Greg Voisen
Hey, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining me from, you're in what city right now today? Never know when authors are traveling.

Aaron Salko
Basking Ridge, New Jersey.

Greg Voisen
Is in New Jersey, which is his hometown. And we have Aaron Salko on. And he has a book called The 9th Stratum: Your Guide to High Performance. And you can see it over his shoulder, and you can see it in front of me too. I'm gonna say I complimented him already this morning, but probably one of the best laid out books to actually go through it. From an instructional standpoint of what you need to do. It's very instructional, very informative, a lot of wisdom. And if you're looking for high performance, Aaron and the company that Aaron works with is a place to actually get that
high performance. So Aaron is the founder and creator of the ninth stratum. He's a sales management professional with the innovative solution-based company, Stephen Gould. Aaron has demonstrated history of talent development, innovation, creativity, and organizational growth for more than two decades. He's focused on human performance in both career and life in highly competitive entrepreneurial based global sales environment, with an intense concentration on exploring how the science and I want to report that science underlying and mechanisms of human behavior, psychology and social interaction, and human psychology apply to performance. His life's desire is to help individuals attain the highest level of performance in order to achieve success in their career, and find purpose and fulfillment in life. I'm going to underline purpose and fulfillment as well, because that's the key to getting to high performance. And his new book is called The 9th Stratum, as we said, Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron Salko
Greg, thank you so much for having me.

Greg Voisen
Oh, you're so welcome. And thanks for taking this time today, you know, to impart not only what this book is about, but really what people need to change in their life to get there, right. And it's always about a change that we all have to make, right. And with that, you wrote in the preface of the book, with a desire to make a difference in people's lives by providing a pathway for others to follow in order to optimize their performance, and improve their trajectory. I love that, for future success. With regards to your personal story, I got very brief with our listeners on your personal story. What compelled you to change your own trajectory and make changes to become a higher performer? Because I know, you know, look, there's always that ego inside our head, we're not enough. And then the question is, where is enough? And when do you really just love yourselves for who you are? Right? Because at some point, you know, I've worked with mountain climbers climbed all the highest SEVEN, SEVEN Summit, these guys are just pretty intense individuals. So in your own life, what was it that kind of got you that to say, Okay, I'm gonna join this company, I'm gonna write a book. I'm gonna be the guy that's about high performance.

Aaron Salko
Yeah, I mean, I obviously we all don't start out like that. performance in general is very intriguing, I think to all of us, you know, how do we get better? How are we better than we are yesterday? How do we stay on top once we get there. But my own personal story has a lot of ups and downs of of performance, you know, as a, as growing up in a in a, in a great hard working household. There wasn't a lot of acknowledgement for work, you know, so you work with something we did, right? I remember at age seven, standing on a milk crate Washington dishes at my family's restaurant. And, you know, as a classic Gen XOR. When we don't get acknowledged for work, what do we do? Work harder, right? We work towards that acknowledgement. And, you know, that's sort of the path I followed, you know, whether it was sports, whether it was a job. Once I got into college, you know, I was kind of lost and didn't really know what to do. My father was a psychologist, my mother was an educator. And, you know, one of the main things that that propelled my initial desire to achieve was my father had passed away at the age of at the age of 43. I was about 17 years old, and I had a younger brother younger sister. And you know that that showed me Yeah, okay, you know, you need to now take this and go, because there's not going to be a lot of support, I told my mom, hey, take care, take care of my brother and sister I got I got this. And so that that I think really propelled me on my on my trajectory for trying to achieve the highest type of performance I could find. And there's a lot of failures along the way, you know, I got into college didn't know what I wanted to do. I discovered sports medicine and physical therapy, and jumped into that, and came out and realized that wasn't what I wanted to do. And ended up working for this company, Steven Gould Corporation, which is a global solutions expert. And basically, it was something I had never done. You know, sales was, I guess, ingrained with in in me due to the restaurant business. But I'm hopping into this, I had to go and learn and, and understand business and supply chains and learn manufacturing. And so what I did was I dove into books. And I began to learn and then apply, and then try to improve. And so there's the, you know, there's that first that first jump, or that first pathway into trying to reach the pinnacles that I that I wanted in my career, which was okay, how do I become the best salesperson in this in this environment? Like,

Greg Voisen
interesting, there's kind of a common theme I've interviewed so many people, including myself, and you know, when, in this case, I was the youngest, not the oldest lose of father at an early age. The responsibility response ability that you choose to take on requires you to become a higher performer. I think it's part of the situation. I'm not saying all men who've lost their fathers at early ages, become high performers, what I am going to say is, if I probably did a survey, you'd probably find that many of them took on much more responsibility. Sometimes that creates anger in people, and frustration for having to do that. And for other people, it propels them. And I think what we're looking at is the psychology of this propelling a new trajectory, as you say, in other words, how do I get there, and you mentioned in the night stratum, it's a daily operating stratum of high performers, you state that it's the highest level of performance in pursuit of self mastery. And we've gone from zero to 100 on the scale in about three seconds here. There's a lot of levels in between, and we're gonna get to those, I just want to limit the phone as long as but can you? Can you what are the three critical elements of performance at this level? Yeah, let's chop and then we'll go back down and we'll work our way through the stratum.

Aaron Salko
Hey, why not? Right. Right. There's no rules to this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you know, Greg, I do want to point out one thing that you mentioned, which is really important, to anyone out there, that's going through that, that time in their lives, you know, when my father passed away, there's a decision, we all come that decision, we can go left or we can go right. And, you know, we do have to get through those emotions of anger. And you go through that whole that whole process. But yeah, it came down to decision that I had to make my own and say, Okay, I want to fight for this, I want to go go to that next level. Well,

Greg Voisen
you know, think about this, you become a study or a physiology, psychology, human performance. You said, you know, sports medicine, let's just just look at that. Anything having to do with an athlete or performance has to do with Mind, Body Spirit? The ninth stratum is the connection between mind body spirit. And if people think they're going to leave body out, they're totally wrong. Because you're not going to get to the ninth stratum. It's probably one of the most important things. What do you do for the care and feeding of a great body that can perform every day? I know because I'm going to be 70 years old in July and to actually keep on top of things, you've really got to have a program. Right? Amen. Okay, no, no, I just tell people, you know, Everett, this top, you know, what are the three critical elements? Because I think they're important you point them out that

Aaron Salko
they are they are so you know, the nine stratum is that level of high performance, right? And when we talk about a specific skill or something that you're performing in the ninth at, you know, what we look for is, how high is your competency, you should have the highest degree of competency of that skill, your consistency and application of that skill set should be daily. And then the last part of it is your ability to, to formulate your own process and teach that process to others. That's when you know you've attained the ninth stratum in anything that you're doing, whether it's a skill or maybe a career task or anything in life.

Greg Voisen
So, Aaron, there's a lot of listeners out there. And I think there's a pretty common question. How do we make ourselves first? Okay, so here's the deal. I'm a doctor, I'm a nurse, I gotta go into the hospital and do surgeries. I got to take care of people by their bedside. Oh, I was supposed to exercise today. Oh, it's supposed to read last night? Oh, I was supposed to do something that's piling up. But because of the demands in my life, and this is everybody, Aaron, how do they make themselves first because I think most people there, they basically will postpone because they have all these other things that said, they have to do it. Yeah,

Aaron Salko
Greg, there's two things that no one can give to us. You know, I can give you the pathway to high performance, but I can't give you two things. The desire and effort. Now, you have desire and effort. Okay, we've got we've got the basic, we got the foundation now, you know, and putting yourself first is so important. There's so many ways we can make excuses. Not too. But part of the curriculum of the nine stratum is developing those performance based routines, and really analyzing self-reflecting and analyzing, okay, where do I begin to position myself so that I can take advantage of personal health? How do I make changes for my personal nutrition? How do I fit time in for personal development? You know, three critical things. And trust me, there's time, if you look, you'll find it? How much time do we spend scrolling, you know, in the mornings before work, when we can be using that time to set ourselves up for a stronger day with higher focus, because we've had a good breakfast we've worked out and we bathed the brain in all the chemicals that that exercise releases, right. And then, you know, getting to that point where we're walking into work with a calm mind, because we haven't been distracted or, or set off by triggers, in social media, in politics in whatever it is that we're reading, before we get into the workplace. How

Greg Voisen
balance is a big part of that. And you've outlined 45 skills and categories. You have mentality. So within these mentality, cognitive abilities, mastery of emotions, social interactions, and personal health. Let's not leave any of those out. Can you speak with the listeners about some of the skills because there's 45 of them? And I don't think we have time to cover all 45 in those categories, but then really pick out some, but more importantly, Aaron, how can we develop them and take time for them and put them as a priority? Yeah, because it's easy to talk about these things. It's very challenging area, and as you know, to actually execute on.

Aaron Salko
I agree, Greg, and you 45 Sounds very intimidating. I've gotten that feedback. But the way we break it down is we've broken down the 45 into what is the essence of human performance and us went through it and Itali cognitively has mastered emotion, social interaction, personal health, everybody forgets about personal health, by the way. And so if you look at all these skills within it, you can look at your career and analyze your career or your aspirations and say, Okay, what are the critical skills necessary for me to be high performing in that career, and you don't have to develop in yourself, you can go ask somebody who you feel is high performing the career and say, Hey, here's a list. What makes you great at your job, and they'll pick them out, give me 10, right, they'll pick them out, and now you have your 10. And that's when you begin to lean in and go through the strategies of learning the nine strategies of performance, utilizing that to get to your goal. And when you look at the nine streams of performance, you know, it's a learning scale, it's not good or bad. It's not A or B. It's not a Likert scale of like, always, or sometimes this is a self-analysis of where you are in the learning and improvement and then self-mastery of these skills.

Greg Voisen
So I think, I think for my listeners, sorry, but this book is also, it's hard to call it a manual, but I'm almost going to call it a manual, okay? Because once you get this listeners this book, you literally can go through this and almost treat it back as a reference guide, go back to it as a reference guide, keep going back, I encourage you reading it and highlighting it in between, and then taking those highlights and take a picture with your phone and then shoot a shot, and maybe put that piece of paper somewhere near your desk, because that would be the synopsis version of this book. Now, use you state that understanding the fundamentals of the nine traits of high performance are important. To attaining the ninth stratum I said we started at the ninth. So there's a lot of them in between. There's eight before we get to the nine, what are the nine traits? And what are some of the ways to develop and inculcate those traits into our being into our essence? It's, it's like a dude, you and I can sit here and talk all day long. But unless somebody knows the psychology, and how it relates to the physiology, and how that relates to the neuro pathways to actually make this happen. It's like just psychobabble. Yeah,

Aaron Salko
Veritas. Right, right, exactly.

Greg Voisen
So I'm not saying that the listeners will get it all. But if you could say, hey, from a psychological standpoint, maybe this is what you might want to think about, right? Yeah,

Aaron Salko
yeah, in the nine traits, you know, studying high performers, we not only stayed high performers, and we studied the low performers to write the low performers taught us the most. But you know, when we look at traits of high performance, all these traits are are relative to skills that that embody the traits. And so you know, to go through a couple of them, you have gold focused, right, those who embark on the journey to become a leader in their field do so in order to attain specific life goals. These people have traits of high drive, perseverance, visionary thinking, focus and organization, right. And so what we did with these traits is, what do you relate to? What rings what rings true in your life, as you self reflect of who you are as an individual, you know, you have other traits, such as knowledge driven, network driven, experience focused, personal growth driven, and then disciplined and self evaluation, right? These are those nine traits that we see high performers possessing, as they move through, and it's not just one trait many high performers possess, you know, eight are all not nine sometimes. But all these traits have those, those skills that are related to them. And so you can look at skills and you can say, okay, hey, this is the trait I most likely agree with, or, you know, feel feel emotionally attached to. And then you lean in, say, Okay, what other traits should I be began to develop?

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, in high performers, we've had Steven Kotler on here, so many times, and I mentioned this to you before, ya know, when you're trying to flow genome project or flow research project, and you're trying to act flow, you know, to get to the highest level of performance, and I've had a lot of high performance coaches that have been on the show. There are some things and one of the big things about people that are high performance is they're curious. The first. Yeah, they're highly curious, they always want more knowledge about something, right? But then they define a purpose. Okay, which drives for that curiosity lead to finding a purpose in something maybe in one thing, I'm going to be the highest performer in high jumping, and I'm going to be the highest performer in basketball, whatever it might be, I'm using sports, but it could be in a lot of different things, right? So you have a graph in the book that shows the nine stratums. Now we're gonna get to the nine stratums of performance is very visually compelling that graph I mean, I hopefully what I can do is have my assistant pop this graph up during this video portion of this, but if you're listening on audio right now, trust me, go to the website, and check out his website at stratum s-t-r-a-t-u-m hyphen nine.com. And find this graph. Because the graph is very important. And I say much like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Your chart addresses the scale of knowledge, our consistency of application, and our competency. So, when you look at the graph, it's got that that's the axes of the graph that are required to reach the top realm of performance, which you're calling the ninth stratum. I love the terminology. Can you speak about these stratums in generality, so the listeners can get some perspective, because some people are going to be listening to this on audio, and they're not going to get it. But if you are getting to it, I'm gonna get I'm gonna say, go to stratum hyphen nine.com. If you do anything, grant a copy of Aaron's graph, because once you look at the graph, you're going to kind of get the whole book. But the reality is do get the graph. Okay, and you have the tool on there, right over on the section, we can actually go to Resources, or performance library or the night stratum resources. So just go to the ninth stratum resources, take the assessment, and get the damn graph. That's all you got to do. And by the book,

Aaron Salko
All right, it's just that easy. It's just that easy.

Greg Voisen
So just tell us about this graph. I mean, I think the graph is exciting, because it's a new way to look at it. It

Aaron Salko
is it is and you know, I'll break it down real simple. This is the graph and you can look at it and be like, Okay, there's some complexity here. But basically, the nice jobs are very simple. So first stratum, right? You have no idea what the skill is, you know, you've not paid attention to it, it might just be a behavior, right? The second stratum, well, you know what the skill is, but you might be stuck in your ways. You know, it might be just again, you're, you're just in a behavior, more or less. My

Greg Voisen
third thing, I'm sorry, I gotta say this, because what you are saying says to me, and, and I know it's in the book somewhere. awareness, awareness, awareness. If you're unaware, one simple word is aware of what you're doing. You know, I've always said, Aaron, and I'm gonna let you go. Because I want to make sure you get this in you, if you had a camera, watch you all day long, and somebody then played back the video, would you like what you saw? Probably not. Point made. So if you want to get to the ninth stratum, now have someone play a camera. And now play it back and say, I was being at my best. Yeah, right. No matter what it is, how you treat people, how you treat others, how you speak to people, how you walk the gym, you go to all that stuff. So tell us this graph. Because this thing is so cool. That right now, no

Aaron Salko
worries. So so we got past the second stratum, which is you're now aware of the skill, but you really don't care about you know how it's affecting your performance, then you get to the third stratum. And that's the aha moment that everybody has whether you got negative feedback, like, Hey, you got to fix this skill, right? It's affecting the way you're performing. It's affecting your career. And the person goes, oh, boy, I better get this this right. So what do they do? The fourth stratum, they go and seek the tools, the resources, the coaching, so they're looking for information. In the fifth stratum, they've they've attained that information, right? And then they begin to absorb the knowledge, they begin to use the coach, they begin to read the book, right? Watch the video. And then they get to the six times six stratum is the scariest for everybody. Why? Because you finally have to apply the knowledge that you just learned. And guess what, you're not going to be good at it. Nobody is the first time. So take that step into the sixth stratum. be messy, understand you're doing something new, and embrace it. Because the sixth stratum then gets you to the seventh district seventh stratum, where you begin to practice the skill. And your your With practice, you gain more awareness of when you screw up, right, you're hyper aware of that you're getting more consistent, you know, you want to improve, right? Because you see that you see the light at the end of tunnel, then you get to the eighth stratum. And man at the same time you got it dialed in, right. You're like, Hey, I do this all the time. You know, I've got a good process for it. You know, I'm gaining a lot of confidence in this skill. And then that leads to the nine strapping in a nice day for my

Greg Voisen
Larry go. You guys can actually see what he's talking about. So go ahead, Aaron. That's it. Absolutely

Aaron Salko
finished. It finished strong with nine stratum, right? That is the stratum of teaching and mastery, you're highly consistent. You know, you're you're you're very competent in the skill, you've actually developed your own process for the skill and man, you can teach that process to others. And so that is what that high performance that that mastery of the skill looks like. And the one thing about the nice stratum is, you know, it's not perfection. I don't like the word perfection. I don't believe it exists. But I do believe that when you reach the nice drown, you're always in pursuit of perfection. And we all know that doesn't exist. So you're always looking to improve. Every day you wake up, asking yourself, How can I be better than I was yesterday. And that is what the nine strategy is all about?

Greg Voisen
Well look, for my listeners, I threw this up because it's visually it's so compelling and important, you know, to go Vermont aware, I'm concerned, which is the absence of knowledge, to seeking knowledge, realization, seeking to attainment and knowledge attaining to application of knowledge, practicing to the continuous pursuit of knowledge, you'll notice there's one word in there. knowledge, knowledge, every time it's knowledge, but knowledge can only be attained by either somebody outside providing you new knowledge, or you knowing and applying what you know. Yeah.

Aaron Salko
Yeah. I got to say a quick story. I decided that I wanted to make my own bread. I've never been prepping my entire life. And I decided to make bread one day, and it was a bust and I took it out of the oven, and I said, Hey, kids, my two daughters, 14 and 11. I said, Hey, kids. This is dad's six stratum bread. So I'm, I'm practicing making bread right now. And it was it wasn't great. But guess what? Yesterday I threw another batch in and it got better. So now I'm practicing the seven stratum. There you go, it's that simple.

Greg Voisen
And it isn't, and it isn't gluten free bread. It might be well, if it is gluten free bread, it's a lot harder to make, which is made, which is why you made some mistakes, but you can get as you know, I just had Michael kirpan on here. Did a National Geographic on the five power foods. And you know, the flour. The flour we have in the United States is horrible. But the flour, the flour in Europe? Look, you don't need to go gluten free if you bring in European flour.

Aaron Salko
I agree with you. 100%.

Greg Voisen
Okay, so the reality is, is that it's all about what we've done in growing our wheat here in this country. Actually, the Blue Zones guy was on here as well. And you know, when you speak to these gentlemen who studied this all their life, you're like sitting here going, okay, these guys know what they're talking about. We have people living its longevity there living over 100 years old in these regions of the country. Dan was just blew my mind with the interview that I did with him. And then kirpan and then right there at Cleveland Clinic, we're going to have Michael Rosen on speaking about the Golden Age or the golden change whatever its title is book. But the point is, is that, look, you are trying to make gluten free bread. That's a tough one to make. So your book is really organized? Well, I've said that three times so far. Could you tell the people how the curriculum has been developed? And then give a brief overview of the chapters in the consistency of cadence of learning? Because, you know, look, this is not like a lot of books, I'm just gonna say that it's really like, Hey, I'm gonna go to class. Okay, you're gonna go to class, go to class, 10 to 15 minutes a day, read 10 pages, apply what you do. And this book has actually been put together in a cadence, right, that you can do that.

Aaron Salko
100% and I appreciate that. Immensely. You know, I'm a, I'm a lifelong learner, I love to learn. And the one thing I didn't like about learning is when somebody said, Hey, just go do this, because I said, so. Right. And that is not what I wanted to do in this book, and that I didn't, I backed everything with the sciences of psychology, physiology, human biology, right to make sure that people understood why I'm telling you to do this, in order to improve your performance. And it's, I want it almost like raise my hand say, Hey, listen, don't don't look at me. I'm, I'm going off the science here. And if you do this, you're going to see a result. And so if you look at the curriculum of the book, we start with the basics. We obviously we go over the foundation of nine stratum, all the 45 performance base skills, and what that looks like and how to understand it. But then we get right into the first chapter, which is how are you showing up? You know, how are you presenting yourself to the world? What do you when you get dressed? Do you feel radiant and confident or your clothes drab and they don't make you feel Your confidence so that you can present yourself well. And so there's a performance lift right there just wearing things that make you feel good and make you look good.

Greg Voisen
Right? Can I bet can I do just like, can I be just like Steve Jobs, I always put my black T shirt on in the morning, you know, we he would always show up, the only thing you ever had on was a pair of jeans and a T shirt. Right? And if that makes you feel good, I think here's the point. You know, in today's world, dressing for success is a little different. We see plenty of people that are billionaires that don't look like they're dressing for success, right? They're not wearing $3,000 suits from, you know, Brooks Brothers or whatever. And I think you're right, though. It's what makes you feel good, right? And I've seen people get on TED talks, and you think, wow, what are they wearing? Right? But the reality when they opened their mouth, you didn't care what they were wearing. Because they had the knowledge right? Now I know you're coming from the sales world. So in the sales world, it's kind of like, okay, Greg's got his suit jacket on today, kind of thing. So I think it's important, but I'm just here to say, the book is laid out in like a curriculum, but don't look at it. That way, you can pick it up anywhere, and open it up and learn something, you could just turn to page 105. And start reading. It's great that way. Now, you speak about the achievement mindset. And the truth of first impressions. It's what I just was talking about, you know, first impression is oh, well, okay. That Steve Jobs done looks so good, shaggy beard, whatever. Can you speak to this achievement mindset and how to make better first impressions. And I want to go to the psychology if you can, because I know, you know, this, of listening.

Aaron Salko
Man, one of the most important performance based skills, can't stress it enough. But you know, that that achievement mindset, you know, is the one that you don't think about failure, you know, failure is there as a guide. It's used strategically, like, how will this fail, you know, and how to mitigate failure, but it's not like, I'm going to fail. So the achievement mindset is built through these discipline and habits and routines that we talked about in the book, and how to get from, you know, even the stratums, if you look at the psychology of goal setting, or of mindset, you know, it's achieving those little goals to gain confidence. So when you gain confidence, you're, you're more apt to drive for performance. Because because you know, you can, right, that's, that's the epitome of the nine stratums. But, you know, the achievement mindset is, if you have that mindset, the way you're presenting yourself to the world, and the first impressions you're making, well, look, you're showing up more confident, you're you've practiced, you know, are you so so you know, what your body language looks like, you know, how your emotions can affect others, and you know, how to listen and listen with empathy to, you know, just listen to the words, you know, try to really understand what the person that you're engaging with is going through. And then that's when the magic really begins to happen.

Greg Voisen
Yeah, and, you know, you were talking about this confidence and confidence goes along with people's fear of failure. And I actually think many times, I'm gonna flip this, and a lot of my listeners have heard this, you have a fear of success. You don't really have the fear of failure, but you do, you know, if there's a lack of confidence, or you see somebody eroding in an area, and they say, Oh, I'm afraid of and what are you afraid of? And then you say, really, are you afraid of that? Are you really afraid of the opposite of that? Which is really, you know, if this case, oh, I'm afraid I'm gonna go broke? Or no, are you afraid of having a lot of money and what that might bring, or the challenges that might come from that? And it's not just money, its fame, its money, its fortune, its success. It's all the other things that go along with it.

Aaron Salko
I like that point. Many times, you know, our fears, our self imposed prisons, right, you know, we begin to fear because our turbulent mind is going down all these pathways. And really, what we should be looking at fear is we should be embracing fear because fear is really just our subconscious telling us, Hey, I haven't experienced this yet. I don't have the data to back it up or to understand what to do next. And that's when we need to embrace fear, lean into the fear and just and go To understand that, hey, we're not going to be great at first, we're gonna make mistakes. It's a new experience. But that's what gets you again, that seventh, eighth and ninth straddle. Totally, and,

Greg Voisen
but fear, too, can have the physiological attachment of anxiety associated with it. And I know many people then go into having anxiety attacks. I'm not going to say this, because I'm not a doctor. But I've been around this enough. And I've spoken to enough doctors, that if you move your body more, you're going to reduce the propensity toward those anxiety attacks. What I mean by that is, well, don't just go get Prozac because some doctor said, here's some Prozac for your anxiety. Basically, do Tai Chi, do yoga, do meditation, try every alternative practice first, before you actually go down the medication route. And and if you would do that, you might find you might not need that. And I think anxiety comes from that fear, that fear is constantly with you, I get that it can be debilitating. In my life, I used to go through a panic attack. So I get this folks. You have panic attacks the real, I get that it's real, it's physiologically it's happening. But to break that cycle, that's what we're talking about. You need to break the way in which you have planned your day, so that you can get through that. And I know I'm talking to a lot of listeners out there. Because there's a lot of people that deal with anxiety and still have anxiety. I'd like for you to address the key points of focus, which include routine. So we're just talking about a new routine, new habits. All right. I've had all the habit guides on here, clear, you name them. They've all they've all been on. Can you speak to the achievement mindset and how to make better first impression? Oh, we covered that. Sorry, that was me. I got the wrong question, folks. We'll edit that. Let's go back up, and we'll edit this. I'd like for you to address the key points of focus, which include routine habits and discipline. How do these critical elements help us achieve night? Stratum? Those three things?

Aaron Salko
Yeah, probably the most important things we can do in our life. You know, we all have routines, sometimes we have routines around our pets, biological needs, you know, time to walk the dog. You know, but the routines themselves don't necessarily form good habits, and good habits. You know, a habit is a habit, whether it's good or bad. You know, it's the discipline within the routine, that helps to set the habit. Right. And so I see I talked to a lot of people and they say, you know, here's, here's what my morning looks like, and I hear all these variations every morning. You know, it's there's never a consistency in what they're doing. And it causes them that stress, it causes them that anxiety. So one of the basics that I teach is okay, let's let's get a morning routine. down that works for your schedule. Everybody's schedule is different. But there are five things we can do every morning that set the stage for the achievement mindset, and the performance mindset. The first one is probably the hardest one that everybody deals with. But it's the easiest one, set the alarm and wake up at the bell. Right? No snooze button because we know as soon as we hit that snooze button, our brain begins to bathe us with that with the with the sleep hormones again, and we try to get back down into that deep sleep cycle.

Greg Voisen
So I add something Aaron, can I absolutely. All the psychology, all the studies, sleep is one of the most important things. So if you're not getting enough sleep, go to bed earlier. Just clear, clear and simple. Because eight hours of sleep is one of the most critical things to your performance. And getting a good night's rest too. You know, I know I have the sleep app on my watch from Apple. A lot of times my wife says Why am I wearing that to bed? The reality is is because I do want to look at the analytics. I want to see how much my heart rate is dip. I want to see how long I was in deep REM Yeah, I know I don't have mine on right now. But the point is, is that it really seriously I can't stress this enough. A good night's sleep is probably one of the best things for your performance.

Aaron Salko
I couldn't agree more. I'm so glad you said that. And it's regard

Greg Voisen
regardless of what time you wake up or the alarm goes off because I do know there's many times in a cold morning you want to just crawl back under the covers and not get on the peloton bike which was yesterday morning. I was like yeah, no, I'm not going to do that. But the point well As is that habit, the new habit that you've formed is important knowing that that's better for you than crawling back under the cover. Oh,

Aaron Salko
yeah, in the book, like, like I said, like, I'm not just going to tell you to do it, I'm gonna say, Okay, here's how to do it, you know, you're gonna put your stuff that you need, in another room, we're gonna go in, turn the lights on, right? And then you're gonna wake shake to wake, right? And then you're gonna get your body into that cycle of, okay, now I'm awake, let's, let's move, let's move forward. But you know, it is It's waking up at the alarm. And then it's like, okay, you know, let's get some physical activity and physical activity in the first part of the day has been shown to increase performance, increase focus, increase mental, your positive mental state. So, you know, in less than 30 minutes, all you need, just set some time aside.

Greg Voisen
And, you know, I don't care if you have a yoga app on your iPad, or whatever device you're using, you know, a lot of stuff I have to do, because, look, I started here at seven with you. The reality is, is that some movement of some type, whether it's walking the dogs, or it's doing something like that, as simple as that, but getting the body moving, because you're going to feel so much better. I'm glad we covered that, because it's such a key area. Now, in the time remaining, I have two more questions for you. I picked a quote out from your book. And I really love this quote from George Bernard Shaw, Shaw, the single biggest problem in communications is the illusion is the illusion that it has taken place. Okay. Can you address some of the types of communications and how utilizing these will assist us in improving being heard, underline, and reaching heightened levels of strategy? Performance?

Aaron Salko
Yeah, and we can go back and you just reflect on our own experiences with with individuals who are bad communicators, right? You never know what they're what they're driving yet, the messages are always unclear, sometimes it's rushed. And you know, so communication is one of those, those key performance based skills we really need to focus in on. And in the book, that's one of the chapters, we focus only on the communication. It's, it's verbal, nonverbal, and written communication, right, especially in this day and age with texts and tone in texts. Right? We have to be really careful of that. And so and zoom, here we go. This is, this is our new way. Yeah. But yeah, it you know, we go through the process of understanding nonverbal communication and, and then also working on your verbal communication, whether it's, you know, your pitch, whether it's your tone, you know, there's there's all these things we can do as, as people trying to communicate the cadence of our communication, you know, that we that we can do to raise our performance and even in emails, right? How many times have you got an email, it's like, 17 pages long, you're like, Whoa, you know, what are the key points in this thing, I don't even pull them out. And it's really trying to boil that down so that you're clear, concise, and organized three things in writing an email. So you want somebody understand what the task is or what you need. Alright, lose the fluff. Let's just dive into it. And make sure that you have a little bit of finesse in there. So you're saying hello, hope you're having a great morning? Here's what here's the tasks at hand, and how can how can we work on this in a collaborative way, right. So that's,

Greg Voisen
and like you said, the nonverbal communication, the way you hold your body, you know, you come in a meeting with your arms crossed that day, I was doing a sales training, because I still do that. And as young man had his arms crossed, and you know, you get a little bit older, you just call people out on their shit. And I said, your arms are crossed, which means you're really not receptive to what I'm saying. So if you want to go out of the room and uncross your arms and come back with a different attitude, I'm good with that. But other than that, don't come to the sales meeting. Greg, How about how about this one? Yeah, what exactly. Does that tell you? So I know that it I know it takes big wave us to do that. But you know, what happened after I did that? Every sales meeting that now he comes into, he's totally alive, awake, and he's engaged, you know? So it was like, maybe it just took me calling him out on it to be able to make it happen, but it was it was what it was.

Aaron Salko
Aaron, you gave him good feedback. You gave him good feedback. Yeah.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. You know, and I wasn't afraid to do it. I think maybe if I had been younger, I might have been afraid to do that with somebody, but I wasn't afraid. And and I think it was one of the best things for both of us because it built my confidence up Ben being able to say it, and it really got him to think about what he was doing. Right? Yeah. So, you know, this book is filled with stories advice, wisdom about becoming a high performer. high performer means different things to different people. If you were to synopsize your book and provide three practical steps that people can take to move up the stratum, what would you say? The saintly, Claire, this is what you should inculcate into your being to be a better person and to reach the night stratum as much as possible.

Aaron Salko
Yeah, the first, the first and most important thing you can do is really just self reflection. You know, where are you at today? You know, what are you happy with? What are you striving to be where you want to go? You know, and do you have desire and effort to achieve achieve what you want? Because a lot of us don't know, until we really sit down and think about, okay, hey, am I happy? where I'm at right now? You might, am I getting all the five categories of performance? Where am I? Where am I deficient? By the way, the S nine self assessment on the surrounding a website can help with that can help you determine what skills you need to really work on. But second second to that is you need to, you need to now take action, right, you need to put the effort into place. And it is it's it's getting into that fourth stratum where you begin to seek tools and resource resources and coaching, you know, you have to be a sponge. Life is not about knowing everything. It's about saying I don't know everything, and I want to learn as much as I possibly can. Right? And then you know, taking those next steps to begin to apply, you've got to understand fear, and you've got to embrace it. And you've got to be able to recognize when it's happening and say, Yeah, this is fear. All right, I'm experiencing something new right now. And you're turning that turning that on its head. And you know, that's what's gonna get you into that seventh and eighth, ninth stratum. And then, you know, make sure that when you're doing all this, you're looking to get to the level where you can then become a performance leader. We talk about performance leadership a lot. What is a performance leader, somebody who, who has achieved something, they're really good at something they have an expertise? And what are they doing, they're gonna go out to the masses of the people that need help. They're going to be altruistic in their approach, and they're gonna say, Hey, let me let me show you something. Let me show you what I've learned. We help you get to that next level. That's what true mastery and nine stratum is all about.

Greg Voisen
Well, those three tips are specially the self reflection. I will say that, because that's where it starts. Okay. And for all my listeners, go get a copy of the night stratum, the night stratum from Aaron salco. You can get it at Amazon. And then the next thing is go take that assessment, the f dash nine assessment at his website, and then they're going to send you the feedback after you take the assessment because then you're going to see where you are. Because the self assessment is like self reflection. Anyway, let's face it, it's like your I presume I haven't taken it. But I'm going to, because I want to see what it says. Okay. But I want to thank you for being on the show, sharing your knowledge, your wisdom, because if you look at the actual ninth stratum of performance, every word going up the scale of knowledge is knowledge, right? The bottom is competency and over consistency of application. So if you look at those three axes, that's really it. What's the scale of knowledge? What's your competency? And what is the consistency and application? And Aaron, pleasure having you on inside personal growth, sharing your knowledge with us about what it would be like to reach that ninth stratum? I appreciate you. Thank you so much.

Aaron Salko
Thank you for having me, Greg. And, you know, here's to a very strong and prosperous 2024.

Greg Voisen
Thanks, Erin. Have a good holiday season.

Aaron Salko
You too.