Achieve Something You’ve Always Wanted to Accomplish
On January 3, 2001, I promised myself that I’d do something great and frivolous this year — something I’ve daydreamed about but never took seriously. It would be one of those things I would like to try to do had I my life to live over again. You see, I…
READ MOREWhy You Shouldn’t Expect (Or Want) Our Goverment’s Help
Recently, Forbes Small Business magazine convened a meeting to poll some of its readers on how they felt George Bush has done with regard to small business. They rated him highly for his efforts to end estate taxation and for dismantling a Clinton proposal that would have forced small-business owners…
READ MOREA Lesson Everyone Needs To Learn To Become A Success In Any Field
“The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors.” – Charles Peguy DF, a friend and colleague, wrote me…
READ MOREAgreements: Written? Oral? What?
“Wrong must not win by technicalities.” – Aeschylus (The Eumenides, 458 B.C.) A very common question among businessmen: Is it prudent to “paper” deals? During the 25 years I’ve been in business, more than 90% of the deals I’ve made have been oral. Usually, the process is some version of…
READ MOREIf You Want That Better Job, Go After It Like You Mean It
“There is one quality more important than ‘know-how’ … This is ‘know-what’ by which we determine not only how to accomplish our purposes, but what our purposes are to be.” – Norbert Wiener (The Human Use of Human Beings, 1954) Yesterday (in Message #487), we talked about your career. I…
READ MOREDo You Want A Better Job?
“Every man is the architect of his own fortune.” – Sallust (speech to Caesar, first century B.C.) Few of us are entirely happy with our current work — and if we are for a while, eventually some of it, at least, becomes ho-hum. There’s nothing wrong with wanting a better…
READ MORE14 More Good Rules For Getting A Better Job
“Do more than hear, listen. Do more than listen, understand.” – John H. Rhoades Jeffrey Fox tells the following story in his book “Don’t Send a Resume”: Douglas MacArthur, the legendary World War II Army general, was looking to hire a new aide. After a staff review of candidates, MacArthur…
READ MOREDon’t Send Out Resumes – Send Out Sales Letters
“It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain for himself.” – Epicurus (Vatican Sayings, third century B.C.) As I said yesterday, resumes don’t work because they are all about you. Sales letters work because they are all about…
READ MOREWhen You Want A Better Job…
Most people end up with jobs that result from a series of half-baked actions and fortunate accidents. Ask a dozen executives to retrace their careers and you’ll hear a dozen versions of “this happened” and “that happened” but very few saying “I wanted this so I did that.” When you…
READ MOREThere Is No Limit To The Number Of Ways You Can Make Money
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky (legendary hockey player who holds numerous NHL records, including most career goals and points scored) Inc. magazine just came out with its yearly issue on the fastest-growing small companies. Looking over the list, you have to be impressed…
READ MOREMultitasking: One of the Most Odious Words Coined in the Last Decade
Let’s spend a few moments today talking about something you should NOT be doing and its opposite — which is the core habit of all successful enterprises. Of all the hot air that inflated the New Economy bubble (new myths about how businesses grow, what they should be about, the…
READ MOREPioneers and Governors: You Need Them Both In Your Business Empire
“The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and the will to carry on.” – Walter Lippmann In Message #466, I talked about growth (how much is good and how much is too much) by drawing an analogy between a new…
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