Pages That Inspire Action, Purpose, and Possibility

Stop Clowning Around: The 10 Fundamental Leadership Skills Proven to Elevate Your Career

The Foundation Before the Framework

Many performance issues don't stem from lack of effort or intelligence; they come from foundational gaps that were never explicitly taught. Communication, emotional steadiness, focus, collaboration, and self-awareness quietly determine who earns trust, influence, and opportunity. Yet most professionals were never shown how to practice them consistently.

Stop Clowning Around was written for two audiences:

For professionals doing the work but still feeling stuck, those who sense there's an unspoken rulebook for career growth that no one handed them. This book makes that rulebook visible.

For leaders coaching capable people who lack a solid behavioral foundation, when team members have the intelligence and work ethic but struggle with execution, credibility, or self-awareness, this provides the baseline they need before advanced coaching can take root.

In Stop Clowning Around: The Ten Fundamental Leadership Skills Proven to Elevate Your Career, Scott Holman distills hard-earned lessons into practical, observable behaviors that shape how others experience you. Not theories or motivational ideas, but everyday behaviors that influence trust, confidence, and performance over time.

What Readers Say

"If 'you don't know what you don't know' about career development, this book will tell you what you don't know."
— Matthew R. Baker, Verified Amazon Review

Baker notes that entire books could be written about each fundamental, but what makes Stop Clowning Around valuable is its clarity and focus. It gets straight to the point with specific, actionable guidance.

While often recommended for young professionals early in their careers, exposure, not age, is the real differentiator.

"The things I learned are not only helping me in my position at work, but also in everyday life. You taught me things about myself that I haven't known in 44 years on this earth."
— William Parrish

How It Connects to Relational Influence™

Stop Clowning Around is not a sales manual or comprehensive leadership system. It's a foundational performance guide, baseline reading for individuals being coached or developed.

Many principles introduced here later evolved into the Relational Influence™ methodology now used with sales leaders and organizations to address underperformance and buyer indecision. For leaders working with underperformers who lack foundational skills, Stop Clowning Around provides the entry point before Relational Influence frameworks can take hold.

This book is for individuals ready to stop guessing, close foundational gaps, and take ownership of how they show up at work and in life.

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Unlock Your Full Potential: 10 Secrets to Maximizing Your Performance

A Resource Managers Give to Emerging Professionals

Unlock Your Full Potential: 10 Secrets to Maximizing Your Performance is a practical handbook that managers give to professionals who have capability but need clarity on what peak performance actually requires.

Many emerging professionals work hard but plateau because they've never been explicitly shown the principles that separate adequate performance from exceptional contribution. This book provides that roadmap, not through motivation or theory, but through ten observable principles that, when practiced consistently, unlock higher performance.

Why Managers Use This Book

This isn't a comprehensive leadership system or sales methodology. It's a foundational guide managers assign to individuals they're coaching, creating a shared language for growth conversations in one-on-ones.

The book helps professionals:

Understand what's required to perform at their best
Identify gaps between current performance and full potential
Take ownership of their development rather than waiting to be managed

Rooted in the belief that each person is uniquely designed with specific talents and capacities, the book encourages professionals to fully develop what they've been given—not to become someone else, but to maximize who they already are.

Best Used As:

Assigned reading for professionals in development, discussed chapter by chapter in one-on-ones
A shared reference point for coaching conversations about performance gaps
A self-assessment tool that gives managers and employees a common framework for growth discussions

Unlock Your Full Potential is the book you hand someone when you're thinking: "They have the talent—now let's give them the roadmap and talk through it together."