What is True Wealth?, Your Best Diet, Richard Branson’s Secrets to Success
Business
What is True Wealth?
If you want to be an effective leader at work and at home and if you want to lead yourself well, you need to know your answer to this pivotal question.
Is true wealth a financial number like those bank ads tell us – “What is your number?” Is it a dream house, vacation or boat?
Remember that there will always a be a bigger boat (thanks Alan Weiss for that nugget).
Is it making a difference in someone’s life? What is true wealth?
I’d like to make the argument that true wealth is FREE TIME. It is having the option to spend your time where you are lead to spend it. It is the ability to spend your time in a way that will create the greatest positive impact for you and the ones you love.
Our lives are high maintenance. We required food, shelter, clothing and electricity. Most of us need reliable transportation and I would argue strongly that access to the internet is a need and the faster that internet connection the more time I get back – right?? (Only if I stay focused..). We would like to have some savings in the bank, to save for retirement and help our kids pay for a great education.
If true wealth is free or discretionary time. How can we create more of it? We’ll dive into that next week.
Let me hear from you. What is true wealth for you? Drop me an email at cfowler@valuesdrivenresults.com. If you are reading this on my website, drop me a note in the comment section.
Health
What is the Best Diet for You?
US News ranked the 38 most popular diets overall and the best diets for specific goals like diabetes management, weight loss, healthy eating and the diets that are the easiest to follow. For me, give me ease of use and overall healthy eating. That has me wanting to learn more about the Mediterranean and the MIND diet.
The Mediterranean Diet/Lifestyle overly simplified – active lifestyle, weight control and a diet low in red meat, sugar and saturated fat. High in produce and nuts.
The MIND Diet/Lifestyle overly simplified – This diet takes the DASH and Mediterranean diets and zeroes in on the foods in each that specifically improve brain health. This diet emphasizes eating from 10 brain-healthy food groups: green leafy vegetables (1st) and then all other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, fish, poultry, olive oil and wine while avoiding the five unhealthy groups of red meats, butter and stick margarine, cheeses, pastries and sweets, and fried or fast food.
All I can say is that my wife’s celiac disease is a blessing in disguise. I know it is tough on her, but it forces us to each so much healthier!
What diet is best for you? Check out the full report here.
Life, Fun, Whatever!
Richard Branson’s Next Big Thing
Richard Branson is aiming to combine your elementary school Sports Day with a music festival to create Sports Festivals around the world. The idea is to bring the family fun of a music festival and combine it with the healthy outlet of sport. The idea is pretty neat but the interview with him was even better. This man has had tremendous success in his life and had a blast doing it. I love learning from him. Below are my takeaways.
- Focus on value and quality before profit. Yes, there has to be a way to reach profitability but understand that you must first focus on value and quality to get there. Virgin America airlines is a great example. They are the highest ranked airline in America but lost money for a while building their value and quality. It is now worth $3 billion!
- Make sure your business can be “exceptionally better.” Branson lost with Virgin Cola because they were not exceptionally better than Coca-Cola. He won with Virgin Atlantic airlines because they were that much better than British Airways.
Branson summarizes his business philosophy as this – “We like to do things as differently from everybody else as much as possible. We want to provide great value for everybody. We like to have a lot of fun doing it. We want to make sure that our people are really happy and thoroughly enjoying what they are doing. We really want to make a positive difference in the world.”
Great lessons. Check out the full article here.
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