Leaders are readers! Today, I’d like to share five of my favorite books. If you haven’t read them, you need to check them out! 1. How To Win Friends And Influence People, by Dale Carnegie If you’re going to pursue leadership, you must be able to connect with people. Even if you’re not in leadership, your ability to connect with others is a vital aspect of all areas in your life. This book walks you through how to interact with different personalities. For leaders, it will help you win over the people on your team, so that you can share your vision. With a shared vision, you’ll be able to tackle your goals, knowing that your team has your back.           2. The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership, by John Maxwell By far, this is the best leadership development book that I’ve ever read. The 21 Laws provides a formula to becoming a great leader. Going through the 21 Laws, you’ll be able to implement a step by step process to develop your leadership skills. If you can master the concepts of the book you will not only be successful but you will be able to grow your business by helping other leaders.           3. Be Obsessed Or Be Average, by Grant Cardone This is an awesome book to help keep you inspired and motivated. In pursuing your goals, you have to be relentless… you have to be OBSESSED! This book teaches you to always think big and back it up with your actions. Cardone says, “Never lower your target; increase your actions”. While working towards your goals, if you’re looking for a book to guide your mindset, this is it!             4. Proverbs Proverbs is the book of wisdom. In the pursuit of mental & spiritual growth, Proverbs exposes you to infinite wisdom. Even if you’re not a particularly spiritual person, a lot can be gained from reading Proverbs. It’s also a great way to schedule & track a full month of mental & spiritual growth as there are 31 chapters in the book which roughly gives you one a day.       5. Mind Is The Master, by James Allen Your mind is the biggest tool you have. Once you’re able to learn how to think & use your mind correctly, it’s immensely powerful. It allows you to control your own destiny. Your thoughts form your actions, your actions for your habits, and habits form your destiny. It all starts in your mind. I highly recommend you read Mind Is The Master

What’s up gang? If you watch the GRIND messages, you know that I’m passionate about finding a mentor. It’s one of the key ingredients to being successful & one of the easiest ways to learn. When you’ve got a mentor, you can learn from their experience. It’s a way to “cheat” your growth process, because you’re learning from the failures & successes that they’ve had, as opposed to living through them yourself. Today, I wanted to talk about three of the biggest mentors I’ve had in my adult life. If you know my background, you’d know that my plans after college were to move to Florida & get my real estate license. It was one phone call that changed that plan, and ultimately changed my life. The man on the phone was Marcus Smith, partner at Surace-Smith Agencies with American Income Life. Marcus called my resume & I decided to come to AIL for an interview. After meeting Marcus, I admired so much about him. His confidence, his mental toughness, his ability to think big, and ultimately his level of success at a young age. I knew I had to learn from him. While your specific journey in life may be different, my advice on learning from a mentor applies to all walks of life. I followed Marcus’s coaching 100%. Let me stress 100%, not 99%. If Marcus had told me to run head-first into a wall, I would’ve done it. No questions asked. I may not have understood the reasoning behind every little detail, but I knew that if I implemented, it would get me closer to my goals. My biggest takeaway from Marcus was the ability to think big. When I started having success and making big plays in business, Marcus never hesitated to show me the next level. That’s a rare quality in a leader. Many people would sit back and enjoy the success of having a new player on the team who was helping grow the business. Instead, Marcus saw my potential and coached me to always be thinking bigger and looking at what else was possible. It was also while starting my career at American Income that I meant another one of my biggest mentors, Jim Surace. You’d recognize Jim from his Spiritual Sunday messages on the GRIND. Jim taught me how to grow my spiritual faith and develop myself inwardly. He helped me strengthen my relationship with God & showed me how to help others grow spiritually. You know I constantly preach daily development mentally, physically, & spiritually, and I’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who helped my spiritual growth as much as Jim has. Our medical center dedicated to patients with anxiety disorder has been ordering it there for few years already. We know that the most important thing is the quality of the drug, and with them we are always sure about it. One of the best offers we could get for it was on https://ativanonlinetabs.com. Lastly, and most recently, I’ve been mentored by Jim Tressel from Youngstown State University. I approached Jim, asking him to spend some time mentoring me & he did it without hesitation. Coach Tressel has taught me humility & how to treat others after a win or a loss. He’s taught me how to better coach my team in business, and how to set goals not only in business, but in my personal life as well. I’ve learned the way to balance how to be caring and serving, but to still hold people accountable. I want to take a minute to thank each of the three men I’ve mentioned here. I could easily go into even greater detail on all that they’ve taught me, and I’m extremely grateful. To wrap it up, make sure you seek out mentors in all areas of your life. You’d be surprised how many great people on this earth are willing to pour into others.