Dr. Tony Alessandra is the Founder of Assessments24x7.com, a company offering a variety of online assessments, including the widely-used DISC profile. He is the author of 31 books and over 100 audio/video programs and films. Dr. Alessandra was inducted into the NSA Speakers Hall of Fame in 1985; inducted as one of the “Legends of the Speaking Profession in 2009;” and elected into the inaugural class of the Top Sales World Sales Hall of Fame in 2010.
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
- Ken Blanchard
- Bill Gove
- Dr David J. Schwartz
- Jim Cathcart – Click this link to listen to the Jim Cathcart Podcast episode on The Entrepreneur Way
- Harvey Mackay
When business started difficulties overcame:
“certainly making enough money to make ends meet…. The net income early on, the first year was less than when I was teaching when I thought it would be more. So that was sort of a surprise to me. Also, the concept of hiring the right people. Back then I didn’t have as refined process in terms of hiring the right people so I will just hire people who I liked and they may or may not have been the best people that I should have hired… I wish I knew how much money I needed to get started as an entrepreneur, I didn’t have enough quite frankly, and how to hire the right people to complement me as opposed to duplicate me” (4 Lines minimum) …[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
- Psycho-Cybernetics, A New Way to Get More Living Out of Life Book by Maxwell Maltz
- The Magic Of Thinking Big: Acquire The Secrets Of Success… Achieve Everything You’ve Always Wanted Book By Dr. David Schwartz
- Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive: Outsell, Outmanage, Out-motivate, and Out-negotiate Your Competition Book by Harvey B. Mackay
- 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary Mass Marketk Book by Norman Lewis and Wilfred Fun
Favourite Quote:
- “This too shall pass”
- “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time”
- “The longest journey starts with a single step”
- “Do unto others as they would have you do unto them”
Recommended Online Resources:
- LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28, 2002, and launched on May 5, 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs and job seekers posting their CVs.
- One Across – Free help with crossword puzzles, anagrams and cryptograms search to find answers to crossword puzzle clues
- Yahoo – News, email and search are just the beginning Discover more every day
- Podcasts like The Entrepreneur Way
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“focus on the important things in your business and don’t get tempted or pulled away by other opportunities that might look good but are not a focus of your business. Put on blinders, focus on everything that you have to do in your business and don’t get sidetracked by other opportunities that are outside of your business because your business will suffer if you don’t have your full attention on it”…[Listen for More]
More About Tony Alessandra:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
“When I’ve lost my way or when I am confused about a path to take, I remember that most answers I need I already possess – deep inside. I am naturally creative, resourceful and whole. If I consult my invisible compass, I’ll know what to do.” Steve Goodier
Other Quotes From the Chat with Tony Alessandra:
- “business is a game to me, I love it… I am just excited by the game of business”
- “I really like this whole process of running the company, seeing our revenue increase, really helping our customer’s, giving them a better solution to what they may have been doing”
- “do your homework on the industry itself”
- “as an entrepreneur sometimes you are starting slow and a team is just one employee but make sure that you are hiring that employee compliments you as opposed to duplicate you”
- “early on I would make sure, this is my advice to somebody, that you are keeping an eye on the money and you are not delegating that to somebody else. Keep your eye on what is coming and what is going out. And until you feel like you have somebody who you can truly trust and is incredibly competent with numbers and details I wouldn’t turn that responsibility over to another person until you find somebody that you trust and is good at it. But still keep your eye on it.”
- “make sure that you have enough revenue to take you through the tough times”
- “focus, focus, focus. All too often entrepreneurs get side-tracked by interesting opportunities that are outside of their wheelhouse”
- “one of the things that entrepreneurs are tempted by early in their career is they want to jump on every opportunity available. But it needs to become crystal clear that you need to start saying no to some opportunities, even though they may be intriguing opportunities, if they are not taking you in the direction that you need to be taken”
- “I got coaching to make sure that I was doing things the right way”
- “in my business when I brought in a business coach who came in weekly to meet with me and my team to make sure we accomplished what we said we were going to do, talk about why we didn’t get things done, create a plan for the following week, that was by far up to that point the best year I ever had. So coaching is absolutely crucial… I think everybody should go through it”
- “when I was growing up my mother had a saying she always told me to go the extra… I know a lot of people thinking but no… she always told me go the extra inch. She talked to me about continuous improvement little by little in every area of my life, every day physically do one extra push up or sit up, learn one new word mentally every day, give one extra complement to somebody from a social point of view. All of these things. And that’s what coaching does, coaching is incremental improvement in every aspect of your business and that’s why I think it is very very important ”
- “we don’t use assessments necessarily to make a higher or no higher decision, the assessments are simply one additional piece of information, an objective piece of information to counter and balance the subjective nature of hiring people. The subjective natures would be for instance a person’s resume: have you ever seen a person’s resume where they put negatives on it? No, a person’s resonate is like a balance sheet with no debits. And the interview process: typically when people interview candidates they interview them looking for more like them, people that they like, people that they can relate to. So we tend to hire people in our own likeness which may not be exactly what we need in the company. So if I knew about these assessments I would have done that early on in my business…”
- “…focus, making sure that you focus on the urgent most important things… Even if you look at a to-do list a lot of people look at a to-do list, and on that to-do list there may be very important things, there might be some things that are not so important, the might be some difficult things and some easy things, there might be some urgent and some not so urgent things. But what a lot of people do when they have a to-do list is they basically look at the to-do list and say what can I cross off, what’s easy to cross off? And they look at more things to cross off them what is really important”
- “I have this attitude of this too shall pass. I don’t get so upset or stressed when something goes wrong because I try to immediately take action to make it good or correct it. I definitely tell myself and tell my employees this to shall pass let’s not fret too much over it”
- “I am a big advocate of a rule that I have created called the Platinum rule which is treat people the way they want and need to be treated. Which again means that I have to be more observant and more sensitive about the differences in people… I have got to be more sensitive and more tolerant and that is what the Platinum rule is about”
- “if you go back and look at some of the studies on success you will see that different people come up with different formulas for success. One in particular says your ability to be a good public speaker can differentiate you on a success level from other people. But another one says your vocabulary has a major impact on your success.”
- “there is lots of ups and downs in life. The downs truly don’t last especially if you take action”
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