You have to start thinking for yourself sometime. Insist on yourself. Never imitate. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson Frankly, at some point you don’t have a choice. Life forces you. Maybe it’s when you take your first step as a toddler. Or maybe it’s when you take the SAT test as a young adult. At some point, you realize that even though information is being thrown at you, it is up to you to interpret what you hear, to make your … Continue reading
It is all too easy to let other people distract you from being amazing. Let me tell you how I really learned that lesson all over again a few days ago. As a popular speaker, I have the unique and wonderful opportunity to speak all over the world to big companies, business organizations, and non-profits. Like much of what you read here on my blog, the discussion is an unconventional one. I talk about pain and fear and how uncommon … Continue reading
It is frustrating when your ideas go nowhere. When you innovate, explore, discover, and push the limits — all to no avail. You’ve been there before. You sell your boss on a new idea and it goes nowhere. You make your pitch to new prospects and they say “no”. You share your plan with investors and they tell you that you haven’t thought through all of the angles. You just have dead-end ideas. But here’s a little secret: That is … Continue reading
There’s no such thing as a win-win business situation. The idea is intriguingly magical. But like pink unicorns, the Prison of Azkaban, and world peace it is more wishful thinking than reality. It just isn’t possible. Any situation where opposing sides emerge together as equal winners defies reason. It is just not possible. Either the situation isn’t really a competition, or the person we label as the winner isn’t really winning. Either way a win-win outcome isn’t possible. It becomes ludicrous the … Continue reading
You probably had to learn the lesson the hard way. Most of us do. You’re in the middle of creating a service offering and you reach out to your customers for help. You ask potential buyers what they want for you to build for them. And the discussion is a good one. Buyers tell you their needs. Even how much they are willing to pay for what you are about to do for them. And you’re busy taking notes. Not … Continue reading
There is nothing more frustrating as a business leader then to focus all of your efforts on revenue growth only to see your hard work have little impact on the top line. It’s a kick in the gut. Over the last half decade of business, we’ve been introduced to a wide number of new business tactics to help us achieve revenue growth. Social media. E-mail marketing. Online webinars. Demand generation tools. SEO optimization. These are just a few of the … Continue reading
Just because you start something doesn’t mean you need to finish it. And while we’ve been taught since we were kids to “finish what you have on your plate” or “to finish your homework” or “to always finish what you start”, being successful requires you to start a lot of things that you never actually end up finishing. Because they are the wrong things to finish. You realize that they don’t work like you expected. Just because you start an … Continue reading
Just because you start something doesn’t mean you need to finish it. And while we’ve been taught since we were kids to “finish what you have on your plate” or “to finish your homework” or “to always finish what you start”, being successful requires you to start a lot of things that you never actually end up finishing. Because they are the wrong things to finish. You realize that they don’t work like you expected. Just because you start an … Continue reading
