#97 Former CEO Of Primerica, John Addison, On Real Leadership

I am honoured to speak with John Addison, CEO of Addison Leadership Group. For 16 years, he was Co-CEO of Primerica, a financial service business with over 100,000 representatives, before embarking on his own entrepreneurial journey and teaching thousands of people around the world how to become the leaders and humans they want to be. Max Out Insights: • If you want to be the best, you must learn from the best. They’ll have the experience and expertise of past failures intertwined with passion and endless drive for what they do. • Always be yourself. Adapt all your learnings to your own style and develop who you are, but always be you. • Failure is a crucial step to achieving success, it’s part of the whole process. It’s a tool that helps us refine our path and allow us to learn what works and what does not. • All successful companies revolve around human needs. It’s a people’s business, not a financial business. It’s all about learning how to deal with people and practicing it. • When you’re a leader you need people’s skills, ability to connect, communicate and move people. If you develop an ability to inspire, help and provide trust you can accomplish amazing things. • Capitalize on the areas you excel at. Focusing only on weakness, you will only grow in the areas where you have identified a problem. When too much of your focus goes toward problems, you cripple your ability to fully make use of your strengths. • Work on your inner tranquillity and use it to generate peaceful power. Great leaders calm things down and your state of mind dictates if you’re moving your organization in the right direction or not. Max Out Quotes: • “Take the best, leave the rest and turn what you learned into you.” • “You have to be true to yourself, work on yourself and be the best you that you can be.” • “We have to find within us the strength, compassion and power to do great things.” • “When you are the person responsible for moving an organization or a group forward, you got to figure out how to compromise.” • “The greatest ability is likeability.” • “My biggest definition of success is that you are happy.” • “If you’re waiting on circumstances to be happy, you never will.” • “A peaceful mind and core generate power.” • “Great leaders calm things down.” • “You make much better decisions when you’re calm.” • “Get up everyday and find a reason to be happy.” Connect with John: You can find in his website all contact and social media info. https://johnaddisonleadership.com/ Make sure to take your skills to the next-level with his book "Real Leadership."