Touchdown!: Achieving Your Greatness on the Playing Field of Business and Life - Hardcover

Elko, Kevin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0137019602 ISBN 13: 9780137019601

Publisher: Ft Pr, 2009

Synopsis

“I’ve been there when Elko has given one of his famous talks and he really fires everyone up. I’ll never let anyone else speak to my team.”

--Nick Saban, Former Head Coach, LSU, National Football Champions; current Head Coach, University of Alabama Crimson Tide

 

"If I had one choice for someone to work with my firm, I would pick Kevin Elko. He has a unique way to touch people to become the kind of person they were meant to be. When I need a plan for growth, Kevin is my first call."

--Andy Kalbaugh, CEO, Mutual Services (LPL Financial)

 

"Dr. Elko taught me 'You have to dream it to achieve it' and that before championships and pro bowls happen, in your mind they have already occurred. From the moment I learned it I have not only played that way, I have led that way."

--Ed Reed, All Pro Safety, Baltimore Ravens

 

What’s your vision? What’s your passion? What do you want most? This book will help you find it, focus on it, and transform it into reality.

 

Dr. Kevin Elko has spent 20+ years helping people do precisely that: Super Bowl and NCAA Champion athletes and coaches...winning salespeople and corporate executives...audiences who’ve responded with hundreds of standing ovations. His techniques and insights don’t just supercharge performance...they change lives. Now, he’s brought them all together in a single boo--and it may be the greatest motivational book ever written. Elko’s lessons helped the University of Miami build its national championship football team...led Nick Saban to make Elko his team’s only performance consultant...helped NFL all-time leading rusher Emmitt Smith stay relentlessly focused in the face of any challenge. They got what they wanted. Whatever you want, Elko’s message can help you get it, too!

• Build your success brick by brick...until it happens, all of a sudden!
• Seize your season, and become fully alive.
• Gain the certain knowledge that your vision will come true.
• Put aside distractions, identify the price of your vision, and go for it.
• Don’t just claim your success: enjoy it!

From America’s #1 Sports Performance Consultant

 

Breakthrough success happens first in your mind, and then in the world. In this book, Dr. Kevin Elko shows how to build your success one brick at a time...so when it happens, it happens huge. As America’s #1 performance consultant, Elko knows more about preparing for success than anyone. In this book, he shares everything he’s learned working with legendary athletes such as Emmitt Smith, championship coaches like Nick Saban, and thousands of the world’s top businesspeople. If you’re good, he’ll make you great. If you’re great, he’ll make you the best. It’s your turn. It’s your time. Learn what it takes. Do what it takes. Get this book, and make it happen.

 

Forewords by Butch Davis and Jon Dorenbos

Preface by Stewart Emery

About this title

About the Author:

Dr. Kevin Elko is a nationally renowned performance consultant, professional motivational speaker, and author. In the sports world, Dr. Elko has consulted with Louisiana State University Football and Women’s Basketball, University of Alabama Football, the University of Pittsburgh Athletic Department, University of Miami Football, Rutgers University Football, University of Nebraska Football, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Pittsburgh Penguins, the Dallas Cowboys, the New Orleans Saints, the Cleveland Browns, the Miami Dolphins, the Buffalo Bills, and the Philadelphia Eagles. His presentations and personal consultations have had a major impact on the performance objectives of these teams and individual players. He also developed a highly successful personality test that helped various professional football teams evaluate potential draft choices.

 

Kevin’s appeal in the sports world translates directly to the corporate arena. Dr. Elko has consulted with and presented to hundreds of companies, including Travelers Insurance Company, Young Presidents’ Organization, Smith Kline Beecham Consumer Brands, Abbott Diagnostics, Prudential Securities, Smith Barney, Merrill Lynch, Pioneer Investments, and Tyson Foods. Born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Dr. Elko completed his Bachelors in Biology and Coaching Education at California University of Pennsylvania. He went on to West Virginia University where he completed a Masters in Counseling, a Masters in Sports Psychology, a Graduate Certificate in Gerontology, and a Doctorate in Education with a major emphasis in Sport and Counseling.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Preface

Preface

This is a terrific book. My hope is that you read it, practice the principles you find here, and make a great life for yourself. The world needs you to be successful. Touchdown! can help a lot. I’d like to tell you how and why. So please take a few moments and read on.

I used to be an ad man in Australia. My mother and father had been artists—of the mostly starving variety, as I liked to quip. Before I was born, my dad went off to the Second World War where he was injured. He was shipped back to Australia, and after a little while he died. My mom did the best she could, but I didn’t have to be psychic to know we were poor.

Being a reasonably bright lad, I figured that the solution to being poor was to make money, which as far as I could tell back then, was the only reason to get an education and endure going to high school and then on to college. The thing about going to college, as compared to going to high school, was that dropping out was less of a big deal in the 60s. So I dropped out and put my creative genes to work as an advertising photographer and creative director. Turned out I loved it and was really good at it. Which was just as well—in today’s world, not graduating from college is a seriously bad idea.

Since I’d convinced myself that the secret to being happy was to acquire and consume the right stuff, being a creative type in advertising seemed like the perfect career choice. Basically, I became the guy telling you that if you wanted to have a great life, you pretty much had to acquire and consume the right stuff —and that would be our client’s stuff. I was the guy telling you that things actually went better with Coke, that if your deodorant failed your life would, and that if you didn’t use my client’s toothpaste you wouldn’t even get kissed, let alone have a chance for anything else you were hoping for later on.

Then one morning I woke up and realized I had solved the problem of being poor. I had enough stuff to start my own world. Next I reasoned that if having enough stuff was going to make me feel successful and happy on the inside, it would’ve worked by now. It hadn’t. And it didn’t seem like more stuff would work any better. So I dusted off my college philosophy and psychology textbooks and began to realize that living successfully had to happen on the inside before it could happen on the outside. Then one day I came across a copy of Look magazine. Th e issue editor, George Leonard, was talking about a thing called the Human Potential Movement happening in California. It was about people transforming their lives. Sounded like just what I needed. He reported that San Francisco was Ground Zero. In Australia it was the summer of ’70. I made plans.

I got on a Qantas jet in Sydney and got off in San Francisco. I found myself standing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I said to myself, “Self, you are definitely not in Sydney anymore.” I got involved with the kind of ideas and practices Kevin is offering you in this book. I became the first CEO of a transformational training company known in those days as est. Tens of thousands of people participated. Today the company lives on as Landmark Education. I moved on to co-found an international training company called Actualizations and became a successful partner in a corporate consulting firm. I have written four books—all bestsellers. It’s been a wonder-filled adventure.

I know that you really can make it happen for yourself on the playing field of business (and life) if you really want to. First, as Kevin will show, you make it happen on the inside—in your heart and in your imagination—then you make it happen on the outside and become a success in the world. This is one of the core ideas of this book—that it all happens before it happens: First you create a vision for your life, then you take skilled, spirited action. Sometimes this can take awhile. And then suddenly it happens for you in the world. People may even think you’re an overnight success. As Kevin likes to say, “It all happens over a long period of time all of a sudden.”

A problem with many so-called self-improvement books is that while they might make sense on some level, how to actually take the words off the printed page and put them to work is not terribly clear. Not so with Touchdown! The printed pages that follow are filled with Dr. Kevin Elko’s crystal-clear messaging and step-by-step “how to.” You will be able to do what he suggests and make a rich difference in your life. In the lives of others, too.

As you read this book, you will learn that extreme makeovers start inside your head. Kevin tells you exactly how you accomplish all this. Now, I don’t mean to suggest you need an extreme makeover the way I did way back in the early 70s. However, each and every one of us has the opportunity to be more tomorrow than we were yesterday; and the world really needs that from us right now. Always has.

I have learned that the happiest and most successful people in the world have this in common: They discovered what they love to do and learned how to get really good at it. Th ey create tremendous value in the world. Become one of them. If you are already one of them, this book will help you to help others become one of them. This is important work.

I wish you a wonder-filled life.

Stewart Emery
San Francisco, California
April 2009

© Copyright Pearson Education. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Ft Pr
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0137019602
• ISBN 13: 9780137019601
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 157