and you can use it.
Then the stock market is rebounding and creating more millionaires than we've seen in a while.
Let's go!
Helping you win at work so that you can win in the rest of your life.
I'm going to tell you something right now.
If your work life sucks, I got news for you.
Your life is about to suck and it probably already does, so I'm here to help.
You can't separate those two and it's time we got our heads out of our...
You know what?
And figured it out.
Let's go.
Let's talk about highly successful people.
How can I comment on this number one habit?
I'm glad you asked me.
Number one, I'm fairly successful.
I don't know that I'd say I'm wildly successful.
I'm pretty successful, but if you don't like my credibility, that's fine.
I have no problem with that, but I have sat with an interview.
Some of the most powerful, successful people in the world.
And I'm not going to drop any names because if you're new to me,
or you didn't know that about me, you can go to your research.
I've got a who's who list of people from every walk of life, a plus listers.
And when I talk to these folks, I actually pay attention because I'm doing
great amount of research to formulate these interviews.
I'm paying attention in the middle of these interviews and pulling things out of them.
So if nothing else, maybe that's enough credibility for you.
What is the number one habit of highly successful people?
Here it is.
Connecting.
They don't necessarily work harder than you.
They don't necessarily care more than you do.
They're not necessarily smarter than you
and they're not necessarily luckier than you.
Let me tell you what they do that you don't do.
If you aren't very successful in any walk of life,
and we're talking about our work here, we're talking about work, okay?
But this applies to your marriage, parenting, your money, everything else.
If you just feel like, you know what, I'm kind of average.
I'm just kind of stuck.
I'm going to tell you the reason you're stuck,
the reason you're not successful is you don't connect well.
You aren't strategic, you aren't intentional to make connection.
Now, some of you are going, oh, this is so gross.
I hate networking.
So do I.
There is a difference between networking and connecting.
Now, most of us have been at some type of networking event.
If you have it, let me describe it for you.
It's awful.
It's like speed dating on steroids.
Everybody's there for themselves, right?
To me, the whole concept is a little bit whacked out.
Now, some of you are going, because there's always a cynic in this world.
I could say that the sun is hot and some more on out there will go,
well, Ken, that's actually not true.
I mean, so some of you already go, well,
I've made great connections and I've done good things and networking events.
Okay, sure, because you had to wade through all of the crap
and it's unnecessary to wade through all the crap that a networking event represents.
And here's what it is.
I remember the first time I went to a broadcasting networking event when I was
starting out and I'm 33 years of age.
I have no contacts.
I've never done anything.
And so I show up and I got the obligatory Ken sticker on my shirt
and I walk in the room and this guy walks up to me and he is excited that I'm alive.
You know what I'm talking about?
Like it's obvious, this guy is really jacked to see me and I'm going.
All right, this is great, man.
This guy, I'm nervous.
I'm an extrovert and I'm nervous about the networking event.
Why?
Because I haven't done anything.
I'm a wannabe and this guy is jacked that I'm there and I'm going.
Oh, man, this is going to be awesome.
Hey, man, put her there and we shake hands and exchange names and
this guy immediately asks me about me and I'm, man, my spine is magically
straightened.
I got some juice and I'm telling this guy my limited story because of this point
and remember folks, I haven't done any broadcasting.
I'm a wannabe.
I've done some MC.
I've done a few leadership interviews, blah, blah, blah, blah,
but I don't have a really impressive recipe and he figures it out in about 20 seconds.
This guy goes from really, really excited that I'm alive.
So he's looking over my right shoulder and the only time he moves his eyes
from my right shoulder is to move over to my left shoulder.
And I'm here and I'm doing one of these numbers.
You know, I'm trying to, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
He has already 20 seconds in.
He's not interested in me.
Why?
Because I couldn't help him.
And that's what networking events are if you're not careful.
It's just, can you help me?
Can you help me?
Can you help me?
And that's gross.
That's not true connecting.
That's networking.
And can it yield results?
Yes.
But does it yield the best results?
No.
And the very successful people know this.
In fact, they connect like our introverted friends.
Now, I'm an extrovert.
And my introverted friends, they hate large gatherings.
It drives them bananas, sucks in the life out of them.
You talk to an introvert about going to a big party.
They're like,
ooh, but you put an introvert in a one-on-one setting.
And they thrive.
Why?
They like to go deeper.
They feel safer in that environment.
And they're really good at the true connection.
Introverts are the best at it.
It's a, by the way, it is a complete cultural myth
that extroverts are better connectors.
That's garbage.
Extroverts may be better at the networking.
The whole speed dating on, you know, on some type of drug.
But introverts go deep.
So I want you to begin to see networking now as the wrong way to go about it and connecting
one-to-one as the way to become wildly successful, because it's true.
Sociologists call this a web of connections, developing what you call a network,
as a web of connections.
And that's what I want to lay on you very quickly.
Now, you think about a spider web.
You ever walked out in the early morning and the sunlight is shining, a little bit of
dew on a spider web, and you can see all the intricacies of that spider web.
It's fascinating.
Did you know that drag line silk is what they call the silk that a spider spins?
And drag line silk, wait for wait, is stronger than steel.
Isn't that mind blowing?
Now I'm not trying to give you interesting weird facts today.
I want you to understand what I'm getting at here.
That web that the spider creates is as strong as anything on the planet.
And your web of connections will be the strength of your career of your success.
The ability to do what you need to do is predicated on the strength of your web of connections.
I'll never forget.
I was a year and a half in and I was struggling mentally and emotionally because I had not
made a lot of great connections.
I wanted to get into broadcasting.
I believe with everything that I had that I had the talent to be a national broadcaster,
but no one would give me a shot.
And I was sitting in my office one day just having a little private E or session.
And I said, you know what?
I got to take the bull by the horns.
And over the next day and a half, I did an inventory of all my connections on my
phone, my computer.
I got them all together and I did an inventory and I went through and I began to prioritize.
Does this person know something over here?
And let me tell you what happened.
In that moment, I saw one connection that I had forgotten completely about.
And I realized, wait a second, there might be something here coming up.
I'm going to tell you what happened and it changed my life.
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The number one habit of wildly successful people is they know how to connect and then they
make it a habit.
I'm going to tell you what happened is I really began to understand this myself at just
a moment but our show is growing and I'm grateful for that but I need your help to help
us keep growing.
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I'm sitting in my basement and I'm about a year and a half into, I'm meeting with producers
in TV and radio and I'm doing some things here and there and things aren't happening
for me.
Folks, I'm going to tell you something.
I'm 34 years of age.
That is really late to start in broadcasting.
I like to joke all the time with my friends and family and people that I meet that I don't
really work for a living.
You know, there's a bad.
You know, I'm in this really cool freaking studio and it's the air's controlled and you
know, I'm not like picking up a shovel or whatever, you know, and I like to have some fun
with that.
But this is a hard gig because you don't just show up and do this gig and you got to,
you got to, you got to develop content and you got to deliver it and it takes time.
And I will tell you the thing about broadcasting that most broadcasters don't get a chance
to share much is that you got to really embrace the suck.
There's no training program like if you go work at a, at a corporate job and they five
or six steps into the trade, let me tell you how you learn in broadcast.
You have to suck.
They just put you on the air and you suck.
There's a reason why you know, they take young talent and they put them on like a 300 market
and you're out and, you know, red dirt Idaho, no offense to my friends and Idaho and you're
sucking.
But, you know, it just is what it is.
And as you get better, you move up and you get bigger audiences.
So, so understand that I'm, I'm 34 at this point.
I got three little ones.
Now I'm running my own small business.
It's not making a bunch of money.
It's just taking care of business and it is like I am grinding.
And I'm like, I, I may have lost my ever loving mind.
I got, I, something's got to happen.
And what I'm doing now isn't working.
Was I being intentional, sure, but was I doing what the wildly successful people do,
which is intentional connecting and don't ever stop connecting even when they're crushing
it, they're connecting.
Their top of people's minds.
Why?
Because they're always connecting.
It's a part of their rhythm.
So I'm sitting in my basement.
All right.
Now, understand folks, I want you to get this because I, I want you to understand that
you can apply this to your life because I didn't know many people in broadcasting.
I wasn't already connected.
So I had to develop this.
So I'm sitting there and here's what I did.
So I'm going to give you three things you got to do.
You've got to inventory your connections and I did that.
So I sat down and I had my Mac and I had my phone and I wanted to make sure that all
my contacts were synced up so that I had everything possible and I thought, are there any
business cards?
Do I have any emails that I got some contacts?
And I literally spent about half a day creating what I felt was the exhaustive database of
people that I knew.
Now that included regular life and then I was looking at, back then it was just Twitter
and Facebook.
Okay.
And I was going, all right, this is my universe.
Now watch this.
I started going through it.
So I inventoryed it first and then I said, all right, I need to prioritize.
I made it to do list.
Just like you would make it to do list around the house or like, I got to contact these
people first.
This is where I'm going to prioritize and I started going, do they have any connection
that I think may, any connection to the broadcasting space at all, anything?
And I just was very liberal and I moved these people over here and I created this, this
is going to be my list.
And then I went after it.
But before I went after it, I was finishing up my list and I'll never forget.
And this is the power of connections that can change your life, change my life.
And I never saw it until it happened.
It was just like, bam.
I'm looking through and I see this name, Elizabeth.
And I'm not going to use her last name, but I see her name and I first I went, who is
Elizabeth?
How do, oh, I remember.
I met Elizabeth as a lunch favor.
I had lunch with her and another one of my friends.
And my friend asked me if I would do lunch with Elizabeth.
Watch this folks.
Stay with me.
My friend said, hey, will you have lunch with Elizabeth and I?
Because you've got some expertise in the area of work that you've been in and she needs
some advice.
And I think your person that can help her, would you do it?
And I said, you know what, sure.
Did I want to go to lunch?
No.
I probably, I can't remember, but I probably decided to go to lunch because it was a free
lunch.
I thought, well, they're asking me.
It probably got to buy my lunch.
I'll go get a free lunch.
And you know what?
I'll be a nice person.
Now watch.
So I say yes.
We go to lunch.
I give her advice.
I say goodbye.
And I leave.
Never going to see Elizabeth the rest of my life back in my basement office.
I'm looking at Elizabeth.
How do I know Elizabeth?
And I begin to recount the story.
And I'm getting ready to move Elizabeth over to the do not contact list.
And then I remembered as we were getting to know each other in the first five minutes
of the lunch.
I remember that she said my family owns a radio station and I went, wait, get over here
Elizabeth.
Right?
And I put Elizabeth over here.
And his fate would have it.
I believe this is God's hand, but this is also some intentionality here.
I'm tied this whole thing together because she was the last name that I put over there.
She was the first person that I'd contacted.
And I'll never forget folks.
I got goosebumps right now in my arms because this is crazy.
I got nothing happening in broadcasting at all.
No one's giving me a shot.
I sent Elizabeth an email and I just said, hey, love to reconnect.
If you've got five minutes sometime this week, five minutes later, who do you think
email me back?
Elizabeth.
Now, Joe, you know this story.
Joe knows Joe lived this story.
I got goosebumps, Joe.
Every time I tell this, I get goosebumps.
So Elizabeth says, I'm free this afternoon.
Call me anytime.
So I said, can I call you now?
She said, yeah.
So I called her.
She picked up the phone.
I told her, hey, I remember in our lunch that you told me your family owned a radio station.
Where was that?
She says the name of it.
She goes out to WDUN and Gainesville, Georgia.
I go, you're kidding me.
She goes, no, my brother runs the station.
What do you need?
I go, I can't get the station manager to call me back.
She goes, really?
Well, I'll take care of that.
I'm freaking out, folks.
I'll fast forward the story.
Six, seven days later, I'm in her brother's office having a meeting with the owner of
a radio station that I had tried to get in touch with could not get a return call.
And that's where I started radio.
On a Saturday afternoon, eventually went Monday through Friday.
My second guest ever was Dave Ramsey.
And it all just led to where I am today.
All from a connection.
Now, here's the whole point.
The number one habit of highly,
wildly successful people is connecting.
Let me tell you something.
The art of connecting is the intentionality of saying, you know what?
When somebody asks me, if I will connect with them to help to the extent that you can
and by the way, sometimes you can't.
But here's the point I'm making.
It was one connection where I was, where I was intentional to help a person and it came
back to me years later and it ended up being the break for me, the break.
So start connecting.
Connect every day.
Now let me break this down to something really practical because I think you get this,
but I also know that it's intimidating.
Some of you are going, man, I don't know.
I'm not very good.
Listen, listen, listen, listen.
If you are the shyest introvert in the world, you're a better connector than me fundamentally.
Because I am a hundred miles an hour, big personality when I walk in the room and I got
to really lock in.
I don't care who you are, what your personality type is, here's what I want you to do.
I want you to every Sunday night, I want you to think of five people, five days, five
work days, every Sunday night, right down five people that you want to connect with and
it could just be sending them an email going, hey, haven't seen you in a while, hope you're
doing well, prayed for you.
Any connection, just getting a habit of making connections and watch your world completely
open up.
You were created a full unique role in your work.
That means you were needed.
But that also means you must do it.
So to that end, I have created a tool called the Get Clear Assessment, which will help you
maybe for the first time in your life get really, really clear about your unique makeup.
What are you good at?
What do you enjoy doing and what results motivate you?
Let me tell you something, you figure that out and you can see it in the work world and
let me tell you something, there's no stopping you.
You'll be as successful as you want to be that you determine that.
The money and the meaning will be enough, trust me.
If you use what you do best, talent, to do what work you love, passion, to produce
results that matter to you, mission, let me tell you something.
People look at you and go, you were born for this.
The assessment is the Get Clear Assessment.
You can get it at kenkolman.com, kenkolman.com and get it right there in the store.
All right.
So those of you that are new to the show or maybe new to Ramsey Solutions, I'm in
toward my boss, man, Dave Ramsey said this for years, the key to investing and the key
to winning is to ride the roller coaster.
Don't get off the only way you get hurt riding the roller coasters if you try to get off
the stupid thing while it's going.
And so this is from the Washington Post here with new data, the stock market rebound and
it has been a lovely rebound.
Just put more workers into the 401k millionaires club.
And these people are characterized by one quality, they ain't scared, I'll do an interpretation.
They don't get spooked, they're not scared easily.
They don't see a headline and then they just decide to jump out and ruin their financial
future because they're like, oh, no, I'm losing money, my 401k shrunk today, you know
what?
They get it.
They get the long term play, their eyes on the prize.
These numbers are really encouraging.
New data from fidelity investments found the number of employees with 401k balances over
one million dollars spiked 26% in the second quarter of this year to 370,000 Americans.
That's a big deal.
There were only 299,000 at the end of 2022.
Now again, did those people do something different?
No, they kept investing, they stayed patient and now they're watching the rebound.
Make Shameral Fidelity's Vice President for Workplace, Thought Leadership of the study
said we found that a growing number of people understand that saving for retirement is
a marathon, not a sprint.
Out there's other good news.
Even for the non millionaires, average retirement account balance is climbed for the third
straight quarter.
The average 401k balance for the second quarter increased to $112,400.
It's up 4% from the previous three months IRA and 403B balances experienced nearly 5% bumps
from the first quarter to $113,800 and $102,400 respectively.
Now pause here.
This is a very, very good sign that more people are investing and holding because at the
same time, I can give you very bleak financial numbers to the tune of we have now more credit
card debt in this country than we've ever had before.
That's not going to change, folks, until people change.
That data will always be there as long as people use credit cards as an option.
Those numbers keep going up, up, up, up, up, up, up like this, but it is encouraging
to see that people are investing and that people are saving.
That is encouraging, especially young people, listen to this, Gen Z workers, the number
of Gen Z workers investing in 401k accounts was up 66% year over year.
The number of young investors ages 18 to 35, their individual retirement counts rose 34.4%.
I'm a dad of three Gen Zers, they're young still in high school, but this is really encouraging.
If you were to just say, all right, I can only do one thing for each new generation.
If they understood the power of saving and investing, it's a game changer.
You're talking about increasing the wealth of one generation exponentially over previous
generations.
If you were to just see a large portion of Gen Z doing this, and I hope they do.
The reason I bring this up is because we talk a lot about work and winning in your work
life, and that has a lot to do with money.
I'm going to tell you something, if you were to just do your own research, so instead of
taking my word for it, I could give you the data, but just go do your research.
It's pretty easy to figure out on the Google, okay?
Just get on the old Google and just look at your stock market returns over the last 75
years, 60 years, 50 years, okay, just just just play with it.
Just look at it and understand its relationship to things like your 401k and just look at
what it has done.
You will see that there have been blips in the market.
You'll see real life events that can cause the stock market to tank, and it has, and you
literally look at it, folks, and it's a pretty wild.
It just goes like this, and you got a little bit of this, and you got a little bit of this
ridiculous, but it just keeps going like this.
And you realize, wait a second, I can think about my emotions on any given day, or if you
look at 2022 was a really crappy year for the stock market.
But now you look at where we are in 2023, half the year gone, it's been a great year.
And so what happens is you've got to be knowledgeable so that you can be wise.
Knowledge and wisdom go hand in hand.
When I have good knowledge, good understanding, then I can have discernment.
Knowledge is understanding discernment is wisdom.
That's how I'd play that out, and so you've got to be able to understand that.
But here's what happens, when you look at TikTok and Instagram and pick your favorite
news outlet, and you look at those every day, you're going to be a mess.
You're going to be an absolute emotional mess, because the news headlines and the TikToks
are all designed to do one thing.
They are designed to grab your attention and hold it.
And what's one of the number one tools of grabbing someone's attention?
Fear.
Fear.
Some of you say, well, Ken, you know, fun headlines, they grab my attention, sure.
But they must not work as much as fear headlines, because these people in the media aren't idiots.
Some of you want to think they are.
These headline writers, they know what they're doing.
They've been taught, it's a game.
If my eyeballs are scrolling along, and I see something that induces fear or worry, I'm
going to stop.
I can't tell you how many headlines I've demonstrated on the show before.
I'll read a negative headline, and then you get into the article, and the actual data
says, well, it might happen.
But the headline says, it's going to happen.
The world is coming doing it.
Well, then you get in and it goes, well, if this were to happen, and this were to happen,
and this would happen, the world might come to an end.
And so with our finances and investing, we get calls all the time on the Ramsey show.
Hey, the stock market's been down.
I'm really nervous about having all this cash and all this and all that and all this,
should I get out, should I put it in a safe haven, should I put in a savings account?
And we tell them, no, why?
Because we have historical context.
Historical context that if you stay, you're going to win and hear the numbers.
And more and more people are saying, you know what, I'm going to keep my money in.
I've been alive long enough to know that I'm going to be okay, and I'm going to keep
my money.
And I'm going to lock it in and I'm going to ride the roller coaster.
And by the way, when we get done with the roller coaster ride, you know what, it's always
pretty freaking fun.
So hang in there.
Long-term play is the strategy when it comes to saving and investing.
This is The Ken Coleman Show.
Thanks for listening to The Ken Coleman Show.
For more, you can find the show on demand wherever you listen to podcasts and watch the
show on YouTube.
You can also find Ken across all social media by following at Ken Coleman.