Our Chanukah Gift to You—Eight Crazy Lists

Happy Chanukah Maestro readers! What? You don’t celebrate Chanukah? That’s okay. I do, and I’m inviting you to celebrate along with me. We’re gifting you eight of our favorite tools and resources in eight different categories so you’ll be knowledgeable, inspired, and prepared as you enter 2022.

But first, just so you’re fully in the Chanukah spirit, here are eight fun facts you might not have known about the holiday.

1. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, there are 24 variations of the spelling of Chanukah. Do you know what that means? It means it’s really hard to Google anything that has to do with Chanukah.
2. The first Chanukah was most likely a late celebration of the harvest holiday of Sukkot. During the Maccabean Revolt, Jews were not able to celebrate their eight-day harvest festival, so they celebrated when the war ended. And who doesn’t love a winter holiday? We should do this every year! (Sharing this with a Jewish child would be the equivalent of ruining Santa. Don’t.)
3. The potato pancake, or latke, has its origins in Italy and was originally made of cheese. This begs the question, WHO? Is the idiot?? That substituted potatoes?! We could have been eating fried cheese pancakes!
4. We put on a big show that it’s eight crazy nights, but let’s be practical. Eight gifts for each child is a lot. That’s why most of us have “calendar night” or “underwear night.”
5. Jewish homes without a traditional hearth build a special platform on which to put the Chanukah presents. That’s not actually true, but you believed me, didn’t you? So did my non-Jewish husband.
6. There are many stories about why dreidels are associated with Chanukah. The actual origin is not clear, but we do know this—they are not originally a Jewish custom, and they are intended for gambling.
7. Chanukah seems to jump all over the calendar, but it is on the same date every year according to the Hebrew calendar, The 25th of Kislev. The Hebrew calendar is on a lunar cycle, but since a lunar cycle is 29.5 days, there is some correction that needs to be done. Rather than having a leap day every four years, the Hebrew calendar has a leap month seven out of every 19 years.
8. There will be no Chanukah in the year 3031. In 3030 it starts December 13. The following Chanukah begins January 1, 3032.

AND NOW FOR YOUR PRESENTS!

We have surveyed the Maestro team and compiled our favorite resources, tools, tips, and life hacks. Most are sales-related, but a few were just too good not to share. Enjoy!

NIGHT 1—BOOKS

Here are our top book recommendations to help you work smarter, communicate more effectively, and learn the science behind all of it.

1. Exactly What to Say by Phil M. Jones—great for anyone in sales or who could benefit from the power of influence
2. Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
3. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein—we’ll be reviewing this book at the end of the month
4. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss
5. Barking Up the Wrong Tree: The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong by Eric Barker
6. Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success by Adam Grant
7. Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics by Richard Thaler
8. Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs by John Doerr

NIGHT 2—PODCASTS

Podcasts are great for multitasking. Listen to them while in the car or exercising—here are some of our favorites.

1. Blissful Prospecting
2. Pod Save America—gain an understanding of economic policy that’s impacting business decisions
3. Sales Game Changers
4. Revisionist History—who doesn’t love Malcolm Gladwell’s storytelling?
5. Behind the Bastards
6. Sales Success Stories Podcast
7. Terrible, Thanks For Asking
8. Rewatchables—everything you didn’t know about your favorite movies

NIGHT 3—TED TALKS

It can be tough to find time to learn and be inspired, but TED Talks make it easy. Our favorites are below, ranging from 4 to 21 minutes. That’s doable no matter how busy you are.

1. Adam Grant—any of his are great
2. Simon Sinek—there’s a reason he’s always in the “best of” lists
3. Shawn Achor—insightful and hilarious
4. Ernesto Sirolli
5. Amy Cuddy
6. Karen Eber
7. Dorie Clark
8. Jamila Lyiscott

NIGHT 4—BLOGS

Clearly you love blogs and have excellent taste in them already, but we thought you might want a few more recommendations from our team.

1. Maestro Mastery
2. Barking Up the Wrong Tree
3. Industry Dive—broken down by industry
4. Dave Kurlan
5. Kellblog
6. Tomaz Tungz
7. OpenView Venture Partners
8. Hiten Shah

NIGHT 5—WEB EXTENSIONS

Web plug-ins don’t get the love they deserve. There are some that are incredibly helpful to sales professionals. Here are some our team uses.

1. Pearls Extension—highlights multiple words on webpage
2. Awesome Screenshot & Screen Recorder—lets you screenshot a whole page (even if it doesn’t fit on your screen) and mark it up
3. Hunter.io—email scraping
4. LinkedIn Sales Navigator Search Plugin
5. RevDriver by SalesIntel
6. Save Chrome Tabs for Later
7. Click to Call Chrome Extension—great if you don’t have a dialer
8. ZoomInfo ReachOut—effective and user friendly

NIGHT 6—WRITING TOOLS

No matter how great of a writer you are, it’s nice to have some help. Here are some resources that can help make your content even better.

1. Readability Checker—this one is simple and provides both grade level and reading ease
2. Scrivener
3. Capitalize My Title—double-check which words need capitalization
4. Thesaurus.com
5. Grammarly
6. Grammarly Web Extension—specifically for checking tone
7. Quick and Dirty Tips: Grammar Girl
8. Learn your dashes (there are three kinds)

NIGHT 7—PRODUCTIVITY TOOLS

We could all use more hours in our day. Here are some of our favorite resources for being as effective as possible with the time we have.

1. Go Tensai—work through question trees
2. Warmly.ai—makes it so easy to check out the LinkedIn profile of anyone you have a meeting with right from your calendar
3. Enable shortcuts in Gmail
4. Airtable
5. ClickUp
6. Microsoft To-Do
7. Vidyard
8. Vivaldi Browser

NIGHT 8—LIFE HACKS

Try some of the Maestro team’s strategies for making day-to-day tasks simpler.

1. Use a second monitor when presenting anything
2. Travel with paper clips and duct tape—anything can be fixed with paper clips and duct tape
3. Time blocking
4. Set an alarm to go to sleep
5. Set emails on a 5-minute delay so when you think of that one other thing, you can still include it
6. Say “It’s good to see you,” instead of “Nice to meet you.” You’ll avoid the awkward moment of not remembering you’ve met someone before. This one is from a client!
7. Every salesperson needs a noise-canceling Bluetooth headset
8. Deep processing while walking or running

We hope you find your Chanukah gifts enjoyable and useful. If you don’t, we’re sorry, but you’re still not as disappointed as my kids on calendar night.

Now is a great time to schedule your training next year! Contact us at mastery@maestrogroup.co.