At some point you need to draw a line in the sand between past and future and there is not better line day than today! I almost caught myself looking at to-do lists from last year (OK, last week) and just carrying them into my early January tasks. Bad idea! Many of the items have …

Every year we make New Year’s resolutions and those declarations drive our activities in January and sometimes through December. You can see the Diet books, stop smoking books and quit bad habit books all spiking on Amazon in early January. Why don’t we make resolutions that challenge us to magnify our strengths? Think about it. …

This weeks video post features the legendary marketing guru Joseph Pine (The Experience Economy). In 2002, he asked me to participate on the faculty at the annual Think About conference. This event, put on by he and his partner Jim Gilmore, is the premier experential marketing conference in the world. It attracts marketing pros from …

Jeremy Ring was an early stage Yahoo executive and worked for Anil Singh until about 2001. He was an operations czar and made the sales trains run on time. He had a strong point of view that people need to improve weekly, monthly and especially yearly. At a sales offsite in 2001, he posed the …

In my weekly video post, I argue that your success (as person, company or brand) will be determined by the quality of your mission statement, combined with your execution. Too many mission statements fail to guide us and few create community with others. If you apply the learnings of positive psychology or even the teachings …

TK (Tim Koogle, former CEO and Chairman of Yahoo!) taught me several life/biz lessons in my short time knowing him in 2000 and 2001. He was the source of my Paul Galvin story (see earlier post, The Paul Galvin Story). One lesson he frequently taught regarded the selection of business partners. He said that he …

In my personal experience, the difference between a good year and a great year comes down to the incremental work I take on in the 4th Quarter – especially December.  I know that typically I preach work/life balance, but in the case of the 4th Quarter, I actually think we lean too far towards time …

Here is my weekly video post and it is on a subject near and dear to my heart: Execution. There is so much talk out there about how to increase the level of innovation in our companies. Dozens of books exist to give insight on how to create a creative environment to foster innovation. The …

About 10 years ago I stumbled upon a great Monday morning exercise in gratitude. Every Friday, I would write down the names of three people that made a diffference to me that week (in my business life, for example). I might think of one of my coordinators, a supply partner or even an agent. Over …

Five years ago, dog-eat-dog was the prevailing wisdom of leadership and business. Really. I would know this, because I launched a shot in-the-name-of-love in 2002 and I found two types of people: Those thats got it and gave all and those that didn’t trust it or thought it was just a fad. Some people are …