Archives For The 10x 100

Foreword by Dezaray Barr

The experience is something that will change the rest of your life. Whatever the opposite of regret is, that’s how I feel about this experience. – Dezaray Barr, Intern at WeTeachMe

Introduction

The undisputed king of franchises, George Nadaff, once taught me: “He/she who builds 10 people is superior to he/she who does the work of 10 people. In other words, if you take on the responsibility of 10 people you will end up in the shit house. Especially if you’re in the toilet business.”

Irreverent humour aside, George’s clever quip is imbued with wisdom.

Accordingly, I invest in my people and my team, and I have seen the benefits–perhaps selfishly–from taking a genuine interest in their health, hopes, and dreams. What I know for sure is that all the wins and accomplishments aside, I am nothing without my team for they carry me 1,000 times further than I could traverse on my own. And for that, I owe them my focus, my time, my attention, and a genuine desire to invest in them. After everything is said and done, I believe with absolute conviction, that if you take care of your people, they will take care of everything else.

So what exactly does “invest in them” mean? For me, it means:

  1. Lift from where you stand
  2. The times you/they are challenged are your/their greatest opportunities for growth
  3. Don’t limit your/their challenges. Challenge your/their limits.

And so, to bring the above concepts to life, I share with you a story of an exceptionally bright intern from WeTeachMe by the name of Dezaray Barr who joined the WeTeachMe Team 10 weeks ago.

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Goals.jpg

Foreword by Ron Lovett and Adam Jelic

This article is a must-read for anyone who needs clarity and who may be stuck at creating strong visioning of the future for themselves. Kym provides a clear simple path on the “how to” of this process which most articles are missing. If you’re not setting clear and measurable goals, you’re really selling yourself short of what you’re actually able to accomplish.

– Ron Lovett, President and CEO at RFL Group of Companies

 

Growing up I had always dreamed of doing something extraordinary with my life, my choice of escape throughout my teenage years was to fulfil a child hood dream of becoming a professional soccer player. Now in order to fulfil that dream I began to explore different tools and techniques that would excel my growth and allow me to fulfil my full potential. That search led me to the practice of Goal setting, the more I read about successful individuals across sport, business and in other parts of life the more I would read and hear them talk about the power of Goals. It was clear to me that if I wanted to turn my dreams into reality then I needed to be clear and specific about what it is I want to achieve, and then develop a plan of action to turn those dreams into reality.

Today goal setting is a big part of my life, I even started a business based around it www.migoals.com and here’s the key thing for me about goal setting. Just because you set your goals it doesn’t mean that success is guaranteed, but what it does guarantee is that your odds of success are improved dramatically and for that reason I keep setting and taking action on my goals.

– Adam Jelic, Founder at MiGoals

Introduction

It was two years ago at a dinner where the gentleman sitting next to me, turned towards me and said, “Kym, did you know that only 4% of the world population sets goals?” I recall being shocked. Didn’t everybody set goals? Naively I took this behaviour for granted, and now see that goal setting is the exception rather than the rule. This is something that I would like to change.

As a person that has always set goals, it is with interest when I reflect on my goal-setting journey so-to-speak. When I first started setting goals, there wasn’t structure or understanding why I was setting a goal. I just did what I believed most people did: sit and make a list of what I want to achieve for the year; which mostly coincided with the new year. All I knew, at the time, was that once I had written down the goals, come 12 months later most of them would have been achieved.

So are you a cardholding member of the population’s 4% that set goals? If not, let’s fix that! You probably have dreams and ambitions that you want to materialise in this lifetime. Some of these ambitions, if you put thought and effort into them, are goals that you can turn into a reality. These goals, once achieved, can give you a sense of fulfilment and can result in greater things in your life. I’d love to share with you some of the tools, structures and frameworks that help me systemically achieve my goals at an accelerated rate.

Once I started applying these tools and frameworks, I started seeing a shift in myself. It’s an incredibly powerful feeling knowing that I am the captain of my own ship and that I can steer the ship in any direction that I choose. And not only that, but I can also steer it with intention and I can get to my destination a lot faster.

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Foreword by Jeffrey Hodges

In yoga philosophy the concept of habits is vital to understanding ourselves. Yoga uses the term ‘samskara’ to describe and explain human habits. It is suggested that every thought, emotion or physical action creates an impression or imprint–a samskara–in the deeper structure of our mind, and these samskaras create tendencies to repeat that thought, emotion or action. Imagine one of the old vinyl records; each time the needle of behaviour runs over the record it scratches a groove in the record. The more a particular behaviour is undertaken the deeper the mental groove becomes, and hence easier to repeat again next time.

Obviously we want to encourage positive physical, emotional, and mental habits and discourage those that limit us or cause us to do destructive things, however any automatic behaviour, whether good or ill, is to a certain extent still limiting our capacity to act with conscious awareness in the moment. But good habits are better than bad ones, and if you can identify and replace a limiting habit of thought, emoting or acting early in 2017, what a great start to the year!

– Jeffrey Hodges B.Sc. M.Sc.(Hons) B.Ed., Director, Sportsmind Institute

Introduction

It’s 7:42 AM. I have slept in again. I feel tired because I stayed up until 2:30 AM last night working on chipping away at a never-ending task list. I grab whatever clothes comes easiest to hand in my half-awake stake, hastily pull them on, and run into the office, forgetting to have breakfast along the way.

Some of the thoughts that run through my mind as I arrive at the office in an adrenalin-fuelled panic include:

  • What do I need to do today?
  • Who do I need to talk to?
  • What client emailed me last night requesting individual attention?
  • Which team members do I need to loop in today for x project?
  • How many emails are there in my inbox again? Why can’t I get on top of my inbox? What’s wrong with me?

“Shoot!” I curse at myself. I just checked my calendar and realised that I have a morning meeting in 3 minutes that I haven’t prepared for, and a lunch meeting soon-after that I committed weeks ago. There goes my entire day alongside any hope of being productive with “my time”.

Oh, wait! There are also teammates that need to run ideas and proposals by me, and emergency fires that have popped up out of nowhere that all scream for my attention. My business partners are impatient and grumpy about some issue or other and they need a sounding board, someone to offload to or to escalate a task delivery time.

Before I know it, it’s 7 PM and I have yet to have lunch. I’m starving and the chocolate sitting on the Junior Developer’s desk entices me with its demonic allure. “Something is better than nothing…” I think to myself as I hastily devour it to satiate the hunger. Bye-bye eating healthy and well.

I feel like I’ve been at everyone else’s beck and call all day that I haven’t had the chance to look at one single thing on my task list. So to rectify this I stay late at the office when everyone else is gone, but all I can do is stare at the computer screen as my hand sits lifelessly on top of my mouse. I realise that I am physically exhausted, emotionally drained, and have 1% of battery life left in me. It’s times like this that I wish I could instantly transport into my bed because the thought of finding my way back home abhors me.

Does this sound familiar to you too?

When I reflect on what my life was like a few years ago, words and phrases that spring to my mind include “stress”, “anxiety”, “struggling-to-stay-afloat”, “drowning”, and “overwhelmed”. I’d tell myself that I couldn’t afford to be weak and that I needed to hold it together. So I would put on a happy face, and I’d muster what energy I could to keep pushing. Unfortunately, the constancy of this mode cumulated in a few things: Burning out, exhaustion, anxiety attacks, and finally sitting across the lunch table from one of my business partners–after the 3rd doctor appointment that week to try to find out what’s wrong with me (tip: exhaustion)–and verbalising, “I’m not doing too well. I’m tired.”

I should have known that I was burning out and barely holding it together. After all, I was spending my evenings sitting for 3-4 hours in my bedroom in front of the heater during Melbourne winters, doing nothing but staring into space. Or that it wasn’t normal that I would be rational and calm during an end-of-day debrief with an overseas teammate yet have my face wet with tears, or that both my hands would shake when I tried to explain with my closest confidants what I was going through.

Today, that feeling of being rushed, anxious, and stressed is now replaced by a sense of flow. I wake up earlier (5:30 AM), my pace of work is less frantic, and oddly enough, I’m the most productive I have ever been in my life. The franticness has been replaced with a calmness, and the stress has been replaced with a stillness. I feel even-keel in my approach, and I walk into the office knowing exactly what needs to be done every day, every week and every month. It’s a feeling that is both incredible and powerful.

So what’s the secret? The truth is that there is no real big complicated secret. I take simple tools and apply them over and over and over again. And the best part is that anyone can do it. So get your pen and papers out because I will be sharing with everyone something that completely turned my life around, and a tool that had a profound impact on my life.

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[Letter #1] Opening remarks

Kym Huynh —  January 2, 2017 — 2 Comments

Dear Internet,

I have moments in my life where my desire to do something overtakes my rationale, and I obsess, plan, obsess, write, obsess, create templates, obsess, create systems and processes, and then obsess a little more until at the end of the process, I have my idea, systems, processes, templates, overall strategy, and execution plan meticulously mapped out (including dotted i’s and crossed t’s). Up until this point, time seemingly suspend itself and I get caught up into this state of flow where thirst and hunger have no meaning, nothing else matters, and time is of no consequence.

Today was one of those times, and even now as I write this post, a million thoughts run through my mind. I have a sense of urgency to start executing, and I feel equal parts excited, determined, and impatient (with a dash of trepidation added in for good measure).

I strongly believe that as you go through the journey of life and learn, so you must also give. And my way of giving is to share the tools and learnings that has put me in good stead, and have served me so well; my own personal playbook if you will.

The idea is simple: Release a collection of articles filled with practical advice, how-to’s, ideas and tutorials to 10x your life. These are lessons I learned the hard way–in-the-trenches so-to-speak (or write!)–and lessons that served me well in co-founding and growing WeTeachMe–a tech startup that is the go-place for Australia’s best and most popular classes, and in 2016 officially became the largest school in Australia. These include skills and tools that made 2016 the best year of my life in 4 key areas: business, family, community and personal.

Everything that I share are things that I live on a daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis. This is important to me because I believe that what you teach, you must also live; and so I do my best to live what I teach.

The idea

1 — Each article will be practical and will be accompanied with worksheets and templates so that what I share can be immediately actioned. It is important to me that my articles aren’t your generic “10 ways to simplify your life”, but that they are infinitely useful and that you will see the benefits of implementing the tools immediately.

2 — Each article will be grounded in a story. This is important because stories are what enable people to connect with each other, and makes the core message easier to remember.

3 — All articles come from personal experience. I only write about things I have lived, because it is important to me that what I share is authentic.

4 — My goal is to help 1,000,000 people. My wish is to have these articles shared 1,000,000 times through the various social networks. For this reason, I provide this collection online for free and all I ask of you is this: If any of these articles have helped you in any way, please take a moment to share on social media, email to someone you think will find benefit, or print and leave it on the desk of someone whom you believe has the motivation, but lacks the tools to take themselves to the next level.

5 — I want to hear your stories. Did you benefit from this? Leave a comment below, or on the articles themselves, or even get in touch. I can’t wait to hear from you.

6 — I’m here to help. Questions? Need something clarified? Or perhaps you’re stuck? Leave a comment below, or on the articles themselves, or even get in touch. I’ll see what I can do.

7 — Each collection will consist of 10 articles of at least 100 words. Most likely more but never less.

8 — The articles and tools will be accessible to anyone who wants to read and use it. Therefore the style of communication will be simple to understand; plain English, and downloads are for free.

9 — New articles will be released every fortnight. Don’t want to miss out on any new articles? Subscribe via email using the form at the bottom of this post and I’ll have the articles delivered straight to your inbox.

10 — At the conclusion of this collection, I will announce the next collection. Is there an area of life that you feel particularly stuck with? Leave a comment below and I’ll keep track of what it is people want most of.

Draft table of contents

Take a look at the 10x 100 tools shared through this site outlined in this page. Links are provided for every tool that you can always return to when the need arises.

Final words

1 — One of the reasons 2016 was the best year of my life, is because I paid attention. A lot of attention. For I believe with absolute conviction that life is your greatest teacher. And because of this, I pay a lot of attention to my own life, and the lives of others around me. I pay attention to what others say, what they do, and to the tools they use in their own lives. These tools I then modify and incorporate into my own life to help me achieve my own goals. When I do this, I am at my very best.

2 — I want to write a book. One that is outside the one I penned for online gaming phenomenon Neopets anyway. But baby steps first. So let’s start with a collection of articles focused on practical advice, how-to’s, ideas and tutorials to 10x your life.

3 — I do now know where this leads. But I believe that when one does something with good intentions, one eventually attracts the same back.

So I invite you to come along this journey with me. Subscribe via email using the form at the bottom of this post and I’ll have the articles delivered straight to your inbox. Alternatively, I can also be followed on my various social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.