John Hope Bryant

Entrepreneurship Success Quote of the Day

"Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."

John Hope Bryant


John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, and author of business bestseller LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass).

From Gallup: Build Your Career Around Your Strengths, Not Your Weaknesses

 

 

The best advice I ever received came from my dad, Don Clifton. It was actually a piece of simple, yet profound wisdom that has shaped my life. “Your weaknesses will never develop,” he told me, “while your strengths will develop infinitely.” 

If he hadn’t taught me this, my development and achievements would have stopped at a very early age -- in college, probably.

I couldn’t concentrate in college and flunked or barely passed a lot of easy courses. Later in life, I was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, which made sense, particularly when thinking back to my college classes. Those classes were disorienting -- I just had no idea what the professor or the students were talking about. 

Dad, who taught educational psychology at the University of Nebraska, figured out that my extreme weaknesses in classroom learning would never really develop, and that I would not follow in his footsteps as an educator. But he recognized that my strengths might allow me to succeed in sales, so he pointed me in that direction. Almost immediately, I succeeded at selling western record albums, history tapes of the old West, and advertising for farm and ranch directories.  

Eventually, my best friend and I borrowed $5,000 and started a business selling market-research surveys. This was perfect, because the two things that inspired me most in a job were salesmanship and ideas. (I still love ideas, even bad ones.) Selling a wide variety of polls and surveys, mostly on the subject of customers, was a dream come true. 

My work today has never really changed from that time -- it’s still predominantly about sales and ideas. I am forever indebted to Dad for the best advice I’ve ever received. So are millions of others.

Dr. Donald O. Clifton died a decade ago. He advised people all around the globe to build their work and lives around their strengths, rather than only trying to “fix” their weaknesses. His legacy is his late-life invention, the Clifton StrengthsFinder. This online assessment uncovers users’ top five strengths out of a total of 34 -- such as Achiever, Communication, Learner, Strategic, and others -- allowing users the potential to soar with their strengths. 

It’s impossible to go anywhere in the world, from New York to Nairobi to New Delhi, without someone asking me about StrengthsFinder. Many of the world’s most influential leaders and organizations use it for their employees and students. If you haven’t already, I urge you to discover your own strengths and then build your whole personal development plan around them. 

You’ll be in good company. Some of the most successful people I’ve ever known achieved what they did because they built their careers around their strengths, not their weaknesses. 

As an example, our late founder, Dr. George Gallup, knew he’d never become a super-successful businessman. He once told me that he couldn’t even run a popcorn stand, and he was proud of this. But what Dr. Gallup could do was teach, and he focused all of his energies on that. He was so good at it, such a natural, that many leaders around the world who knew him have told me he was the greatest teacher of his time. 

Read the complete article here.

An Inspiring and Thoughtful Comment on Recent Huffington Post Article

The commenter reflects on the recently published Huffington Post article, Solving Poverty: Poverty is the new Racism

Normallyafan

16 hours ago ( 7:02 PM)

"I've read a lot of articles that touched on race and class differences in America lately. I am one of the unfortunate few sociology majors that plans on pursuing a graduate education in my field so it's naturally a pretty large focus in my reading diet. I have to say that this is one of the only articles I have seen written lately that actually addressed the issue in a manner that didn't seem driven by either guilt or antagonism. Another article I had just read (by a professor, no less) here on Huff actually made me quite depressed today because of it's blatantly ethnocentric approach which intentionally excluded whites.

I personally feel that because we have gotten used to either obsequious liberal whites or brazenly racist conservatives there has been too little room for dialogue that is genuinely moderate on the topic of equality in America. As someone who identifies as Asian and Black I am frequently embarrassed by writers who honestly believe that if a socioeconomic theory doesn't completely generalize/shame/insult every single white person alive it can't possibly be accurate. I really feel that many self proclaimed "community advocates" and "civil rights leaders" and even worse, actual ones, have made a habit of using "us versus them" dialogue with deaf ears and this was a stunning reminder that it's not all bad."




John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass) the only African-American bestselling business author in the U.S., and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama. Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Media Report: Bryant Speaks Before ISFiT 2013 Global Youth Conference in Trondheim, Norway

adressa.no

TOR 14.02.2013

21:13

TRONDHEIM

ISFIT 2013:

Se foredraget til Obamas rådgiver

Adressa.no sender direkte fra Isfit-møtet i kveld.

Den internasjonale studentfestivalen i Trondheim (Isfit) har mange møter å by på i løpet av de elleve dagene festivalen varer. Kveldens arrangement handler om sosialt entreprenørskap - Nyskapende løsninger på verdens mest akutte problemer.

John Hope Bryant tok initiativ til Global Dignity Day. Onsdag kveld holdt han foredrag på Samfundet.

Trykk på play-knappen på videoen for å se møtet fra Storsalen på Studentersamfundet i Trondhjem fra klokka 19.00.

Det er ikke bare internasjonale organisasjoner og myndighetene i de ulike landene som forsøker å komme opp med gode ideer. Isfit ønsker å presentere noen av de sosiale entreprenørene som gir sitt beste for å gjøre verden til et bedre sted.

Kveldens talere er:

• James Fierro (CA), grunnlegger og administrerende direktør i Recipco, the Capacity Exchange. En alternativ transaksjonssystem som reduserer en organisasjons behov for kontanter eller kredittkort.
• John Hope Bryant (US), er grunnlegger, styreformann og administrerende direktør i den amerikanske organisasjonen Operation HOPE som jobber for å utrydde fattigdom og styrke mennesker som mangler økonomiske ressurser i amerikanske samfunn. Han har vært aktiv rådgiver for president Barack Obama. Han var sammen med kronprins Haakon og Pekka Himanen initiativtakere til Global Dignity Day.
• Celine d'Cruz (IN), koordinator for Slum Dwellers International, et nettverk av samfunnbaserte organisasjoner bestående av de urbane fattige som har utviklet en vellykket mobilisering og problemløsende strategier.

MER Å LESE: Se deltakernes egne Isfit-minner

MER Å LESE: Har du ei seng, noen brødskiver og hjerterom?

Media Report: John Hope Bryant Speaks on 'Leadership and Life' Before Student Body at Lillestrom High School, Oslo, Norway

Foto: Roar Grønstad

Her vekker Obama-rådgiveren elevene

Lillestrøm: John Hope Bryant er rådgiver for president Barack Obama og personlig venn av Kronprins Haakon. Tirsdag fikk han 350 nye beundrere på Lillestrøm videregående skole.

Lars Petter Hallingstorp

Publisert 12.02.2013 kl 15:34 Oppdatert 13.02.2013 kl 07:41

Med et «hello, there» stiger amerikaneren ut av den store svarte bilen, før han entrer aulaen på Lillestrøm vgs.

Der venter nærmere 350 ungdommer og lærere på mannen, som har tatt seg fra fattigdom i Los Angeles til å bli rådgiver for USAs siste tre presidenter.

 

Global Dignity

Sammen med blant annet kronprins Haakon er han stifteren av Global Dignity, et prosjekt VK1-elevene på Lillestrøm vgs har har jobbet med i snart fire år.

I beste amerikansk vekkelses-ånd sitter etter hvert «high fives», «wow» og spontanapplausen løst hos så vel publikum som hos foredragsholderen.

– Jeg har kommet hit, fordi bare unge mennesker kan endre verden, sier Hope til full jubel.

Med Global Dignity Day, som markeres av stadig fler verden over den 17. oktober, vil han vekke folks bevissthet for verdighet og respekt, for de selv og for andre. Kort fortalt.

Huffington Post: On Leadership ~ Just Borrow My Ladder

John Hope Bryant

Bestselling business leadership author and philanthropic entrepreneur

Fear is the ultimate prosperity killer. This was the basic premise of my bestselling business book, LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead In A Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass).

I went on to say there were two things in the world, "love and fear... and what you don't love, you feared." I concluded by suggestng that "most of our so-called leaders today were actually leading by fear."

What I didn't consider when I wrote this in the book was the possibility that the internal threats of fear, far outweighed the external threats of fear (bosses, government, private sector, societal leaders, etc). What we fear most, is actually ourselves.

Getting over our own sometimes paralyzing fear and insecurities, is key to finding success and long-term stability in our lives. I remember as a child, all my friends just wanted to get rich, but I wanted to become wealthy. At an early age, I knew the difference, but that didn't just 'happen' to me either. It was intentional. My mother told me she loved me every day of my young life, and over time I began to believe it. Today I may have problems and challenges, but basic self esteem is not one of them. I believe in myself, and this along with a vision for myself has proven to be my ultimate strategic advantage in life.

I believed in myself because my mother told me so, and I believed in what I could do and who I could become because my father showed me so. My dad has owned a business for more than 50 years now, and my earliest memory of him was meeting a payroll out of the front door of our home in South Central Los Angeles.

My dad wore a suit two to three times a week growing up. A banker showed up in my inner-city classroom and taught us financial literacy, or what I now call 'the global language of money.' He wore a suit too. And so, of course when I was ten years old, I wanted to wear a suit.

All of this was intentional in my life, so I have a great deal of compassion today for those who did not have the benefit of a loving and supportive mother and father growing up. Half of success in life today I believe is simply self-esteem and self-confidence.

Read, share and comment on the complete article here.

 

 

 

Professor Pekka Himamen Quote of the Day

"At the end of their lives, scientific research has revealed that most people have the same complaint. I wish I would have had the courage to be... me."


John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, Bryant Group Companies, Inc. Magazine/CEO READ bestselling business author of LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass) the only African-American bestselling business author in the U.S., and is chairman of the Subcommittee for the Under-Served and Community Empowerment for the U.S. President’s Advisory Council on Financial Capability, for President Barack Obama. Mr. Bryant is the co-founder of the Gallup-HOPE Index, the only national research poll on youth financial dignity and youth economic energy in the U.S. He is also a co-founder of Global Dignity with HRH Crown Prince Haakon of Norway and Professor Pekka Himanen of Finland. Global Dignity is affiliated with the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the World Economic Forum. Mr. Bryant serves on the board of directors of Ares Commercial Real Estate Corporation, an NYSE Euronext publicly traded company, and a division of $54 billion Ares Capital.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

"We've Got to be All In" ~ Bryant Speaks at Sanneh Foundation annual fundraiser in Minneapolis, MN

I was honored to accept an invitation to be the keynote speaker at the annual Sanneh Foundation gala fundraiser in Minneapolis, MN, this weekend.  I was particularly thrilled to learn that the event raised more than three times what they normally do, and if I had anything to do with that then it was well worth me giving of my time.

Tony Sanneh is a soccer legend and now a humanitarian leader also.  He has dedicated his post-playing career to the uplift and empowerment of youth through soccer, and his foundation is showing some impressive results.  

My message to the assembled group of more than 1,000 supporters was "All In."  I shared the experiences of my personal life, from children onward, where people (family, friends and partners alike) have made absolute commitment to my social, emotional, spiritual, economic and philosophical development.  How there is something magical that happens when people decide they are "all in," versus some level of general support for you.  Even the Bible says, "be hot or be cold, but if you are lukewarm I will spat you out."  Translation: even God doesn't like mediocrity.  No one does, really.  We just have gotten use to settling for it. We settle.

Self Love Quote of the Day

"If I don't like me, I cannot like you.

If I don't respect me, I cannot respect you.

If I don't love me, I don't have a clue how to love you.

If I don't have a purpose of my life, I will make your life a living hell."

 

Ambassador Andrew Young "Wisdom" Quote of the Day

"In my generation, parents didn't have a lot of money so they have kids good values, because they knew they couldn't afford to get them out of trouble if they got into any. Today, parents all too often give kids 'things,' because they don't take the time and care to give them values. Values, that could save their lives."

Civil rights icon Ambassador Andrew Young


John Hope Bryant is a thought leader, founder, chairman and CEO of Operation HOPE, and author of business bestseller LOVE LEADERSHIP: The New Way to Lead in a Fear-Based World (Jossey-Bass).