Introduction

“The world accommodates you for fitting in, but it rewards you for standing out.”

~Matshona Dhliwayo

In many of life’s biggest moments, only a few or worse, only one is chosen…

Admittance into America’s colleges and universities, corporate job openings, and the dating scene are just a few examples in life where the odds are not in your favor.

Acceptance rates at many top colleges and universities are between 4 and 10 percent.1 If attending college is on the horizon, your mission is to get accepted to your top choice and pick the one major, you think, will give you the best chance to fulfill all your hopes and dreams.

Maybe you’re out of school and trying to survive in the ultra-competitive global marketplace, where an MBA is barely enough to get your foot in the interviewer’s office door. In fact, with an average of over 250 resumes submitted for every corporate job opening, your chance of being the one candidate selected for each of those opportunities is less than one-half of a percent.2

What about love? If you subscribe to the notion that there is only one person among the billions of people on the planet who you are destined to be with—your soulmate—the odds of finding that special someone have been scientifically calculated at approximately .010 percent.3

Perhaps the most important fact among all this data is that you’re only going to choose one life. On average, you will live roughly 29,000 days, making 35,000 conscious and unconscious choices per day.4 Based on the accumulation of those choices, you could experience life in an infinite number of ways, but you will only live one of them.

These statistics validate the immensely competitive and highly variable nature of the world you’re living in. They exemplify how challenging it is to emerge from the crowd of similarly qualified peers and become the chosen one in many of life’s opportunities for achievement and happiness.

Adding fuel to this fire is the pressure to succeed coming from your parents, family, friends, and others. They’re all pushing you to attend a great school, pick the perfect major, get the best job, perform at the highest level, raise an amazing family, and meet any number of other societal expectations.

There is good news, however, because the solution to these problems is simple…

You need to learn how to stand out!

The Evolution of Standing Out

You, and so many others, have incredible gifts and talents, but it might seem like you only scratch the surface of what you’re truly capable of. Meanwhile, the world waits for the special few to step up and solve the many problems and challenges it faces.

I wrote this book because I believe everyone has the ability, opportunity, and responsibility to stand out when it matters most.

Throughout my lifetime, I’ve been fascinated by the people who always seem to get ahead, be in the right place at the right time, have the most luck, and appear to be blessed with special powers and skills reserved for only the chosen few.

On the other hand, I’ve witnessed the confusion, uncertainty, and stress in aspiring, young students and professionals at every school and company that I’ve visited or worked for. To make matters worse, schools and companies around the world do a poor job of preparing the younger generation for success and happiness beyond the basics of a selected major, early work experience, extracurricular activities, leadership courses, and other standard career development topics. Millions of high potential young adults get thrown into life without the required tools they need to face the challenges, expectations, and competition they will face. Like many before them, they do their best to figure it out as they go.

Throughout my career and even today as a successful executive, entrepreneur, author, husband, and dad, I face many similar challenges. In some respects, it should be comforting to know that no matter how successful you are, we are all human and life is ever changing and complex. Thus, we all face the same challenges.

Fortunately, challenges can be transformed into opportunities and life is beautiful with its limitless range of possibilities for positive outcomes. Although some situations in life are more impactful than others, no singular moment in life is do or die, nothing is forever, and hope and answers are always available.

The Playbook

At its core, this book is a framework for preparing you for success and happiness, while also providing you with a set of guiding principles to help you face the challenges of life head on.

There is already an abundance of information related to personal development available to you. But with that incredibly vast amount of wisdom comes a feeling of being overwhelmed and confused about where to start, what to focus on, and what to do first…until now.

This book was written to inspire, help, and coach you through that infinite maze of knowledge. It will provide you with a new mindset, easy-to-remember action items, and a framework you can use to focus on the most meaningful things. More importantly, it will tell you what you need, what to ignore, and how everything links together.

As you move through each chapter, you’ll be building a playbook for your life, step-by-step, to serve three core human needs—clarity, simplicity, and certainty.

With better clarity, you know more, understand more, and feel more confident about the future.

With more simplicity, you think about and focus on the most important things. This reduces confusion and creates a sense of calm.

With higher certainty, you increase the possibilities for success and happiness.

With more success and happiness, you will be able to stand out!

A concise graphic representation of this playbook is included in Appendix A. It is a clear, simple, and powerful way to go from where you are (just starting or restarting) to where you want to go (standing out), by helping you answer nine fundamental questions. You will notice that these questions align perfectly with the playbook, which aligns perfectly with the chapters in this book.

To help you remember the playbook, these steps form the acronym “STANDOUTX.”

• Self—Who am I?
• Tomorrow—Where am I going?
• Attitude—What do I think, believe, and feel?
• Now—What is my purpose, and how do I live it today?
• Do—How do I get to where I want to go?
• Optimize—What specific things should I do to make the most of my opportunities?
• Uplift—How do I lead to help others?
• Touch—How can I make an impact in the world?
• X-Factors—How do I stand out?

As you read and work through each chapter of the book, you will gain the necessary knowledge to answer these key questions. You will also become equipped to take the necessary actions on your way to standing out.

Beyond this book and throughout your life, you will receive a lot of advice, guidance, and information from the people you meet and experiences you have. The beauty of the STANDOUTX framework is that it serves as a way to process all those inputs, shows how all the advice fits together, and enables you to see the bigger picture. You will know where to plug-and-play what you learn into your personal and customized playbook to stand out in the game of life.

This book is not written exclusively for students and young professionals. It’s also ideal for anyone else who wants a new beginning. Sometimes, like an arrow, you need to be taken back as far as you can go to create the required momentum to launch you forward again.

This book is also for anyone who is in a position to help someone else become a standout. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, coach, counselor, consultant, or leader, this book and the associated playbook is structured in a way that provides you with a step-by-step process to guide and coach your up-and-comer. Use the playbook to focus on what’s important and add your own life lessons, experiences, advice, and words of wisdom to give it more meaning for you and your mentee.

The strength and power of this playbook is that it also works well for businesses, particularly for those that are starting or need a restart (See Appendix B). By asking similar questions in a similar structure, a company can take the necessary steps to stand out in a competitive market or industry.

• Self—Who and what is the company (mission, vision, core values, and what it offers)?
• Tomorrow—Where is the company going and why (future benefits and goals)?
• Attitude—What is the company’s culture (feeling, standards, and expectations)?
• Now—How does the company collect and analyze data, and how does it apply that knowledge today to fulfill its purpose?
• Do—How does the company execute its strategy most...