Tell any great leader you’re looking to better yourself and they’ll likely offer this advice: Grab a book. So much can be learned from the stories and experiences of others. Our leaders at N2 agree, and it’s why they put together a recommended reading list for our team. In honor of “Read a Book Day,” here’s a list of six must-reads for anyone aiming for greatness. Happy Reading!

1. GOOD TO GREAT, JIM COLLINS

Author Jim Collins long pondered the question, “Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?” Through his research of companies that made huge improvements in their performance over time, Collins found that it is possible. It came down to a corporate culture that found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. This book is essentially a well-reasoned road map to excellence.

2. LEADERSHIP 101, JOHN C. MAXWELL

Drawing from a number of his bestsellers, this book dives into principles that have become Dr. Maxwell’s trademark style. He focuses on essential and proven qualities necessary for true leadership: influence, integrity, attitude, vision, problem-solving, and self-discipline. Looking for practical steps to develop true leadership in your life and the lives of others? This should be your next read.

3. HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE, DALE CARNEGIE 

This classic is just as useful today as it was when it was first published in 1937. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to “the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people.” Want to know how to deal with people so that they feel important and appreciated? Or how to handle people without making them feel manipulated? This is the book for you.

4. RICH DAD POOR DAD, ROBERT T. KIYOSAKI

This is the story of Robert Kiyosaki and his two dads—his real father and the father of his best friend, his rich dad—and the ways in which both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. The book explodes the myth that you need to earn a high income to be rich and explains the difference between working for money and having your money work for you.

5. GOALS!, BRIAN TRACY 

Why do some people achieve all their goals while others simply dream of having a better life? Bestselling author Brian Tracy shows that the road from frustration to fulfillment is already paved by presenting principles you need to know to make your dreams come true. Using the twenty-one strategies Tracy outlines, you’ll be able to accomplish any goals you set for yourself. This is a must-have on your bookshelf.

6. THE ADVANTAGE, PATRICK M. LENCIONI 

There is a competitive advantage out there that is more powerful than any other. Author Patrick Lencioni argues that the difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are, but more to do with their health. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent, and complete. This book provides leaders with a model for achieving organizational health.

Our Home Office was recently graced with a visit from N2’s Care Team leader, David Clyde. The go-to guy for help and advice on emotional care (anxiety, depression, marriage, you name it), “DC” gathered everyone together for our bi-weekly Lunch and Learn to present on the topic of conflict resolution. What he shared was too good to keep to ourselves, so below is an overview of DC’s thoughts on what causes conflict and how to resolve it.

P.S. For the most accurate experience, be sure to read this post in a thick Irish accent!

IF YOU WANT PEOPLE IN YOUR LIFE, EXPECT CONFLICT.

Unless you move somewhere with a population of zero, conflict will come your way. It’s not something we can easily escape.

Think about the last time you were in a conflict with someone. When asked the reason for it, you may have responded with if he would only…, or she has no respect for…, or if they could just… But, here’s the thing: your biggest problem in conflict is not the other person – it’s you.

Our heart desires certain things – peace, comfort, control, approval, etc. – and when we don’t get those things from people, the negative feelings from unmet needs come out. The people we are in conflict with are simply instruments that expose what is already within us.

HOW DO WE RESOLVE CONFLICT IF OUR HEART IS THE PROBLEM?

The solution always depends on the diagnosis. Common “solutions” include avoiding the person (which will work so long as you can avoid them and if they aren’t your wife or kids!), compromising (which is fine until someone doesn’t follow through on their commitment), or seeking mediation from a third party (which will work for each individual conflict, but then you will need mediation again and again).

But because conflict is a “heart problem,” then the solution has to be a heart solution, not a symptomatic solution. So, what steps do we take for a heart solution?

1. An honest self-examination – What do you want? Can you see your shortfalls? What are you not getting? Are you able to step out of the ‘heat of conflict’ and take a real look at the situation? How are you reacting when you don’t get what you want?
   
   
2. Let go of what you want – Are you willing to let go of what you want? If not, why not? Do you value the relationship more than the thing you want or desire? What has taken over your desires?
   
   
3. View yourself correctly – What are others seeing in you? Are you showing irrational behavior? Is your avoidance, aggressiveness, and anger impacting others negatively?
   
   
4. Reach out to the people you need to – Can you be sacrificial and love them? Can you encourage them rather than rebuke them? Can you help them in areas of weakness or fear? Will you graciously speak truth into their life rather than fight with them? Can you exchange patience and pursue peace rather than conflict? What action will you take to do right?
   
   
5. Figure out a plan – To help resolve conflict, have you come to a good understanding of yourself and the other person? Have you been honest to one another about your heart and desires? What will it look like to extend love and grace to each other? Can you involve others to help you stick with a plan for peace?

OFTEN, CONFLICT IS A BATTLE BETWEEN PRIDE AND HUMILITY.

While pride makes you more aware of other people’s faults over your own, humility makes you more aware of your own faults. While pride weakens or kills relationships, humility strengthens and builds them. So, there are dangers of not addressing your heart and pride first. No matter what, you will still experience conflict. We have no choice in that. Where you do have a choice is how you will resolve it.

My three-year-old son, Max, is all about hide-and-seek right now. And he hides like a three-year-old – in the exact same spot under our kitchen table every time. He isn’t even quiet.

“Where is Max,” I call out.
“Over here,” he responds.
“Did that come from the closet?”
“No! I’m right here,” Max shares openly.

He likes to be found, but what he really likes is what happens right before – being actively sought after. We don’t just will people to appear from their hiding places. It takes intentional action to find Max, and it’s the same for finding radiators for our team at N2. It’s the constant act of seeking that’s allowed us to build the successful team we have today, and it’s the reason we’re achieving some crazy things.

Two weeks ago, N2 Publishing made the Inc. 5000 list for the seventh year in a row. Yeah, we can admit we’ve had a lot of luck – things that went our way we couldn’t have anticipated. But one thing we make sure we do consistently is seek out great people.

We seek people who take responsibility for their actions. We seek people who want to be better tomorrow than they are today. And we seek people who remain humble no matter what success they may find. We seek people that are radiators, not drains.

Still today, as we continue to grow, we are actively seeking more of these individuals to join our team. There’s a ton of opportunity for the right people to help push us even further. And their success is our success.

We’re grateful for the recognition, but we aren’t done seeking.

Every N2 department plays a role in bringing our community publications to life, but none more literally than our in-house print department. One hard-working team member is Second Shift Print Team Leader JD Salazar who left N2 behind for the career of his dreams, only to realize he’d already found it.

WELCOME ABOARD

In 2012, JD returned from a one-year deployment to Afghanistan faced with an important decision: head off to college or secure a full-time job. He chose the latter. Like many job seekers, he turned to Craigslist for potential opportunities and one post caught his eye – “Printing Press Operator Wanted.”

Though JD knew zip about N2 Publishing, his personality and work ethic fit the bill so he was offered the job. It didn’t take long for him to realize his new work environment was, well, different… and not just because he was surrounded by print equipment.

“I’ve worked at a lot of places and I’ve never experienced a culture like we have at N2,” said JD. “We are all there to make the goals of the company a reality and to have a good time along the way. The culture is what makes us so successful.”

JD quickly felt at home in the N2 print shop, but when his shifts ended, he’d turn to his long-time sideline passion – the stock market. So, when a unique opportunity fell in his lap less than a year after joining N2, he knew he couldn’t pass it up.

JUMPING SHIP

JD received a sponsorship from a capital management firm to become a licensed stockbroker for their company.

“My only real motivation for leaving N2 was the fact that I had a chance to turn a long-time hobby into a well-compensated career,” JD said. “I knew that this was something I had to try or else I would regret it for the rest of my life.”

JD made the leap from printing into the world of stocks and securities. As expected, the pay raise was there, but he quickly learned that this came with a price tag: For stockbrokers, work-life balance is no more than a myth.

“I was at the office for 60ish hours per week, and when I was at home, I spent all my time reading, analyzing, and trying to make sense of the stock market,” JD said. “Having just come off a long deployment with the Army a year before, my family wasn’t very happy with me focusing all my attention on something else.”

It’s one thing to jump into a career with little flex time, but coming from a job where work-life balance is a priority makes the stressful, time-consuming opportunities that much harder to bear. This assumption proved true for JD.

“After eight or nine months, I decided to come back to N2 for a more balanced and family-oriented career. Because the culture at N2 is so amazing, they accepted me with open arms,” JD said.

“I jumped right back into the print shop and I never looked back.”

JD with girlfriend, Amanda 

BACK ON THE CREW

JD was glad to return to the work family he’d come to see as more than just colleagues. He credits his strong relationships with co-workers and Troy, his supervisor, for why there are “very few days” he doesn’t look forward to work even today, four years later.

“Troy treats us all with respect and doesn’t micromanage. He sets the tone for a relaxed print shop environment,” JD said, “and it has allowed all the guys in the shop to become friends, not just co-workers. A lot of us hang out together outside of work because the N2 culture attracts the type of people that you want to spend a significant amount of time with.”

We hear it time and again: Enjoying who you work with makes such a difference in your day-to-day happiness. But being able to spend quality time with the people you care about outside of work – for JD, his children in particular – is even more paramount, and it’s what drove his decision to seek the N2 lifestyle once again.

“I learned that time with my family is more important than chasing money,” JD said. “N2 gives me the best of both worlds. I’m able to spend a significant amount of time with my kids as well as provide them with a stable life.”

“Time is the most valuable thing we have and my family would rather me spend my time with them than invest it [all] in my career.”

JD's children, Braxton and Ayden

Let’s be honest. Sales can have a bad rap. When someone hears the word salesperson, the truth-bending “used car dealer” stereotype may come to mind. But not all salespeople are created equal, and here’s why: Not all sales jobs are the same.

Take Mark Clark’s story, for example. A five-year N2 veteran and Region Director, he began his career in the mid-nineties as a radio advertising executive in a sales environment much different than that of N2.

THE PRESSURE IS ON

Mark’s early experience is similar to a lot of others’. He began in what’s known as high-pressure sales. His work weeks were bookended by meetings with the local sales manager to basically be told what his goals were for the upcoming week, and then for him to explain how he did.

“I was brought in on the premise of some kind of currently-billing account list that, only after accepting the position, I realized didn’t exist. The expectations were aggressive in terms of the number of calls we had to make, face-to-face meetings to hold, and dollars to generate on a weekly and monthly basis,” Mark said.

Pair the aggressive sales goals with a limited amount of inventory he and his colleagues could sell –only a certain number of commercials available per hour – and what do you get? Pressure. And it’s this pressure that can push people to become, well, pushy.

“You had to be the kind of salesperson who made your clients consider advertisements not only for that month, but to challenge them to think about commercial spots way into the future and to get those contracts signed right then and there. Under those circumstances,” Mark said, “some people did well, and some really didn’t.”

Whether you do well under pressure or not, it’s often the ability to control your own income that makes sales so attractive. Mark, too, chose a commission-based career because he “wanted to find the top.” But for him, that wasn’t even an option before N2.

“There were many times during my radio advertising career I was told that no matter how much more I sold I wasn’t going to make more money,” Mark said. “Basically, they were saying I was capped out of my potential.”

Though he worked in the radio industry for years and years, it was the combination of high pressure and lower-than-desired return that eventually led Mark to seek something better, and we’re sure glad he did!

THE N2 DIFFERENCE

Sometimes Mark sits back and reflects on the fact that he’s essentially doing the same thing today that he was back in 1994 – offering a product as a marketing and advertising solution. Thankfully, the similarities between his past job and N2 end there. For him, one of the most positive changes was the freedom to make his own schedule instead of having the hours he could work dictated by his boss.

“I remember enjoying ramping up my publication in the summer of 2012 and continuing to work hard so that by the summer of 2013 I’d created a lucrative revenue stream. I actually had the option of which days or weeks I wanted to work,” Mark said, “and the days or weeks I didn’t want to work.”

This amount of freedom and control isn’t easy to come by in sales jobs when commission is king. He (and others) are able to take off work and spend valuable time with family thanks to the N2 opportunity to build a long-term residual income base.

“In the radio business, no matter how much I made the month before, my base would start over nearly every month. It’s why my only thoughts were ‘sell, sell, sell.’ At N2, because we have this residual model built, we can choose to sell more and make money on top of the foundation of the base,” said Mark.

“It not only takes away the ebb and flow from my business, but gives me time to focus on building content, creating proper events, and working with clients on crafting the right message.”

Not only does Mark now have the ability to build up a residual income to relieve pressure, but he isn’t pigeonholed into only selling ad space in his individual communities. This was a life-changing – and income-changing – difference coming from an industry where he was limited to selling just for the few stations he represented.

“Here in Indianapolis, we have 18 other pubs under the N2 umbrella,” Mark said, “so when I go meet with a potential advertiser, I have access to sell for any one of them. On the flip side, I have the luxury of knowing my publication is being presented by my fellow ADs so I’m going to generate revenue through no efforts of my own. It’s like having an extra sales staff I don’t have to pay.”

EVERY STORY HAS A MORAL

At N2, we seek people like Mark who have a passion for sales, but even more so for helping businesses promote their products and services to people who can benefit from them. If you’ve experienced the wild world of high-pressure sales and are looking for a better way to reach your (uncapped) potential, we’re waiting for you.

“Here’s what it comes down to,” said Mark. “I’m in a similar career with the kind of schedule that I want to create, and with unlimited income activity. And for certain people who even want to give back a little more, the opportunity to move up into a leadership role in this 13-year-young company exists, and I’m proof of that.”