An Amusing Little Management Lesson
A man in a hot-air balloon realized he was lost. He reduced altitude and spotted a woman below. He descended a bit more and shouted, “Excuse me. Can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.” The…
READ MOREWatching TV Is Bad For Your Energy
When I tell people how bad TV watching is, I often am told about how many good TV shows there are. It’s true. But that makes the problem worse. There is a lot of good material being aired, but that doesn’t make TV watching good for you. Watching the boob…
READ MOREHow To Make Your Guilt Work For You
Guilt, modern-day pop psychologists tell us, is a bad thing. “You are a good person,” they tell us. “If you’ve done something bad, it’s not your fault. It’s due to your upbringing, your DNA, or the bartender who served you those extra drinks. So rather than flog yourself, tell yourself…
READ MORESelling Yourself: The Secret Of The 100,000 Buckets
After finishing my copywriting program, one of my students decided to “get serious” about his future. He carefully studied the portion of the course that dealt with getting clients and did exactly what it said to do. He went to the local library, photocopied the part of a reference source…
READ MOREFocus On What’s Working
“Know thine opportunity.” – Pittacus (7th-6th century B.C.) JT and KR have a $15 million business, dozens of employees, four big products, and way too many things to do each day. In a meeting yesterday, we spent a good half-hour talking about what was wrong with some of the products…
READ MOREPick Up The Pieces of Your Broken Dream
A week ago, I received a package I’d been waiting for. The feature-length movie I had co-written, co-directed, and co-produced last summer had been edited. A rough cut was finally ready for my review. You might imagine I’d rush home to watch it, anxious as I was to see how…
READ MOREAre You A Good Leader?
Forget about what the best-selling books say. There is only one way to determine whether you are a good leader: Ask yourself, “Do I get good people to work hard for me?” If the answer is “yes,” you are a good leader. It doesn’t matter if the way you do…
READ MORETest Yourself: Are You A Procrastinator?
Choose the response that matches your behavior: A) “It’s easy for me to find reasons for not getting started on tough assignments.” 4 = Strongly Agree 3 = Mildly Agree 2 = Mildly Disagree 1 = Strongly Disagree B) “I know what I’m supposed to be doing but often start…
READ MORECustomers: Pay Attention To What They Do, Not What They Say They Do
“Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.” – B.F. Skinner (Beyond Freedom and Dignity) According to a…
READ MOREThe Effect Of Radio On Productivity
Waking early. Multitasking. Mixing work and pleasure. How much can you cram into a morning? That first half-hour especially, while you are getting up and making your bed, stretching, brushing, showering, and dressing? You’re doing some very routine and mindless rituals, so why not stimulate your mind? I have two…
READ MORERuss Whitney: Poor Boy To Multimillionaire
Russ Whitney was born into very ordinary circumstances and had no special gifts or circumstances that might destine him for success. In fact, he faced all kinds of difficulties — personal and financial — that would have been excuse enough for failure, if explaining away failure was what he wanted…
READ MOREGetting Others To Push You All The Way To The Top
In any endeavor, there is a natural pyramidal structure to progress. You begin doing everything yourself. You have some success and hire two people to help you. Things continue to do well, and you hire four more. Every person “below” you does something you were doing at one time. If…
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