Win With A Winning Attitude! by {Rob Moore}

When I was a seafood manager for a major supermarket chain, I became bored in my position because it started to become too easy for me. We were hitting all of our financial obligations consistently for the company and I built a very strong team within my department. One so strong, that I really didn’t need to come to work anymore because my people knew how to run the department just as good as me.

I began to look for other opportunities to challenge me but I just didn’t see anything open up that I was interested in. I used to rush to the store mailbox every Thursday morning to view the new job openings. One day, I finally found something that sparked an interest for me.

It was a brand new position that I had never seen posted before. I read it quickly and to make a long story short it was a position for a store manager trainee. The cool thing was that it was open to department managers and up meaning that I could apply. After reading all of the details, I knew that I had a shot at the job and started the application process that same day.

When I told a few people in the store what I was doing, they all said that it was impossible for me to even be considered for it. They all knew how strong of a manager I was and they still didn’t think I could do it. I couldn’t think of anyone in the company that was a better fit for this position than me so I knew I had a chance. It felt right in every bone in my body and I was extremely hungry for it.

There was an extensive application process that I had to go through and I got all of my stuff in by the end of the week. I was expecting to hear something at least two weeks after the posting closed. I didn’t hear anything at all until six months later. This was flat out torture. I found out that it was taking so long because they had over eighty applicants and they had to weed out a majority of them.

After hearing that, people really didn’t think I had a chance. I didn’t let it get to me. I kept on growing the sales and profitability of my department. I also continued to look for ways to improve myself. I started taking even more classes that the company offered for free and even got paid to take. These classes were taking my management skills to a whole new level with each class taken.

Ever since I changed my attitude about life and success seven years prior, I’ve been winning in everything I wanted to win in and I wasn’t about to stop now.  I started to look for ways to help me get that position and I came up with several. The first thing I did was start to think like a store manager immediately. I studied my current store manager’s actions. I studied all of the company that came into the store to walk with him.

I wanted to know what they were looking for in each department. I wanted to know everything. I started walking my own department as if I was a store manager. Then I set a goal to have perfect walk with company which wasn’t difficult for me to do. Then I wanted to come up with ways to make them say “WOW!” and remember me and my department during their travels to other stores.

I was determined to win and I was willing to do whatever it took to get this position. After a very long and extensive process I was one of four people selected for the store manager trainee position and I was ecstatic. Even after getting the position, many people thought that I was going to fail but they were wrong. I graduated from the program and after being a store manager for only two years I ended up running the number five store in the chain which was doing just under one million dollars in sales weekly. I don’t know of anyone else that has accomplished this kind of success as a store manager in such a short period of time. But I can tell you that I believe that 90% of this was achieved do to the attitude that I chose to have.

Exit The Common Crowd! by {Rob Moore}

I learned the value of exiting the common crowd by accident in my opinion. The reason I say that is because I naturally always wanted to do a good job at work. Maybe because that was just the way I was raised. My mother was a hard worker and so was my father so that’s probably the reason why this came so easy for me. Not only that, I was very motivated by money.

When I got into the workforce, I always worked hard but more importantly I watched and studied many of the people working around me in every job I ever had. I noticed what the best performers were doing and how they would get complimented on there work. On the other end, I noticed how the worse performers were always getting into trouble.

The best got rewarded and promoted. The worse got documented, suspended, and even fired. The biggest thing that I picked up from my findings was the fact that approximately ten percent were the best performers and approximately another ten percent were the worse performers. The remaining eighty percent were just average workers. To me that met that most people are just average performers in the workplace.

I did not want to be average. I wanted to be successful. I was average during the first nineteen years of my life and to be totally honest with you, I was sick of it. Being average didn’t do much for my past, present, and future. That’s when I decided to exit the common crowd.

I decided that I was not going to follow the ninety percent of average workers and especially the worse workers. I wasn’t going to take any advice from them. I wasn’t going to hang out with them. I wasn’t going to talk like them. Last but certainly not least, I was going to limit as much conservation with these individuals as possible. Instead I was going to follow what the successful people did.

If you do what common people do, you will also get their common results. My mindset was to do just about opposite of what most people did in the workplace. While some people called off from work, I was the first to volunteer to take those open shifts. While they were home watching television, I was home reading policy and procedures manuals. While they were complaining about how much work they had to do, I was getting mine done and thinking about how I can advance my career. While they were being negative, I was being positive.

I make happen what I want to make happen by studying and following the people who are making things happen. That’s the bottom line! I don’t listen to people unless I can validate the information they’re giving to me. If they can’t, I let it go in one ear and out of the other. Have you ever heard that saying, “Talk is cheap!”, well it is.

I believe that I am very fortunate to have discovered this strategy on my own early on. This is definitely one of the top leadership skills that is responsible for me turning my life completely around after thinking I was going to be unsuccessful for the rest of my entire life career wise.

I promise you that you will see a significant change in your life once you take action on this tip. Nothing completely changes overnight but if you start today, you will start to see a difference immediately.