Posted by:
Jim Rohn once said, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” While there are certainly exceptions to this axiom, there’s enough truth in it that it might behoove us to pay attention. And by “pay attention” I mean “pay attention to just whom we’re hanging around with.” Let me give you an ...
Posted by:
Creativity and innovation are the currencies of the future. This is not a surprise any more than it is debatable. The rate of change has never been as fast as it is today, and it will only get faster. Nobody—not even the so-called “futurists”—really knows what’s coming around the corner, so the only defense (which is also the best offense) is to nurture and cultivate the creative talent in your organization. Creativity is the ultimate skill set for dealing with ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
Our business lesson today, boys and girls, comes from a spider (and not in one of those hokey “Charlotte’s Web” kind of ways). A spider, whom I’ll call “Henry” because that’s what my girlfriend and I named him, has built a web just outside my front door, right by the porch light. Now, given that most other flying insects (and ...
So there was this band from England. Not London. Somewhere up north—a place called Liverpool. They were a hit in their hometown, but hadn’t really made much of a splash anywhere else (except for a few clubs in Hamburg). They had gotten a recording contract, and even put out a record—a simplistic little song called Love Me Do. It ...
Posted by:
What if, on the day John Lennon and Paul McCartney first met, Lennon (who was the leader of his own band, The Quarrymen) had said, “You know, this McCartney fellow is pretty good—but I’ll bet if I look around I can find somebody cheaper.”
If that had happened, there’s a very good chance that you and I would never have heard of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, or ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
Yesterday I gave a keynote speech at a resort and spa nestled in the Colorado Rockies. (Hey, sometimes you get a resort; sometimes you get a Motel 3.) This resort had signs posted throughout the facility touting a luxury pedicure available in the spa. This was the last line of the sign:
Continue Reading →“A pedicure from [name of spa] will be ...
Posted by:
Are you ignoring your Fan Club?
It’s one of the biggest mistakes people make in business, and it’s easy to see how it happens. We all like something new, don’t we? It’s like the kid at Christmas (or whatever gift-giving holiday you celebrate)—he’s giddy with happiness when he first opens his presents, and bored to death with them an hour later.
Some of us treat our customers the same way. Maybe it’s the thrill of the hunt, or of the conquest, but ...
Continue Reading →Posted by:
We all love a risk-taker, don’t we? The business owner, the entrepreneur, the CEO who has a big idea, then boldly rolls the dice with a “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” attitude. We look at them with wonder and envy, and jealously applaud them when they make it big. We hear people tell us, “You have to take ...
Posted by:
June 23rd, 2010 is a date that will go down in Wimbledon history. This is the date that two guys whom you’ve probably never heard of—Nicolas Mahut and John Isner—battled for ten straight hours in a match that had to be completed the following day because, well, because it got dark!
Ten straight hours! Even before it was completed ...
Continue Reading →So I was reading an online article yesterday about the iPad (because, as we all know, there haven’t been enough articles about the iPad). The article itself wasn’t earth-shattering—something about how the iPad is outselling Mac computers—but I thought one of the comments was hugely insightful. The thread was about why Apple products, particularly the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, are so immensely popular. The comment that caught my eye (or, in AppleSpeak, my “i”) was this:
Continue Reading →Everybody else is ...