It’s been said there are several?traits a leader needs in order to run a successful business ?while’some may be more important than others, it’s worth?developing as many of these skillsAs possible. Think innovation, time management and communication. However,?one of the most important?qualities is often overlooked: havingA good memory to build business knowledge.
“We need to keep learning and remembering all our lives,”?Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel, wrote in?”Make It Stick: The Science Of Successful Learning,” adding: “Getting ahead at work takes mastery of job skills and difficult colleagues. If you’re good at learning, you have an advantage.”
You don’t need to be a?Will Hunting in life with his photographic memory to see the benefits of using memory to build business knowledge. That’s where Chester Santos, hailed as “the international man of memory”, comes into the picture. The US memory championis in the business of training the mind, and had a few bits of advice to pass down for entrepreneurs.
(1) How did memory techniques originate
Most of the techniques I teach come from the ancient Greeks. Back then, everyone was educated in what was called the Art of memory. Somehow that got lost over time and nowadays we don’t teach it at all in our educational system. We re expected to remember a lot of information, but we re never taught how to remember it.
(2) When you say that you can “superpower” memory, what do you mean?
When you force yourself to commit things to memory and recall them, your memory will automatically improve. That’s one aspect. Another aspect is learning techniques that will allow you to memorise specific types of information, such as names and faces or information that contains numbers?” a perfect example of using memory to build business knowledge.
(3) What’s your technique for improving your memory?
I’ve broken my teaching into three main principles. One is visualisation of the image, so you take whatever it is that you are trying to remember and try to turn it into a simple image or series of memorable images. Beyond visualisation, try to involve as many additional senses as you can while trying to commit a piece of information to memory. The more senses that you involve, the more of your brain you’ll be using and the more connections in your mind to the information you’ll be building, so it will be much easier to remember.
Next, use your creativity and imagination to make what you are seeing and experiencing in your mind unusual and extraordinary. This is important so that you can take advantage of the psychological aspect to your memory. With putting forth little to no effort, we can all remember things that are unusual and extraordinary in some way.
Find out what advantages lie in store if your next goal is to develop your memory
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(4) What’s the benefit for an entrepreneur of using memory to build business knowledge
An entrepreneur with a superpower memory would be able to easily remember important business-related facts and figures to demonstrate that they are the go-to “expert” in a particular field. This person would also be able to smoothly give presentations from memory without notes to be more persuasive. Effortlessly recalling foreign language words and phrases to build rapport with clients that speak another language would also be in such an entrepreneur’s skill set.
Such a person would also be incredibly popular due to his/her ability to remember the names of everyone that they meet and also important things about these people. The bottom line is this: we always want to do business with the person we view as being the smartest, and we view people who have razor-sharp memory ability as smart. Memory is huge in terms of how people perceive you.
(5) Why is it important to remember names?
You’re not getting the maximum benefit from business networking if you’re forgetting the names of people that you meet. The three principles I mentioned above can be applied to help you get better at remembering names, as one of the best ways to do this is to learn to take a person’s name and turn it into a memorable image. Here’s anexample of using memory to build business knowledge. Peter might become Peter Pan. Next, it’s even better if you can then visually connect the powerful visual to a unique aspect of the person’s look using a story that incorporates even more senses while also being unusual.
If Peter has big ears, you could see Peter Pan flying out of one of his ears and when this happens it makes such a loud noise that it irritates your ears. I realise this might seem pretty silly at first, but this technique is very powerful and effective. It works very well for when you next see the person because it’s all based on how the person looks.
(6) Why bother improving your grasp of information when you can just Google it?
If I?m a potential client, how do I feel if you answer my every question by saying, ?Oh, hold on, let me look that up really quickly?” If I meet with another person who knows the answer right off the top of his head, I?m going to want to do business with the second guy because that guy seems like he’s an expert. He seems like he really knows his stuff. He seems a lot sharper and more intelligent to me. Memory is fundamental to acquiring expertise. That’s what makes somebody an expert, someone who actually has the knowledge.
A student can look everything up. When you’re going into a particular field, a student or an apprentice is the one that I view as still looking everything up, but the person with ten or more years of experience know it already. They?ve gained the knowledge. By training your memory, you can learn anything much faster, you?ll have better retention of what you’re learning, and it’s a more fun and interesting way to go about learning.
Chester Santos is also author of “Instant Memory Training for Success” which is available from Amazon. To book Chester for speaking engagements or corporate trainings, send an email to [email protected].
