You Can See That Again.

What you see is what you get.  What you want to find, you’ll find. That’s because you’re looking for it. If you think a situation is irreparable then that’s how you’ll see it. All the evidence around you will look

What Rages Beneath.

You need to rethink your business strategy. Your business strategy won’t work all that well if it’s aimed at what people are doing right now. And contrary to conventional wisdom, you shouldn’t take your inspiration from what you hear from

Misfit Friends.

Just because you  and the person you’re talking with hate the same people doesn’t mean that you should be friends. Anger isn’t a good foundation for friendship. Neither is jealously or fear or passive aggression. You become like the people you

Stop Firing Lousy Employees.

Regardless of who you’re leading, you have people reporting to you that should perform better.  A sales team, technology professionals, the operations teams — sometimes you just need a little bit more from those involved. A lot of books on

Why Almost Isn’t Good Enough.

Almost isn’t good enough. If you almost got the job that really means you didn’t make the final cut. If you almost won first place that really means you ended up losing. If you almost finished the job that means

Why People Change Their Mind And Why You Should Too.

People change their mind.  People you don’t want to change, change their mind. You’ve been there before.   You are negotiating a complex business deal and moving point-by-point to get the person on the other side of the table to

The Secret to Getting Busy Executives To Take Your Phone Call.

You’ve been there before. The phone rings — breaking you out of your concentration. You’ve been focused on a complex task. Trying to solve a problem that has stumped you for hours. As the phone rings a second time, your

Emotional Courage.

It takes emotional courage to say “no” when “maybe” or “we’ll see” leaves you the wiggle room to avoid immediate confrontation. It takes emotional courage to be kind when pointing out the flaws of your opponent will make you gratified

Raging Failure.

We all get frustrated. We all have things that “push our buttons”. That send us into a rage. And reality is that it’s not one set of “things” that does it.  It’s a bunch of them in a lot of

Last Things First.

We all want something from life. Whether it’s a trophy, a job promotion, a bigger paycheck, or to be the first person crossing the finish line. However you label success for you doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you

How To Think For Yourself.

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.

Human Doings or Human Beings.

Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re doing anything that really matters.  The strategy you employ, the actions you fulfill, the results you attempt to achieve — they begin before you start doing anything. “Success begins with attitude, motivation, and

How To Fix a Dead-Beat Loser Business Lifestyle.

You have to show up. It’s not good enough to be around the game or talk about the game.  You have to be in the game.  Sweating it out. Getting injured. Gasping for air. Everything else is what losers do.

The Jerk Sitting In The Front Row.

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

How to Fix Dead-End Business Ideas.

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

There Are No “Win-Win” Business Deals.

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

The Power of Hope.

A bigger budget isn’t the secret to getting faster business results. Neither is more attention.  More staff.  Or a better public relations angle. It takes hope. You have to believe in your plan, the people around you, and your potential

Quick and Easy Isn’t.

The business solution you call “quick and easy” might actually be sloppy and superficial — especially from the perspective of the ones receiving your fix. The Quick Part. – Any problem that can be resolved quickly might not really be a

Why Clients Don’t Buy What They Say They Want.

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

Everybody Hurts.

It’s normal to assume that what hurts you isn’t right for you. It’s natural to think that feeling pain means that you’re doing something wrong.  That something is going horribly wrong. That you can be more efficient (and effective) by

The Truth About Why No One Cares.

You lean back in your chair, swing your hands over your head, let out a sigh, and shake your head in disbelief.  “No one cares.” Despite all of your hard work no one seems to be listening to your message.

Why You Can’t Grow Your Business Revenue.

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

Why Now Matters Most.

Now is what matters most. Right now. This very moment. Now is your opportunity to do the things that scare you most. Now is the time to start working on the future you want. Now is the best time to keep going. Now is

You Can’t Do It All By Yourself.

You can’t do it all by yourself. You just can’t. Achieving big goals takes a team. You have to surround yourself with people who want you to succeed. People who love you. People you love back. Attempting audacious packs of

What You Can Do.

You can point out the personal weaknesses in those around you. You can belittle others when you know what hurts them most. You can throw a fit and make-a-scene until people give you your way You can run away from

Caring Doesn’t Make You A Loser.

When it comes to sports we get it.  We understand perfectly how caring makes you a high performer. We understand that caring about the details and putting in outrageous amounts of effort catapults an average performer beyond  the guy who

Inward Mobility.

In all of our minds there is a direct link between satisfaction and achieving business success. You might even call it happiness — being able to mentally navigate a complex corporate environment and achieve success. Working your way up the

How Being a Cynic Makes You Stupid.

Starting out is always an amazing opportunity. Everything is fresh.  It’s all new. Your ideas haven’t been proven wrong yet, you are still at the peak of your health, and you’ve got money and time and motivation. Heck, there’s nothing

What You Believe In.

What you do matters. You can’t hurt people and then claim it was a mistake. You can’t be careless and inconsiderate and then not take responsibility for the results of your behavior. Actions have consequences. But actions don’t magically happen

You Don’t Need To Finish What You Start.

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

Why Living in Denial Is the Secret to Success.

Most of us are willing to do almost anything in order to realize our goals. We will turn over any stone, cross any bridge, and scale the highest metaphorical mountains in order to achieve success. Or at least that’s how

Why Asking Better Sales Questions Won’t Help You Close More Deals.

One of the most popular recent theories about business development is that if you ask better questions of your clients, you can uniquely uncover pain points that allow you to negotiate a more efficient close. According to the experts, you

27 Must-Have Tools to Help You Be More Successful Getting Things Done.

You shouldn’t wonder why you aren’t more successful if you haven’t mastered the art of getting things done.  And that’s not easy.  Being productive is one of the biggest struggles for all of us. From not knowing what to do

How To Know You’ve Given Up Trying To Be Amazing.

Fighting to achieve your goals is a raw and gritty sport. It’s a fight-to-the-death that leaves many bloodied, hurt, and wondering why they even attempted grand ambitions in the first place. So it’s only natural that at some point you

How Extraordinary Happens.

Doing something that is amazing isn’t an accident. Living an extraordinary life doesn’t come naturally. What comes naturally is for you to just be ordinary. Which is how most of us stay.  That’s what is normal. So we invented a

Why You Won’t Be Successful.

A lot of life comes down to doing hard things when you least feel like it. Iif you are going to be successful over the long run, you’re going to have to do things that hurt on days when you

Why Words Matter.

What you say matters. To you and everyone around you. Winners use winning words. Losers do the opposite. You show your attitude in the words you use. Especially when you aren’t paying attention. Anyone can take the stage and rip

What To Do When You Disappoint The People You Care About.

It’s evitable. You are going to disappoint people that you really care about. Friends, partners, clients. It’s going to happen. And it’s usually not a huge mistake. It’s a series of small annoying behaviors that, if not addressed properly, can

When Hope Gets In The Way.

There are moments when the dawn is hidden by the dangers of the night. There are moments when our fears and doubts collide so forcefully that we are left breathless, wondering if life itself is only a fantasy of mistreatment

Stop Being a Whiner.

One of the clearest attitude choices that you have is choosing whether to be a whiner or a winner. It’s a choice that happens every few seconds of your life. The choice you might take for granted. But it’s wildly

Just Do The Opposite.

It is all too easy to give in to the stress and frustration of every day living. Ordinary choices become chaotic and confusing when your emotions get involved.  You stop thinking clearly and start thinking about survival. And when that

Where’s Up?

The psychology behind success presents an interesting picture. Subconsciously we associate forward progress with upward progress. Think about some of the common expressions that we use: Get up. After you have taken a fall. Make up.  Especially to those you

The Real Reason Why.

There is always a because. Because you feel like it. Because you are angry. Because you have a story to tell. Because you are scared. Because you care. Because you want to be heard. Because you are in pain. Because

Stop Throwing Your Dirt Around.

Just because you’re digging out doesn’t mean that you need to throw dirt. It’s natural to be frantic when you feel your world falling in around you. As each step takes you closer to (what you think is) your demise

Refusing To Be An Imposter.

We all want to be something that we’re not. At least, that’s how we’re talked to by advertisers, coaches, and business experts. According to the pros, you’re better off being an imposter than relentlessly pursuing bold ideas. You’re told that:

Making Money Is the Wrong Goal.

You making more money is the wrong goal for your business. It’s the wrong focus. And over the long run always seems to backfire. It leads to hurting people. It leads to short-term strategic blunders. It leads to selfish behavior.

What Business Experts Don’t Tell You.

It is easy to be confused by all the different strategies and tactics that the experts give us. We are told that a focus on search engine optimization positions us as the best company to be found in a crowded Internet. We

Why Honesty Isn’t the Best Policy.

One of the age-old philosophies of ethical business is the idea that “honesty is the best policy.” And while that quote makes a great axiom in a Ben Franklin almanac, the philosophy of the statement hardly applies today. And not

Replicating Random.

A lot of what we call business strategy is just only mimicry. Instead of working relentlessly to incubate our own success process, we spend a lot of time just copying the ideas we hear might have worked for someone else.

What Lies Beneath.

It’s easy to preach. It’s harder to practice. That’s why there are so many people talking about what you should do and very few showing you how it is done. Just having an opinion doesn’t mean that you’re headed in

Hard-Headedly Amazing.

We make it harder than it should be to focus on being amazing. We’re defiantly hard-headed about all the wrong things in life.  And then we wonder why we aren’t getting the successful outcomes that we want for ourselves. When

Un-Delaying the Inevitable.

It’s inevitable that life isn’t going to treat you fairly. It’s inevitable that you’re going to find someone who is better than you are. It’s inevitable that you’re going to try something and fail miserably. It’s inevitable that you’re going

Celebrating Failure.

It’s natural to feel like failure is the end of the world.  That there is something wrong with you. That you’re permanently destined to be a loser in whatever you do. It happens to all of us. No matter how

Mentor or Molester?

You can’t be both at the same time. You can’t hurt and heal at the same time.  The two don’t go together. You start being a molester when you stop caring and start thinking about satisfying your needs first. Your

7 Reasons Why They Don’t Care.

It is a curious thing to be passionate about a mission.  It changes how you think.  How you act. It defines everything that you do. So it is only natural that you are left confused and frustrated when those around

10 Reasons Why Outrageous Customer Service Is All That Matters.

The single most important focus of your business is to deliver an amazing experience for your client. That’s it. There is nothing else more important than making sure every memory of you by your customer is one of delight. Now,

17 Mistakes That Cripple Business Growth.

Most battles are lost, not won. That’s the same behind enemy lines as it is the business boardroom. Mistakes, anywhere, have the same disastrous impact. They kill you. It doesn’t matter how much you know or who knows you.  If

Making Sense of the Changing Business Conversation.

Business is changing.  But that’s always been the case. In the early 1800′s, American adventurers traveled by foot and covered wagon to the West in search of new opportunity.  They left their families in New England with the understanding that

Defying Business Gravity

We’re told that what goes up must come down. That irregardless of velocity or effort or raw human courage, we are bound by the constraints of science.  We are held captive by the laws of humanity. There is only so

Hoping Your Way To Better Results.

Every successful business idea starts with hope. Getting results over the long term requires more than an intellectual creativity for coming up with new ideas. It demands emotional attachment. You can cut employees. You can trim budgets and eliminate redundancies.

The Right Age To Be Amazing.

At 1, Christian Friedrich Heinecken, the legendary child prodigy had read the Pentateuch. At 2, speed skater Bonnie Blair began skating. She should go on to win five Olympic gold medals. At 3, Wolfgang Mozart, taught himself to play the

Anger Isn’t A Strategy.

Not getting along isn’t a winning strategy for long-term success.  You just end up looking like a fool. While it’s only human that you have an opinion, forcing your opinion on everyone else all the time just isn’t a winning

One is Enough.

It only takes one to start a trend. It only starts one to get people thinking. It only takes one to make a difference. One thought. One moment. One person. “Who shall set a limit to the influence of a

11 Game-Changing Companies Who (Successfully) Broke The Rules.

There are rules and guidelines that limit what is possible to achieve.  Rules that we all somehow agree to. Rules about the cost of doing business. About profit, loss, and reinvestment.  Rules about possibilities. Rules dictated by shear elemental constraint.

9 (Uncomfortable) Steps to Changing Any Conversation.

Any time you try to change a conversation you’re going to get pushed back. When you try to change the topic some of those around you will try to push the conversation back to where it already was. That’s where

Refusing To Lose Quietly.

You don’t have to go down quietly. You don’t have to throw up your hands, hang your head, and admit defeat. It is a choice. Both giving up and fighting on. They are just choices. And it’s your choice today.

How To Get Places.

The only step that matters is the next one. Where you were before is just history. Where you end up is a result of where your next step takes you. It is all too easy to let complex business problems

What Doesn’t Need To Be Said.

Just because it is true doesn’t mean it needs to be said. Sometimes kindness is a better strategy. You can discount tolerance as being weak, but maybe it’s just you giving those around you the chance you want desperately for yourself. And that’s not

Re-Feeding Your Addiction.

It might be hard to admit but addiction plays a significant role in all the decisions that you make each day. Your addiction decides for you whether you relentlessly pursue bold ideas of whether you give in to how your

You Already Know What To Do.

You know everything you need to know. What you don’t know, you can find out in seconds. Take a look.  There are more “how-to” articles on the web that ever before.  There is a “fast, five-step plan” for just about

The Best Way To Do Nothing.

Just because you’re busy doesn’t mean you’re doing anything that matters. In fact, the busier you are, the greater your chances that you’re not doing things that really matters at all. Think about that for a second. It might be

Solving Your Pain.

Life is hard.  You know that. Subconsciously you understand what that means at a deeply personal level.  It doesn’t need to be explained. It’s felt. Pain drives every decision that you make.  You’re either avoiding pain or accepting it.  There

Hope Makes the Difference.

The best plans in the world fall flat without purpose and passion. Just going through the motions might end you up headed towards the finish line, but you won’t find yourself competing for the prize. It takes more than a

Pitching Tomorrow Better.

How things look today is different from how you saw them yesterday.  It’s different today then it will be tomorrow. How you feel today will change tomorrow. You probably won’t change your beliefs and it’s likely that big problems won’t

The Lie of Recurring Revenue.

One of the recently trendy business strategies over the last decade is the idea of creating “recurring revenue”. The basic concept is that you can create content and marketing that together drive sustainable revenue long after the content is first

12 Ways To Beat Your Critics.

Everybody has an opinion. Sometimes you wish other people kept their opinion to themselves. Criticism hurts. No matter how thick a skin you have, it’s hard not to get worn down by other people’s negative opinions. You can spend weeks, months, even years

“No” Focus.

We are reluctant to say “no”. It’s abrupt. It’s final. It seems like the end of possibilities. But maybe that’s just because of how we’ve come to understand the word. Growing up, when you wanted something really badly, the last

It’s Not About What You Do.

Business experts will tell you that if you think hard enough and plan long enough that you can generate ideas and strategies that avoid obstacles and end up leading to your success. But that’s just not reality.  And you shouldn’t

Creating Angry Mobs.

There’s always a reason to complain about something. There is always a big guy picking on a small guy.  A monster doing depraved things to unsuspecting victims. These plot lines run through our business speak on a daily basis. It’s

Avoiding Accidental Awfulness.

It’s easy to excuse away mistakes that you make. Especially when someone gets hurt. “It was an accident” you find yourself saying.  And magically, because you claim that it was an accident, everybody around you is supposed to be okay.

Better Than Them.

You’re already better than them. You are. They try a little and you try more.  They win sometimes and you win more.  They’re smart, but you’re clearly smarter. It’s clear. You’re better than them. Which brings up a bigger question: Who

Emotional Choices.

The politics of business are all emotional. The “biggest” player in your industry isn’t necessarily the company with the largest advertising budget or the company with the latest technology advancements. Is something a little more subtle. The company controlling the

Unseating the Experts.

There’s a tendency to believe that the experts know your industry more than you do. It’s easy to assume that with them writing white papers and holding webinars and being asked to speak at all the popular trade shows in

Warrior Speak.

The idea of success has changed over the years. Our idea of conquest, triumph, and challenge have changed with the evolution of our advancements. Our purposes have become confused. Our tactics are no longer simple and focused. We’ve forgotten how

Their Rules Are Bad.

Right now, the decisions you make are a result of what you believe in. Whether you realize it or not, you’re playing by a set of rules. And they’re probably not your rules. Chances are, you’ve never defined the rules.

When It’s Too Late.

You can’t fix today’s problems tomorrow. Tomorrow has problems of its own. It’s natural to hope that by avoiding hard problems that they go away eventually.  That if you ignore what scares you most, your problems will lose steam and disappear.

Ending the Conversation.

You can end the conversation anytime you want. It’s your decision. You can let everyone around you know that your critics are wrong, unhappy customers just don’t “get it” and that your advisors don’t understand. All you have to do

Comparativity.

Staying focused requires that you keep life in perspective. There is no up without a down. There is no happy without a sad. There is no more without less. There is no satisfied without confusion. There is no inspiration without

Uncrushing Crushed.

Change always creates friction. You can’t run against the establishment without creating conflict.  Sometimes lots of it.  So, you need to have a plan for managing the damage that comes your way. It is safe to assume, and wise to

Divine Rights.

There are rights that we argue to be so important that they are owed to us not as constituents of a government but as creations of a divine creator. Freedom. The pursuit of self-interests. Fairness. These rights wise man have

The Difference Love Makes.

A deaf and blind Helen Keller made the ironically insightful observation that: “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” Which somehow we inherently know. We

Irrational Acquiescence.

What comes naturally is to smile and nod instead of forcing yourself to think through the decision that you’re making at the time. It is fanciful to assume that just because you have a goal and work really hard that

How Yesware Rethought Amazing.

Yesware presents an interesting case study about the business pursuit of getting it right. About starting. Rethinking. About finding success. It seems like it has been several years since I had my first conversation with Matthew Bellows. It’s actually been a

Soul Listening.

It’s not good enough to care about what you do. Being passionate will help you overcome a lot of the obstacles in your way.  But it also creates another problems for you. You become a jerk. You’re so busy talking

What Doesn’t Matter.

So what if it hasn’t been done before. Be the first. So what if you get it wrong a few times. Reinvent yourself. So what if you don’t have a college degree. Be curious. You’ll learn more. So what if

The Secret Attitude of Super-Stars.

Giving buyers more value than they pay for is the most effective way to create a delightfully memorable buying experience. To illustrate this point more clearly, think about the opposite of this. Think about the last time you felt ripped

Radical Resolutionaries.

Perhaps our tendency to make resolutions we never intend to keep is more about how we view our inadequacies than about our inability to perform. We aim small believing that we are unable to be amazing. The answer isn’t to stop making

Ahead of Time.

What you do matters. When you do it often matters more. It’s easy to assume that you always have tomorrow to get started doing amazing things. That your bold ideas will still be relevant some other time. But that’s not how time

Business Molesting.

Let’s be frank. If there is one person who enrages us, it is likely the molestor. We are repulsed and angered at the selifshness of their behavior. You can see all the classic signs: Molesters prey on those who can’t

Kinda Sorta Leadership.

Leading isn’t easy. Under any circumstance, having a vision and motivating others to follow you is a feat of monumental proportions. As a leader, you’re responsible for what happens to the people that follow you. When they get hurt you

Happy or Hopeful.

It’s easy to be excited about life when you are surrounded by people who love you. When there is happiness and excitement.  When the frustrations of life are on hold.  When you see smiles and laughs. Happiness motivates us. It

Incredibly Unbelievable.

There is a reason why we use the terms incredible and unbelievable to describe what is simply miraculous. Extraordinary things take our breath away. They cause us to dream again they cause us to believe again. But they also make

Today.

Today is all you have. Today is the end of yesterday and the beginning of tomorrow. But it’s the only thing that you’re guaranteed. Right now. So you should start acting like it. Start today. Stop wasting time.  Start valuing

Why Trying Hard Doesn’t Work

Time and time again studies show that hard work is a significant differentiator between those who accumulate wealth and those who don’t. It’s the simplest of ideas in theory. But it poses significant challenges when put into effect. When you

Lies You Want to Believe.

Business can get confusing.  Especially if you believe what you hear — from your customers. The relationship between buyers and sellers is a conflicted one.  Buyers need the knowledge and access that sellers have.   In turn, sellers need the revenue that

Taking Stock of the Wrong Market.

Just because the Dow Jones Industrial Average drops 200 points in a day doesn’t mean much (if anything) to the success of your business. Financial analysts prattling on about market compression and share exposure are just distractions for you. Frankly,

Afraid of Being Lonely.

You have no problem shouting back when people disagree with you. That’s your  natural reaction. Even though there is conflict, you are not alone in the fight. It’s lonely when you’re the only one who sees the vision ahead. When

The Impossibly Simple Secret to Achieving Greatness.

Let’s face it, we are all looking to be a better version of ourselves.. That’s why we go to the gym, try to eat healthy, and generally try not to die too early. We’re exploring for something better. We read

In Defense of Honor.

On her deathbed, Andrew Jackson’s mother gave him the following admonition: “No one will respect you more than you respect yourself… Never bring a suit in law for assault or for defamation. The law affords no remedy for such outrages

Why Your Business Strategy Doesn’t Work.

It is pretty common knowledge that people interpret what you say paying little attention to the actual words that you use. And while all the scientists don’t agree on how much impact feelings have on interpreting a conversation, they all

Improbable Business Opposites.

It’s fanciful to assume that the opposite of poor sales is outrageous profits. More is good.  Less is bad. Many times that’s how we’re told to view success — all or nothing. But maybe that’s not the clearest view of

Just Because.

Just because they said you can’t doesn’t mean you never will. Just because it feels wrong doesn’t mean it is. Just because you didn’t doesn’t mean you won’t. Just because it’s hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it. Just because

Overwhelmed By Greatness.

There are moments when the opportunity for greatness becomes overwhelming. The mission, our purpose, and the effort demanded collide with an emotional intensity that stuns you to the core. Our natural reaction is to be overcome by the enormity of

The Audacity of Second Chances.

It’s over.  You had your chance. And you blew it. You failed.  In spectacular fashion. What you thought you could do, you did do.  It’s didn’t work. You’re left with the pieces. That is all.  Pieces. Nothing whole.  Not you.

Being the Hero.

We all want to be a hero. It’s an emotion that is wired into how we think and act and make decisions. Being a hero is top of mind for us a lot of the time And why now?  If

Changing a Sophisticrappy Business Cycle by Giving More.

Business strategy is any evolving science. The last thousand years of studied commercial history show a cyclical nuance that usually follows the path of reinvention, risk-taking, and reversion. As entrepreneurs expand on new ideas, old business methodologies get reinvented.  For

Debunking Impossible.

“That’s impossible….” You’ve probably heard yourself say these words on a few occasions.  Usually when what you just witnessed is unbelievable, magical, or defies the senses. That’s how we categorize life — both business and personal choices.  We label options as

How Lazy Intellectualism Destroyed the American Dream.

Business life used to be brutal for the American worker.  Working hours started early in the morning and ended long after the sun went down.  Quite frequently, the pay was for pennies a day. And if you worked for yourself

Stop Making Bad Choices.

Who you are leads to what you do which determines the outcomes that you will experience. All too often you are told by the experts to change your tactics, deployed new strategies, and change up what you do — all

Why Your Business Plan Doesn’t Work.

It’s all too easy to imagine that business is black and white. That if you follow an exact seven steps you’ll be successful. That sounds amazing, promising, like a plan you want to follow.

The Price You Won’t Pay.

In the age of free technology and ubiquitous access to answers, it can seem like everything you need for success is out there at no cost to you. After all, you can download ebooks on thousands of niche business topics

The Insanity of Business Expertise.

We worship at the feet of expertise. As business leaders, we make it a defining factor in almost every decision we make with employees.

How Business Changed. What To Do About It.

The last decade of business has been a rapidly changing chronology of growth, struggle, confusion, and depression. The cornerstones of enterprise stability and growth have crumbled into an elusively expensive hodgepodge of misguided effort and bi-polar strategy.

It Doesn’t Matter What You Know.

It’s easy to discount the emotional impact of inspiration.  It’s easy to write off motivation as being the key to success.

Angry Enough to Do Something About It.

There comes a point at which the challenges of life just become overwhelming. The stress of relentless problem-solving and financial instability create a plight that just seems unfair. After all, you are the one with the vision and the guts

Waiting for Someone Else to Believe in You.

Success is a one-man sport. Despite the team behind you and the resources at your disposal, what you do achieve is the direct result of what you believe you can do.

What To Do When You Don’t Know.

Making bad decisions can quickly cripple your business. Spending too much money too quickly or running after new ideas without all the facts can quickly produce a sad and sudden end to the best of business ideas.

Quitting on the Inside.

It’s a struggle to not give up. It’s tough to keep fighting for your goals day after day.  Especially when people don’t believe in you. When you might not even believe in you.

The Power of Being Wrong.

You’re not always right. But you know that already. It’s not a secret. Even though you work overtime hoping no one around you finds out .

Love Beats Smarts.

Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean that you can be successful. Even with a laser focus on continuous education, you can’t “out think” your way to being amazing.

Giving Your Way to Business Success.

The idea of giving as a “business strategy” might seem insanely counterintuitive. And it’s certainly a concept that many businesses struggle with.

Cheap Crap Isn't Value.

Pushing revenue growth like a mid-block, sweaty-summer yard-sale party isn’t the secret to creating sustainable business growth.  It isn’t creating value. Over the last seven decades, businesses have  tried just about everything to get noticed — from editorials to magazine articles to

The Grittier Side of Discipline We Pretend Doesn't Exist.

Make no mistake. Just putting in mindbending amounts of raw effort isn’t enough to make your business successful. You will get some things done. And perhaps the right things will get done. But success isn’t that simple.

The Insanity Behind Bad Decision Bankruptcy.

No one bad decision can cripple your business. No matter how big the problem is you can solve it.

3 Extreme Behaviors That Produce Outrageous Business Growth.

Following the rules doesn’t work in business. Even if you’re doing it right, you’re doing it like everybody else. Which is wrong.

Breathless Business.

We’ve become a generation of “good enough” business leaders. We’ve traded a relentless focus on being extraordinary for the justification that we are following the rules. That we are doing what we’ve been told we should be doing — college

The Inconvenience of Leadership.

It won’t be a rallying cry that gets you to start thinking about doing things differently. It won’t be a protest movement or a march down Main Street. It’s more subtle.  More likely it will be a quiet look to the

Misfit Leadership Awards.

Awards don’t equal accomplishment. Just because you happen to happen to have the biggest executive trophy case doesn’t mean that you have done anything that really matters in life. It’s doesn’t make you a leader.

34+ Better Ideas Than Managing Sales People.

Leading is a tough job. Leading sales dudes is one of the hardest responsibilities on the planet. It beats out being POTUS “hands down”.

5 Ways to Push The Limits.

Extreme behavior is one of the strongest differentiators for companies that are successful. It’s not just doing it better than your competitors. It’s about pushing the limits.

Thinking Your Way to Becoming Superman.

It’s time to start going on the offensive. About what you think about.  About what you let bother you.

47 Edgy Perspectives for Unstoppable Business Success.

You want to be successful. More than anything in the world, what drives you most is the need to be successful.  You don’t want to lose.  You don’t want to end up looking like a idiot. You want success in

Life is Tough.

Life is tough. And in all the accidental ways that make you even more frustrated and completely unfocused on your real goals.

When the Bottom Drops Out.

If you’re expecting that life is going to give you everything you want without a fight, then you’re in for a rude awakening. Sometimes life goes horribly, inexplicably wrong. It’s not just bad.  It’s a disaster.

Negotiation Reinvented.

Part of being successful is learning how to negotiate your way through the choices and options that are placed in front of you. Whether you’re an attorney closing multibillion-dollar acquisitions or a husband asking his wife if he can hang

Defending Your Way into Loserhood.

Life is full all of the unexpected. It’s not just about what you don’t anticipate. It’s about the purposeful dishonesty of other people around you. Specifically what it’s aimed at you.

Stop Playing to the Crowd.

There is always a crowd to play too. Sometimes they are standing on your bare feet cheering your name.  Other times they’re red in the face throwing anything within arms reach at you as they hiss violently in your direction.

Beating Selfish Selling with a “Dying” Business Plan.

Selfish behavior is never an attractive quality. Whether it’s a room full of toddlers fighting over the same seven toys or a manipulative sales executive pressuring you into making a decision that you are uncomfortable making, selfishness is repulsive.

Rewiring our Autistic Business Culture.

Much of what we know about the brain is only 4 to 5 years old. Recent advancements in science and technology show us how the brain actually operates. Using functional magnetic reasonance imaging, we can see how the brain develops,

How the Mis-Illusion Culture is Destroying Business.

We all want to believe that others care about us. And not in that “drop everything” panicked attention that means the sky is falling.

Why Success Means Running Towards the Painful Path.

Avoiding pain is a huge part of how we make decisions. We are wired to contrast possible risks against possible rewards and choose a course of action that maximizes ease.

The Secret Behind Getting People To Follow You.

Leadership is broken. Perhaps that’s a mis-statement. Maybe leadership isn’t broken at all. Maybe what’s really broken is our understanding of leadership.

Success Takes Extreme Behavior.

Small gestures have no place in big business growth.  It’s time to stop the “business logic nonsense” around what it takes to create something amazing. It takes massive amounts of focused intensity to make the changes that catapult your business

Why Education-Based Marketing is a Fraud.

Educational marketing doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t. It’s a fraud.

Leadership Doesn’t Require Facts.

Life can be intimidating. As you sit behind your executive desk and review the options about which strategy to pursue, it can seem like everything is gray.  It’s hard to tell strategies and results apart from each other.

It’s Going to Hurt Like Hell Unless You’re Doing it Wrong.

Getting what you want most for you it a lot of hard work.  A lot of pain. That whole “working smarter” thing that you hear experts talking about isn’t all that it’s knocked up to be. While you’re busy chasing

Foolish “Number Game” Antics and the Business Confusion They Cause.

At the most basic of interpretations all of business is a numbers game.

Why Fixing Your Sales Process Is The Wrong Business Initiative.

When something doesn’t feel right in our business we usually start to think first about sales. And if sales doesn’t work right we begin to think about the sales process.

The Secret Science Behind Handling Rejection.

No one likes to be rejected. Whether it’s you asking a friend to grab a beer with you or your dream client that you want to sign on the dotted line at the bottom of your contract — rejection is

How to Close Any Deal.

Here’s a problem that no amount sales training can solve for you: You’re going to lose more deals than win… It’s a fact of business you can’t avoid.

Why Your Business Needs You to Ask for Help.

You pretending that you have it all figured out is costing you massive momentum in the business cheerleader category. And forget about the short skirts and pom-poms.

Why You Need to Almost Lose it All.

There is something frightfully motivating about putting yourself at the edge of utter destruction. When you have invested every ounce of energy you have in your mission and the odds still look like you are going to be a loser.

Business Whining Isn’t Business Winning.

Make no mistake — business is tough.  Selling is a brutal full-contact sport. Customers lie to you.  Competitors do shady things behind your back.  Your own team members drop the ball and lose you key business opportunities.

The Lies Sales Experts (Shamelessly) Tell You.

Generating revenue is always a relevant discussion. Frankly, it’s all-consuming for the millions of companies trying to stay afloat in today’s madly convulsing economy.

Giving as a Business Strategy.

We’re pretty good at giving. Especially when it’s convenient or socially popular.

Who Calls Your Shots?

We all need help in life. Whether you are building bio-tech nano-robots in a Stanford laboratory, filling ice cream cones at your neighborhood Dairy Queen, or negotiating IPO deal terms for a Wall Street law firm there are always ways

Why Believing is the New Selling.

It isn’t enough to master the sales process. Sure you need to find leads and turn them into opportunities and deals.  That’s just good “horse sense”. And there are ways that you can improve your skills at moving through that

The Problems With Doing the Right Thing.

Success at anything is no easy matter. You have to know what success is and then how to get there. And while the experts debate the exact 17 steps to making that happen, they all agree about one thing.

Sometimes Things Go Wrong.

Things go wrong. Sometimes things go horribly wrong. You’ve planned and prepared and practiced — and still things can go wrong.

The Only Decision You Ever Need to Make.

There are tough decisions you have to make in life. Most of them you get to make on your own. Other decisions your brain automatically makes for you — like the right way to take your next breath of oxygen

Why We Aren’t Amazing.

The last decade of emergent sales technology has produced an environment where data is integral to customer acquistion. Prospects can be analyzed, tracked, and strategically targeted with greater precision than ever before in the history of business.

23 Thoughts About Selling Hope.

Customers don’t really want cheaper prices. Customers don’t really want better technology. Customers don’t really want faster answers.

4 Reasons Why the Rules Make You a Loser.

Ever wonder how you can do everything “right” and still succeed at failing? It’s like the kosmos has a personal agenda of making sure whatever you do comes up a few degrees shy of awful. And it’s not like you

6 Steps to Doing Better Next Time.

What happens when you do your best and it’s still not enough? What happens when you try but still come out a loser? What happens when you care and love and give but get hurt?

Blowing Up The Idiots In Your Way.

Most of the time, the only thing standing in the way of you being outrageously successful is one big, scary obstacle. A huge insurmountable mountain of a problem. A challenge so big and scary that we usually try to peck

You Need Conviction.

There are quiet moments in between the gasps of a silent sob when you question if you can go on. When the world tells you to stop. When your friends and family shake their head and wonder why you are

11 Reasons Why Your Buyer is Snoring.

Let’s be frank. Just about the worst way to spend the next five minutes of your life is listening to a sales dude prattle on about why you need to give him “five more minutes” to listen to the wonderments

Why Your Sales Process is Broken.

The idea of “having a process” is usually considered by business experts as the key to reproducible success. In other words, if you want to be successful time after time after time, then you need a specific process that you

5 Reasons to Play for Broke.

There are times when you have to lay it all on the line. You have to look past confusion, fear, and the dread of “picking up the pieces” and make the decision that right now is the moment to be

How to Avoid Hiring Super-Star Sales Losers.

We all want more revenue. Whether you are selling internet servers in the Antarctic or pedal-cab rides in Sao Paulo, more money means the same thing — less stress and more ways to spend the profits on bigger and bolder

5 Unconventional Sales Ideas to Help You Land (Many) More Customers.

We all want more customers. It doesn’t matter who you are — baker, butcher, or anonymous computer hacker.  Getting more consumers is an all-consuming part of everything that you do.

Blue Rhinos, Brown Dogs, and Ways to Change the Conversation.

Getting noticed is one of the biggest challenges businesses face today. It’s top of mind for executives in marketing, sales, customer service, and public relations. Not being noticed is a huge obstacle. It makes it harder to sell your products,

Sales Witchcraft and the Insanity of “Turn-and-Burn” Selling Strategies.

Far away in the magical land of sales wonderment there lies the holy grail of selling immortality. A place of “drop the facts on you” efficiency where all you need to generate massive amounts of revenue is you spinning through

The Science Behind Outrageous Business Success.

We all want to be outrageously successful in business. No one starts a business or jumps into a neurotic craft like selling without the single-minded focus to “blow the doors off”.

Making Excuses is Just Easier.

You don’t ever have to be wrong. You don’t ever have to say “I’m sorry” or “I’ll do better next time”

UnCommon Sense Cold Calling Strategy.

One of the ongoing “raging debates” amongst sales strategists is the practice of cold calling. Is it still a valid form of prospecting?  Does it work?  Do people even answer their phone? The idea of calling strangers and dazzling them

Crippled Selling, Wounded Warriors, and Misfit Sales Technology.

Sales has become the ultimate business battle ground. Like storied legends of past world wars, salesmen crouch dangerously on the front lines of combat.  Round after round, they rise from the trenches to run bayonet forward into the stench of

The Illogic of Selling Logically.

We are enamored with “making sense”. There is nothing more frightful for the sales newbie than feeling like they don’t know all the rhymes and reasons for the product they are selling.

Controlling the Idiot Inside You.

There seems to be an idiot inside of us that is always about two drinks away from strangling our common sense and rolling back the progress of a thousand amazing achievements we have accomplished. No matter how sophisticated or degreed

4 Retarded Sales Behaviors And The Reasons We Keep Losing at the Game of Business..

We’ve become a generation of retarded under-performing sales semi-professionals. Instead of being thought-leaders we’ve become frenetic, selfish territory managers. Trading one Mickey Mouse sales idea for the next. Always looking for the quick (and easy) way to make our quota

Old Dogs, New Tricks, and the Attitude That Will Make You a Sales Super Star.

You’ve been there before. You’re right in the middle of building a plan and all of a sudden everything you thought you knew about what you were doing seems upside down.  You have managers telling you that you have it

Goodbye, Good Riddance, I Want My Bath Robe Back.

Goodbye to the days of not caring. Goodbye to the thought that you can create a sales plan for people (run by people targeted at other people) without the willingness to understand what makes people tick.

23 Unconventional Leadership Lessons For Future Super-Stars.

It’s a tough job being the leader. It’s even tougher jockeying to get in the position to be the leader. Right? You have to push and prod and prove your way to the top.

4 Reasons You’re Not as Successful As They Are.

We all want to be more successful. From the time we’re on infant, we just want to be a little bit better. It’s about making that new sound or learning those new letters or scoring a higher grade on test.

Quick Ways to Kill Your Customers.

Everybody has problems. You do.  Your boss does. The post man.  The pizza delivery guy.  The sports super-star.

Unlock Your Inner Screw-up…

We hate being wrong. Lump it together with “getting left at the altar on your wedding day” and there really isn’t anything much worse that we try to avoid at all costs. It all started with you as young little

Quotas Are For Quitters.

Goals are kinda important. Right? If you don’t know where you want to go, you stand the chance of ending up in some pretty awkward places.  

No One Can Force You To Be a Bad-Ass.

We waste a lot of time reading sales books, hiring coaches, and networking around for great advice on how best to boost our revenue, crush a quota and grow our businesses.

Why Building Rapport is Killing Your Sales Career.

People don’t need to like you to do business with you. Heck, they don’t even need to trust you all the time.

Why Buyers Hate Your Sales Presentation.

Somewhere between the evolution of the cave man and the invention of the Model T assembly line, the sales presentation became the mode of pitching somewhat interested buyers on the possibilities of spending their hard-earned dollars on our products. You’ve

Stupid People Are Your Biggest Threat to Being Successful.

Let’s just be frank about this whole idea of you being successful. (And not just the type of success where you learn how to tie your shoes or pay your bills on time.) Don’t get me wrong. Those are certainly

You Know More Than The Experts.

Every industry has it’s experts. We talk them “talking heads”, pundits, and gurus. (The “know-it-alls”.) And regardless of what we call them, one thing is certain.

Selling to Sociopaths.

Inside of each sales person is an unquenchable thirst to win. It’s almost indescribable the raw gut-wrenching aversion we have to losing.  We can’t stand the thought that we might not be able to evangelize our story to every last

What To Do When No One Listens.

You’ve got a product to sell, a quota to hit, and a business to grow. And if you’re halfway motivated, you’re beating the streets making short work of the task of spreading the word.

Selfishness, Sales, and the Sad Excuses We Try to Justify.

Selling has evolved into a Grade-A contact sport. We might like to call it negotiation or client strategy or creating “winning solutions”. But it’s something much more personal. It’s a battle of wits. Where losing isn’t as simple as putting

Bad Questions, Stupid Answers, and Wasted Sales Effort.

The ebb and flow of selling hinges on your crafty ability to ask and answer key questions. To be truly great at sales you need to be good at both sides of the question and answer process.

5 Ways You are Your Biggest Problem.

Ever notice how the same skills and intuitions that make you a super-star one minute are the same bad habits that make you a train wreck? One minute you’re on top of the world, and then you find yourself at

5 Truths About Sales Success We Don’t Want to Admit.

Most discussions about how to be successful in sales include the essentials of technology and process and skills.  How to leverage all three to funnel prospects into closed opportunities. From leads to lots of revenue. But that discussion is misleading

The Idea Already Exists.

Lets face it. Everything you want to do has already been done before. It might not be on the front page of the New York Time or plastered all over billboards up and down the interstate.

Sales Grit and the Insanity of Measuring What Doesn’t Matter.

It’s not just that we’re not tough enough – not putting in enough effort; it’s the fact that what we measure makes us look like we have it all together. When we don’t… And that misdirection limits our ability to

The Lie of a “Better” Sales Process.

We all want to believe that there’s a better way of doing things. And usually there is. We want to imagine that there is a magic process that solves all of our business problems in one amazing swoop of awesomeness.

9 (More) Terrible Sales Ideas We’re Addicted To.

(If you missed the first 8 terrible sales ideas, you can read them here…) 9. “Checking in” Somehow we seemed to have missed the memo that our clients down really don’t care about our personal schedules.  The idea that we

8 Terrible Sales Ideas We’re Addicted To.

Sales needs an overhaul. Frankly, the entire selling process needs to change.  And to be fair that’s probably an exaggeration. (Not everything needs to change.)

The Fight’s (Only) Over When You Are.

Waiting until tomorrow won’t make the fight any easier. And that’s exactly what business is — a fight. Every step of the way it’s a violent fist fight that threatens to steal your dreams and kick you to the curb

Stay Better Connected With a Better Address Book.

If you are in sales, you need to get good at remembering people. And not just the list of prospects found in your CRM.  You need to stay close to your “real” connections. The people you know all over the

Fighting the Fraud Inside You.

We’re all frauds. That’s why adopting another sales process won’t fix your business problems. You’re flawed and so anything you do can fail.  And the more you stray from you who really are, the greater the chances of you failing

Why You Don’t Want Results Right Now.

Maybe it’s time to start thinking about results a little differently. It’s not the first time we’ve needed to rewind. The 1990s created a generation of bipolar performers. We were told that you had to leave your office tasks at

5 Ways to Know If Your Business Meeting Is a Complete Waste of Time.

Let’s face it. Most business meetings are a waste of time. They really are. It’s 3:15 on a Friday afternoon and you get that call from your spouse. The car is packed, the kids are watching a movie, and the

An Ode to Failing Famously.

You won’t do anything that amazing in life without failing. Without failing big. It’s simply unavoidable.

Belligerent Client Badgering and Selfish Robo-Dial Relationships.

Customer contact isn’t the same as customer conversation. Somehow we’ve confused messaging with attitudes that matter.

Dizzy Dance Parties and Misguided Sales Celebrations.

What’s the deal with all the sales celebrations? On one hand it makes sense. You just made a bunch of money.  Heck, you just slapped the competition silly.

You’re Really Just Afraid of Yourself.

Perhaps the only thing standing in the way of your success is you. Not your lack of education, your financial situation, or the bad decisions you regret. The fear of what you could achieve if you believed in yourself.

The Reason You Lose and 4 Ways to Become Unstoppable.

Life comes at you with a vengeance. If it’s not your business on the rocks, it’s a family that’s needs your attention.  It’s not just stress or lack of money or the pressure you feel to perform. It’s dozens of little

Business Boo-Boo’s and the Surgeon Inside You.

The primary driver for every human behavior is rooted in pain. Either avoiding pain, dealing with pain or trying to inflict it on others — what we understand best (at the root of our DNA) is pain.

Don’t be a Small-Business Jerk!

Sales people and small business owners can be some of the most selfish people on the planet. Now before you get all wound up and remind me that you are the one taking the risk and “stepping out there”, let’s

The Love Economy: How Outrageous Acts of Empathy Drive Sales Growth.

The business landscape has changed so dramatically over the last decade that sellers hardly know how to act. There has been an explosion of new technology and tactics — ways to research buyers and buying activity that has never been available before.

12 Reasons to Stop Being A Team Player.

Being a team player means you have to pretend to get along with a lot of morons and jerks. Don’t get me wrong. These people happen to be everywhere. At times it seems unavoidable.

So What….

So what if you’re not the smartest person in the room. So what if you don’t have enough money to avoid getting it right the first time.

Yesware Delivers Email for High-Performers.

Breaking News: Email as you know it is about to change… How many times have you jumped into your car headed for your first meeting of the day and remembered that someone you wanted to talk with hasn’t emailed you

Sacrifice, Destiny, and the Lies We Tell Ourselves.

We have grown uncomfortable with the idea of sacrifice. Not the pretentious self-limitations of overindulgence we like to think of as sacrifice. Something completely different.

4 Unconventional Answers to Hard Sales Questions.

Sometimes, solving hard questions around sales and marketing is the only thing standing between you and the outrageous success you invision for yourself. Here are 4 tough sales questions and the unconventional answers you need to position yourself a little

Be The Selling Door Mat And Win Doing It.

You’ve probably heard the wise old adage:  “You need to stop letting buyer’s waste your time…” Sounds like the reasonably smart approach to efficient selling. Right? You’ve got a plan, a purpose, and more importantly a quota.

How to Stop Being a Creepy, Annoying Sales Networker.

Give it a rest. You don’t need to be prospecting all the time. It’s just flat out annoying.  And creepy.

At the End of the Day.

When the lights go out and the chaos of subsistence fades in the dim of a day’s effort, there are only a few things that matter. And in spite of  the busyness of the day, it all becomes clear at

The Lies Buyers (Accidentally) Tell You.

Lies?  The buyer is lying?  To me? So that sounds mean, slightly awkward, and completely at odds with conventional wisdom. Wouldn’t it make the most sense that buyers would tell you exactly what they want?

Unlocking the Spartan Inside You.

A flustered sigh escapes your lips as you nod your head ever so slowly from side to side.  As you lean forward, your hands grab the back of the counter. Eyes squinting against the shimmer of light that floods the

What if You Don’t?

Life is full of suspense. Things go up and things go down. What you think is bad one moment might be the lesson that swings you wildly in the right direction the next. It doesn’t always make sense.

Technology Tantrums and Sales Nonsense We Try to Justify.

You need more than a glib personality and an honest-looking face to build outrageous sales growth in your organization.  Heck, you need all the help you can get. Buyers have access to more data than ever before. It may not be

The Danger in Playing it Safe.

There’s always a move that’s safe. It’s the move that doesn’t raise eyebrows.  It doesn’t get that awkward whisper or angry stare. No one does a double-take or drops a “What the @#$%”.  

Stop Getting Permission to Be Amazing.

Life is simply a series of opportunities for you to be amazing. And sometimes we need a reminder that we don’t need permission to get started.

Confused? 28,800 Reasons Why Buyers Don’t Email You Back.

It’s a universal problem. You spend time researching a prospect, developing referrals to get an introduction, honing your pitch, and scheduling a demo. It takes days, weeks — sometimes even months. And then you when email the buyer back, you

6 Dirty Little Secrets to Being the Best at Just About Anything.

We don’t like losing. Not one little bit. It’s counterintuitive to the massive chemical systems keeping our bodies energized, motivated, and catapulting towards a future that we want for ourselves. Losing is uncomfortable. Heck, we struggle at times to drop

The Reason We Try.

It becomes all too clear when the odds are stacked against you. The terms are harsh. The conditions frustrating. But that’s why we try.

Sales Malaise and the Fear of Awesomeness.

Every deal starts somewhere. An introduction. A referral. A cold call into shark infested waters. Regardless of how you got in, you’re there. Even if it is just for the 30 minutes you begged your prospect to spend with you.

Selling Crab Cakes And a Pissed Off Meter Maid.

Let’s talk random “sales-pitchery”… Have you ever encountered the angry parking meter maid who puts a ticket under your windshield wiper as you’re getting back to your car to put a few more quarters in the parking meter. You run

Passive Aggression. And Why Babies Know Better.

Even babies know better than that. They are masters at “growing up”.

The De Facto Guide to Dealing With Jerks.

It happens. You are hurrying along toward your goal and run headlong onto a jerk. A selfish, unaware dream-crushing monster of a human being.

Stop Being so Damn Selfish.

Selling doesn’t need to be all about you. Sure you have a pitch, a platform, a process, and a big fast prize when you bring it all together into a “deal”. But despite your perspective (and all the pressure placed

Making Excuses is a Choice.

You always have the choice to make an excuse. At any point in life (in any situation), you can choose to make excuses. It’s an option that is always available for you.

It’s Just Easier to Say Things You Don’t Mean.

What you say matters. What you say (and mean) matters more.

What People Do.

You can make the case that platforms, process, and protocol drive lasting change. And to some extent that’s unquestionably accurate. A plan, a goal, and the steps to get you there are key parts of transactional success.

Would Passive Aggression Kill You?

You can’t actively pursue your goals and be passive agressive at the same time.  Those excuses don’t work. And yet we try so hard to be the exception. Thinking it might work (this time) for us.

You Have to Want to be Better.

There are always ways to boost your productivity. There are more efficient processes, faster learning tricks, and more creative plans to be better.

43 Truths About the Death of Selling.

Sales is dying. The job of professional selling is going away. It’s dead.  It’s over.  Seller’s need to find something else to do.

The Power You Have.

You may think sometimes that you are powerless to change the situation you are in. It may appear that you are powerless to escape the pain you feel, the consequences you have accrued, or the thoughts and doubts that make

4 Staggering Ways Fear Will Drive You to Fail This Year.

Are you scared? Are you looking at a list of audacious goals wondering how you can achieve it all?  Is there that one big scary tasks looking you in the face that you need to start working on?

New Resolution. Forget the Facts and Figures.

At some point you have to question the facts and figures. They don’t (really) add up.

3 Mobile (Sales) Apps to Jump-start New Relationships.

You’ll spend less time this coming year in front of your laptop and become more reliant on your smartphone. And there’s a lot of advantage to that.

Time to Doubt or Do?

There are really only two possible options for handling any situation. You can do.  Or you can doubt. And you need to do both.

Just Attitude Your Way Past Impossible.

What you see is what you get. What you think is happening will happen. It’s your attitude that drives outcomes.

Why Selfish Sales Guy Behavior Makes us Avoid You.

No one likes being around selfish people. A selfish sales person is much worse.

Stop Sending Emails that Trick me into a Conversation.

Just because you can push a button and fire off an email to your closest 300 prospects, doesn’t mean you should. In fact, if the emails you’re sending are anything like the emails filling up most our inboxes, you need

Sales Sulking and the Misfit Nonsense of Demanding Fairness.

Life isn’t fair. It’s not even close to fair.

How to Crush Your Sales Mojo in 5 Easy Steps.

Ever walk out of a sales meeting with that worried half-frown and sick feeling in your gut? That sense that something is missing. That you lost your selling mojo.

There are Always Excuses.

Especially when you are looking for one. And it always sounds good to you.

Discipline: Stupid is as Stupid Doesn’t Do.

Shame on us for not trying harder. For having dreams and goals and ambition, and then giving up.

Selling “Right” is Completely Wrong.

You might be completely right.  

4 Secrets to Solving Impossible Problems.

Realizing your dreams is about overcoming a series of mind-numbing obstacles. It’s about turning problems into potential.  And potential into power.

Stop Emailing Me If You Don’t Really Care.

Stop telling me to “do not reply” to this email. Just stop emailing me if you don’t want to have an actual conversation with me.  

Why You Need to be Standing at the Edge of Explosion.

Success (always) comes to those standing closest to the edge of explosion. You just can’t help it.  

Your Hard Close is just Selfish Behavior.

You want an answer when you want an answer…

Why Being Thankful (today) Doesn’t Make Sense.

At least one out of every 365 days, we decide to not work (so much) and celebrate a historic occasion of gratitude. A time when survival and hope for the future created deeply inspired celebration.

124+ Edgy Perspectives to Help you Accomplish the Impossible.

Are you looking to accomplish something amazing?  Something so astonishingly disruptive and overwhelmingly applaudable that the world around you is never the same. It’s a lot simpler that it might seem.

Edgy Weekend Reading…

Sitting around waiting for something to inspire you off the couch and into doing something amazing? Here are a three more edgy conversations that I guest wrote on other places all over webosphere.

The Ultimate Secret to Satisfaction and Happiness.

I’m just going to be me. I am tired of being the person that you think I should be. I’m just going to be the best “me” possible.

3 Bad Personal Decisions That Are Making You a Business Loser

“Sometimes, bad things just happen to good people…” Ever hear that phrase before?

Why Prospects Hate to Deal with You.

Most of us hate dealing with sales people. OK.  Maybe that perspective is a little too harsh… 

11+ Edgy Tools to Turn Outlook Into the Ultimate Selling Platform

Having edgy conversations and closing big deals isn’t all about just waking up and throwing around energy. Frankly, the tools you use (or don’t use yet) can be a tremendous asset for you being able to have conversations that are different

Beating Fear, Confusion, and Feeling Paralyzed by Circumstances.

Bills. Work issues. Clients. Personal conflicts. Problems come at you so fast some times that you can feel completely paralyzed. Your brain is literally overloaded.  

44,000 Hours. 300 Edgy Conversations. Later.

Last week I wrote my 300th post here on the Edge of Explosion. It’s been 5 years worth of work. And a heck of a lot of Red Bull.

Selfish Salesmanship. 9 ways in 60 seconds.

It’s pretty easy to be a selfish sales person. Most of our sales processes are built on the premise that it’s “all about us”…

4 Ways to Deal With NOT Having the Answer.

You tip back your chair, cross your arms behind your head, and stare at the ceiling. So many questions. So much chaos. You just want a simple answer.

23+ Ways to Stop Pretending You Know Everything.

Pretending that we know everything is probably the worst self-liming behavior that we do. What’s especially challenging about this bad habit is that our culture pressures us to believe that we should know everything about anything.  That to be at the top

Why We Do The Ridiculous Things We Do.

Ever notice how despite our best intentions we end up acting like idiots every once in a while. It’s like we snap. We’ll wearing the right clothes, saying the right works, mixing it up to the appropriate socially-acceptable levels.

Plus.IM Provides Better Instant Messaging For Better Conversations.

Staying connected is key to delivering outrageous results. It’s not that you can’t unplug.  It’s that you can choose when and where you want to connect. Instant messaging is a great way to do that.

When you Make the Choice to be Awesome.

Being awesome isn’t an accident. It’s a choice you make every time you decide not to quit.

Why The Facts Don’t (Really) Matter.

“Is that a fact….?” You’ve probably been asked that quite a few times over your lifetime. Professors. Parents. Your priest. They all care about “the facts”.

Why Making Bad Decisions Is Costing you Sales Success.

Let’s face it.  We love to be illogically irrational. In spite of our experience, talents, and ability to perform at high levels, we seem to be unable to escape our penchant for making bad decisions.  And it’s these choices that

The Value You Bring to the World.

Who you are brings significant value to the world. That’s not just a cheesy line you hear from your therapist or the motivational speaker standing on the stage.

IntroMojo Discovers Your Sales Prospects.

There are sales tools for everything. If you can create a catchy name then you can create your own sales tool.

Selfish Behavior is Limiting Your Potential for Greatness.

Selfish behavior will steal every dream you have for yourself. You’ll make bad decisions, hurt good people, and destroy any chance you have of making a lasting difference in the world around you.

Making Time for Excellence.

To be the best, you have to take the time to pursue excellence. It’s not enough to have natural talent.  Or even to work like an animal — putting in massive amounts of mind-bending effort. You need the discipline to

Maybe You Want to Win Too Badly.

For most of us, there is nothing we want more than “to win” You can’t help it. Neither can I.  It’s part of your DNA.

It’s the Conversation (that Matters) Not the Words.

No one likes to be talked at. Not a spouse.  Not an employee.  Not even the family pet. When we feel the words thrown at us don’t matter, we automatically throw away the conversation.

4 Reasons Why You Need to “Wing It”.

How about you wing it more?

2 Edgy Reasons Why Belief (in Yourself) is Your Real Battle.

Belief.  It’s not half the battle. It’s pretty much everything. Ever found yourself pacing in front of the bathroom mirror wondering if you lost your mojo?  Wondering if this time you just might not make it?

CRM Menagerie.

When the venerable Jonathan Farrington asked if I had an opinion on CRM, I couldn’t help but chuckle manically. The sound of “C.R.M.” kind of makes my stomach churn.  It starts that weird eye twitch that I do.

You’re Not Even Doing the Bare Minimum.

“Dude, you’re just freak’n lazy…” Not you.  That was me about 35 minutes into a boring explanation from a lazy executive about why he couldn’t launch his business in the right direction. I did apologize.  As edgy as I am,

7 Reasons Why Continuous Progress is the Best Way to Find Outrageous Success.

You won’t be successful overnight. (Unless it’s 2,745 overnights later) Certainly you’re smart enough and talented enough to get it right the first time.  And with the right amount of luck, you might just make it happen. The odds aren’t

Stop Whining! Your Service Sucks!

Let’s be very clear about something. Horrible customer service is the fastest way to drive your dreams into bankruptcy.

The Ultimate Guide to Handling Stupid People

The cosmos is full of stupid people. Sometimes it feels like you get more than your fair share of interaction with all the wrong ones.  It can drive you mad.

6 Awesomely Edgy Technologies You've Never Heard About Before.

You’re busy.  And sometimes when you look around it seems like you’re missing that one edgy solution that helps you past the headache you have at the moment. You’re not alone. (In fact, it gets better than that.) There’s a

Why Distraction is Your Biggest Enemy.

Nothing will bankrupt your dreams for the future faster than distraction. Not lack of experience.  Not bad luck.  Not even the worst economic disaster in 80 years. It’s you being distracted and it’s guaranteed to rob you of everything you

12 Winning Perspectives to Drive High Performance.

Everyone wants to be a winner. We like watching winners.  We like having winners as friends.  When giving a choice between winning and losing, we usually always chose winning.

Why CNN is Stealing your Soul.

Have you read every best selling business book in the last thirteen-and-a-half years and still feel like there’s something missing? Like no matter how many times you step through the guaranteed success road map you just read about that you

Actually, It’s (Always) What It’s Not.

Looks can be deceiving.  In fact, more times than not what you see is not what you get. It’s a facade.  It’s like the Wild West of your imagination.  And that’s not your fault entirely. A lot of smart people

Batchbook Reinvents CRM.

Everybody needs a good way to keep track of relationships.  For some of us, a quick trip to Barnes & Nobles yields a slim leather address book that does what we need. If you happen to know more than a

Pain: How to Look Past the Shadows on the Wall.

Pain is the primary driver for everything that we do (or don’t do). It determines what we think about.  What we believe is possible.

Why I Hired My Biggest Critic to Be My Coach.

We all need someone in our face telling us we can do better. Sure criticism stinks!  But so does not getting to your goal…

What Happened to Being Outrageous?

Usually, being ordinary is a bad plan. Pursuing the path of least resistance means high-grade mediocrity and “close-to-but-just-not-there” success. You are active yet ineffective. Moving…. just not toward your dreams.

How Tough (Really) Are You?

We like to think that we’re pretty tough.  In fact, if you back us into a corner (or up to the bar for too long), we might just tell you how tough we really think we are. We’re like the

13 Ways to Turn Defeat into Success.

Ever find someone that always looks like he wins — no matter what he does?  You try and try (and try) and this guy seems to roll over and hit home runs. No matter what he does (whenever he does

Poyozo Feeds your Memory. Never Forget Anything.

Every forget something that you really wanted to remember? Who was that guy I bumped into yesterday?  Did I send that email already?  What was the weather like yesterday? Frustrating right?

When You (Finally) Get Tired of Being a Loser.

That’s where I’m at. You come to a point in your life where you just decide that you have had enough of mediocrity.  Your own. Not the world around you.  Not the nonsense on the television channel.  Not your work

The End of Sales Obesity.

It’s getting to be that time of year.  You push back from the table with a awkward sense of “why did I gorge myself so much”. Any movement out of your chair is slow and painful.  You just feel annoyed

Josh, Land Rovers, and the "Numbers Game".

Ever walked away from an experience just demoralized at the state of the sales person on the other end of the deal.  It’s a reminder to not “be that guy”… Here is my story — the email I sent back

Depression, Dreams, and Destiny.

Ever feel like one of these plastic figurines you beat down at the Mack-A-Mole game at Chuck E Cheese?  Ever feel like the “game” is you getting your head beat in by everyone around you? Like life is rigged to

Are you Obsessed with Greatness?

It’s not a hard question.  Right? It’s actually pretty simple.  Are you obsessed with being great? It’s so simple in fact that many times that we confuse the real issue. 

UnfetteredTV: Sh*t or Get off the Pot

Last week, Tim Pec0raro and his producers asked me to stop by the studio to be a guest on UnfetteredTV — a brand new show from the Peculiar Productions team. I knew Tim from working together on some other projects

Introspection, Nonsense, and Hoping for More.

Since when did sales come down to the fine art of improving your quarterly performance? To improving your quota by that 4% margin of victory. Since when did we start looking back (on the worst sales year of 3 generations)

The Karmic Charm of Action.

Life comes at us fast. We are pushed to fear and faint and fail. The deck is stacked.  The odds are cast.  Friends are few and foes are many.

Get In Your Stribe. Connect Better.

If all this hoopla about the social graph and Facebook privacy settings hasn’t made you want to jump off a cliff, if you find it mildly interesting to connect with people, if you have a message, an audience, and the

Why Success Needs to Hurt First.

Because that’s the only way you’ll listen. That’s the only way to get you out of your own way and on the path to extraordinary… Here’s  a harsh reality.  Being edgy — living on the edge of outrageous opportunity hurts

3 Clues to Achieving the Impossible

There is no one secret formula to doing amazing things – to achieving the impossible.  Timing, a lot of effort, and good old-fashion “luck” have a way of making what someone else has already done pretty hard to reproduce. Which

Use Liaise. Get Things Done.

Getting things done is one of the hottest topics sweeping through the business world over the last few years. The quest for ultimate productivity. There are books and charts and a million different perspectives on the subject. And yet there

Stupid People. How to deal with them.

You can’t live life without running into stupid people. And not just running into these people– them purposefully running unto you. It’s the single biggest demotivating force on the face of the earth.

127 Ways to Make a (Huge) Difference

We all want to believe that who we are matters. We desperately want to know that what we do makes a difference. That’s not odd.  It’s the way that we are made.  Our brains are made to search for meaning

Edgy Technology: Competitious Compares Competitors

Your clients NEVER care how much you are the same with your competition.  They always want to know what makes you different. Special. Better for them. So that means you need to know before they ask you.

It Takes Effort. That's Why It Hurts.

There is no Easy Street. Sure, growing up in Northern Virginia there was an actual road off Route 1 called Easy St. close to where I used to get my hair cut once a month. (Ironically — it was in

Determination: 5 Thoughts to Keep You Going

The race for success is a long one.  Despite your zen-link aptitude at turning lemons into lemonade, life has a strange way of beating you down and stealing your dream. It takes determination (and a lot of it) to keep

LogMeIn Makes "Anywhere" Possible.

You can’t be everywhere at all times.  You can’t even always be in the one place that you most want to be at the time. If you travel for business or pleasure and don’t want to haul around your desktop

It's the Details that Matter.

Getting the big picture figured out is pretty easy. We call that “having a dream”… It’s the edgy details that determine our ultimate fate.  Whether we “make it”.

Practicing Your Way to Outrageous Success.

Being successful all comes down to doing one thing really well. And that one thing is: PRACTICE. And not just the type of practice where you turn on the egg timer and sit down at the piano to grind through

Meet Better. WebEx Brings a Better Game.

Meet better? With WebEx?  Before you stop reading and assume you know what I am going to say: STOP. WebEx has just rolled out a brand new platform that instantly makes it the best technology for you to start holding

Stop Trying to be Good.

I brought this up last week when I was a guest on the Open4Business radio hosted by Trey Pennington and Jay Handler.  It’s something that has been on my mind for the last few months.

How to be Authentic and Avoid Pretension.

Or as I like to say “PRETEND-tion”.  Get’s the point across better. How do you stay “you” in spite of all the pressure to conform to what everyone around you is telling you what “you” should be.

MindMeister Maps your Mind.

Ever have a great idea and then forget it three minutes later when someone jumps into your office asking for help? Or how about the problem of not seeing the world as a series of consecutive steps? What if, to

Passive Aggression is Stealing your Dreams.

Your attitude.  Your behavior is stealing your dreams.  Your destiny.

The Power of Passion.

What moves you? To tears. To get up in the morning. To invest your time or money. What will make you change? Here’s the question that answers all the rest: “What are you passionate about?”

Quantcast Profiles your Audience

“Who really cares?” We’ve all asked ourselves that that question at one time or another.  Right? You are busy in your cause and sometimes it feels like it’s hard to connect with the community.  You hear them.  You just can’t

There is someone better than you.

Usually lots of them. Lots better. It’s an (edgy) reality of life. You can’t be the best at everything.  You can’t even always be the best at the one things that you really want to be the best at. 

3 Secrets of High Performance Selling

High performance. You know it when you see it. It’s one of those stories you can tell a dozen times and still be excited each time. It’s captivating to watch. More of an experience than just an event or an

Flowtown Takes It Personally.

A big part of high performance is building relationships that matter.  It’s more than who you know or who knows you. It’s about your ability to take key acquaintances and turn them into trusted relationships. And that starts with you

Just Say It Already.

Awkward. Ever leave a conversation feeling that way? There’s a lot more that needs to be said, and no one is saying it. Maybe it’s “I’m sorry” or “Here’s what really happened…”.

The Plan is Really Your Success.

You will be whatever you are planning for yourself to be. (……let that sink in for a moment) Chances are that you won’t win the lottery or have a rich uncle leave you a small fortune.  If you are like

Let Feedly Feed your Mind.

Knowing more certainly isn’t the silver bullet for ultimate high-performance.  But it sure gives you more ammo to take down your elephant. You don’t sell more because you know more (necessarily).   You sell more because what you know allows

Selfish Emails are Rude.

Have you ever had a moment where someone looked at you in mild disgust and said these words:  “Dude, Stop being so selfish”? How did you feel?  Probably a little “icky”.  Right? If you have half a conscious at all,

High Performance Patience.

The cosmos doesn’t keep the same time as you do. Your schedules are nice but not pressing.  Your deadlines are ambitious yet ironic.  Your demands are legitimate but limited by experience and time. Sometimes high performance demands ninja-like focus on

Chocolate is Super Sweet from Chocri

It’s chocolate at it’s finest. Exactly the way you want it. Quite literally, in fact. And it’s all because of the wonders of edgy technology.

Stop "Doing" Committees.

You can’t have momentous results and group agreement.  They just hate each other too much to play nicely together. And to illustrate my point — Can you tell me one outrageous, world-changing success that emerged from the deep recesses of

Fear is Making You a Loser.

You were born a winner.  And life taught you how to be a loser. Ironic isn’t it? You beat the odds. From conception to nine months of pre-natal nurturing to emergence in a world full of dangers, you survived.

Threadsy Combines the Conversation.

Do you have 37 ways for people to get a a hold of you? Work email. Personal email. Legacy AOL email.  Unused Yahoo email addresses. Twitter direct messages.  Facebook emails…. It can be exhausting trying to remember to check all

Being a Knowledge Snob Isn't Cool.

Sometimes on the weekends I take my sons down to the park to play and I sit on the bench and watch as they interact with they children on the playground.  I laugh.  I observe.  I come to their aid

Feeling Lost When You Know The Way.

Have you ever looked around and say, “Where am I?” You feel lost.  And sad.  And thoroughly confused. Your head knows the direction.  You have enough experience to know the general outline of the steps you need to be taking.

Conference Calls Become Intimate

You’ve been there before.  Right.  You are pulling together high-level dudes into a discussion and you need to have a conference call. Ring…. Ring…. You dial into your conference call line and this is what you hear: “This conference call

Grow up. Stop Pouting. Care.

The title is really all I wanted to say. (I feel the need to write the rest of this article so you take the idea seriously)

Negotiation. Why You Want Mutual Satisfaction.

So let’s talk shop…  There is no such thing as a “one sided” deal. Both sides get what they want or a deal doesn’t happen.

Video Live Streaming

At 10:40, Andrea will introduce me and ten minutes later (or a smidge shorter than that) I go live… I am the keynote speaker at Launch Greenville in South Carolina but thanks to HubSpotTV, thousands of people all over the world will

Your Emails Make People Hate You.

How believable is this email? Not the one I am writing…. the one pictured above.  The one offering me 15.5 million dollars.  That one.

Survival, Dreams, and Avoiding the Bad Stuff

Who you believe you are might be the only thing that keeps your dream alive. People who study these type of things say that 80% of surviving bad mojo comes from what’s in your head…  It’s your resolve to live

Dooid Makes You Drool.

Sometimes you just need to get your side of the story out there…  You want to be memorable. Great idea, right?. The reality is that you are competing with a million other knuckleheads for 5 minutes of time with the

Stop doing stupid stuff just because your boss suggests it

A senior sales executive friend reached out me a few weeks ago asking for help transitioning between different senior sales positions. He was a former CEO who got bought out by a big company and was now working to group

Fear, Failure & What You Want For You

We let fear control too much of our lives. And the result is unnecessary failure. We fail because we fear. It’s just as simple as that. We fear…….. and then we fail. That’s how it always works. If you fear,

Comparing our Way to Horrible Conclusions

We use comparisons all the time to measure how successful we are.  It’s part of our primal instinct. To feel good about our place in life, we need to know “who we’re better than”.

Karma: 5 Ways to Change your Future.

What you do matters.  Everything.   The big stuff.  The little stuff.  Even the annoying stuff. It all matters and its all a part of that thing we call karma…

Transformation Not Transaction.

Transformation.  It’s not what you say.  It’s not even what you do. It’s how you leave them feeling when it’s all over.

Success Starts With You Being Different

You can’t stand out when you look like everyone else. You can’t inspire and challenge others when you are just as fearful as them to stand out and be noticed.  To put yourself in a position where people disagree with

The will to win: C'est pour toi, Maman

What is it that you really want?  Not what you tell everyone else you want, but what do you really want?  Is it huge success, more recognition — to just be happy.  What is it you really want? Now here’s

The Edge of Possibility: Where are you Standing?

Have you ever felt like you were on the very edge of outrageous opportunity?  Like you were so very close to making everything you ever wanted a reality?

4 Reasons You Can't Shortcut Your Way to Success

There is no shortcut to success. Unlike every episode with Indiana Jones, there is no Holy Grail of aspirational whymsy whereby you plot a few strategic moves and end up with all the pieces on the board.

8 paths to domination and 1 big way to fail

Here’s a harsh reality:  We‘re just not tough enough… On my wall framed hangs the famous inspiration quotation from Vince Lombardi about football and winning and what it takes to be number one.  It’s been on the wall of my

Seth Godin Inspires Indispensable Edginess.

Is what you doing right now something the world can’t live without?  Are you the difference between success and failure?  Are you truly indispensable?

No. I'm Not Like That.

We hate to be misunderstood. Better yet, we can’t stand over-hearing (in someone else’s casual conversation) that our motives or intention suck. How many times have you been in a conversation with a bunch of people when you thought you

Clean up your act… (or else)

For those of you who ignored my rage against the fad of making New Years resolutions, I say “bravo”…  Sure it’s a mindless waste of time to commit to an important goal for just a few months, but you already

Yep… Your New Year Resolutions are Worthless.

It’s that time of year again where we take stock of our poor performance from last year and write down blissful wishes for what we want to make happen this year. It actually a pretty worthwless activity…

Who Convinced us to Trade More for Merrier?

Parties…  You love going to them.  What’s even better — you love getting that late minute call to go crash your buddy’s friend’s pad to join in the “uninvited”  festivities. You can’t have hosted a party more than once in

Can I just pretend I really, really care about you and send you an e-card for Christmas?

This weekend, the missus and I wrapped up our shopping for family for the holidays.  I have to say: “We were more thoughtful this year than any time previously…” (at least I thought so) We really thought through the whole

Unscientific Research: Fix your wallet to fix your head to fix your wallet…

Do you have big dreams? For 2010?  For right now? What you do, how far you succeed, what you achieve — they all come from what you think about. They all come from what you are thinking about RIGHT now…

The Ultimate Life Lesson…

The Hardest Sale of Your Life

I was in a conversation with a close friend last week about some serious matters when I just stopped everything I was talking about and simply summed it up by noting:

Obsessively Searching for Stellar…

Many thanks to the dozens of you who have sent me kind messages over the last two weeks asking where The DEW View! had gone.  Nowhere. I just didn’t have

How to succeed when your life life kicks the @$%*# out of your sales life

Sometimes life throws you a curve ball. Things blow up…. bad. You get beaten up in your personal life and it starts to affect your chances at closing deals.

(Illogically) Help Me Be Your Customer

Think through the mind of your customer… and ask yourself if you are “illogically” wooing your customer.  Are you doing what no one else will do to make them successful?  Are you working to guarantee that your customer hits a

The language of people

  There’s a secret language that many of us don’t understand.  It’s deliberate but very real.  It’s hidden but in plain sight.  It’s how we work but rarely what we think about.

How GMC Lost My Million Dollar Business

What happened to the art of caring about the success of your customers? What happened to caring in general — about your own success, about what wakes you up in the morning, about a higher calling than your 9-to-5?  Is

Stop Shouting at Me.

Since when did we as business people decide that having conversations was too much work?

Searcy Smacks-Down RFP Nonsense

I got a call about 6 weeks ago from a close friend of mine who used to be a top adviser when I was CEO at ACCESS.  Federico was a great compliment to what I did, and so we worked

Stolen Shoes and Bad Movie Mojo.

Two stories. One central theme. It all started on Friday with a call from my friend, Jill Stelfox…

Sales Stat Strategies Suck!

Sneak up behind someone and poke them with a safety pin and they jump.   Do it 100 times to a 100 different people and you will get the SAME result. It’s human nature.  It’s a reaction that all people

Your Email Just Punched Me in the Eye.

Do you write a lot of emails? Do you find that that most of your “targeted emails” never get answered? Are you tired of having your emails ignored?

Attacking the hill.

  Last year as I trained for a UFC fight I spent time in the gym pretty much every day running on the treadmill, pushing some weights, and hitting the heavy bags (The speed bag is still a challenge…).  After

It's your fight. Come to play.

  It you have been in sales long then you can appreciate when I make the observation that SALES is a fight.  It require discipline, dedication, and dogged training.  To be the best (or even get better) you have to

You = Your Idea of You

  Part of achieving outrageously enviable performance is understanding who you are.  What you want and why you want it. Now stop!  Get that last idea out of your head.  Here is what what you just thought: “I already know

No blue pills for your sales ED

NOTE: This is a DEW View rant, you can stop reading this right about now… I had a thought while running today — about lazy bizdev schmoes.  It really pisses me off that in 2009 (with a horrible economy) bad

Myth: Thinking Actually Helps

High-performers in the world of “deal making” share the universal quality of self-assessment. It’s an internal process of strategically measuring the inputs and outputs of a process or idea (or just “what went down…”) and deciding if it could be

When We Don't Run At the Same Speed

Under the right incentive almost any one of us can run the same distance in the same amount of time. It might only be 20 feet… or 2… but until we scale the challenge with hills and distance and time

Perspective on Quitting

  There are not many “walking on fire” acts of bravery that compare to  stepping into the shoes of “chief sales maker”….Whether you are the CEO of a 1-man start-up venture or the lead sales architect at a Fortune 10

Skin in the Game

Warren Buffett famously coined the term “skin in the game” in his business insight that you can “guarantee” the success of a company by requiring C-level executives to use their own money to buy stock in the particular company they

Taking a Gut Punch

Understanding “why” is a frustrating part of life and more specifically your sales negotiations. You can work your ass off, do a lot of things right, and still not get a deal done. It’s a punch in the gut!

Testing that Theory

  Step aside Susan Boyle, you have been outclassed! Meet Kari Callen!

The wrong meds won't fix anything…

I have had a sinus infection for the past ten days or so which has really worked me over.  I usually pop a few Sudafed-24 hour and in a day or two it all goes away.  It’s a proven formula

Why letting down is not an option…

  I get asked all the time why I push so hard all the time. I work when I am sick.  I work when I am pissed.  I work when I have worked enough. So why not let down?

D is for Dialogue

  A recent study conducted by the Shyness Clinic in Menlo Park, California, revealed that almost 90% of Americans label themselves as shy.  Further, the California Department of Consumer Affairs

What Courage Looks Like

I aspire to be courageous. I don’t really think I am.  What I do (who I am…) doesn’t seem to demand courage.  But I might be wrong…. A few days ago I received

Motivation is a Head Game

Don’t ever tell me “you do what you want to do when you want to do it”…  It’s stupid!  It’s emotional and lacks the sustainability to take you to your goal line. The best motivation is cognitive.  It is deeply

Sales Mentoring Madness

Sales mentoring without demanding accountability is like trying to dunk a basketball with an 80-pound backpack on — you might still be able to hit the goal, but it’s really tiring, somewhat painful, and quite a bit annoying…

Just Do It Already…

My CEO buddy Kriss Wilson posted a quote on Twitter from Buddha that fit right in to some of my recent thinking about selling and the differentiation between those who SELL and those who are “working on it.”

Freedom from bad sales ideas

  The 4th of July stands as a tribute to taking action against oppression, bad philosophy, and a depressing future.  America’s foundation in being independent could serve as a lesson to many sales people who forget that most of what

When People Don't Understand You…

Vision can be lonely (I have had this article half-written for  more than 13 months but never finalized my thinking about it.  Today I present it to you as a work in progress…) It is a certainty in life that

Sales Lessons I Learned Running

I have been back into road running recently and since there are no sidewalks to use like I had in Virginia, I run on the edge of the road toward on-coming traffic.  It creates an interesting dynamic when encountering cars.

Your customers are wrong! And you are too for believing them!

Explosive sales breakthough can only occur when you truly understand that your propect, customer, client, or whatever else you call the people that spend money with you are not your friends. One of the biggest legends of sales mythdom

Polarize not Paralyze…

You can’t change the world without polarizing the people you run into — your friends, your community, and even your “not so much” fans.  Polarization creates “sides”.  It’s the line in the sand that says “either you are with me

Talking faster than our client can listen is really good if results are optional…

  I had a great conversation on Wednesday with Tom Searcy, CEO of Hunting Big Sales and we were talking about Sales Matters (which is on “delayed launch”) and how I kept turning down writing a book even though it

Social Media is NOT Crap.

YES –  I do know that yesterday I wrote about how much I hate strongly dislike the whole social media menagerie that has been a bumper crop of marketing geniuses all over the world giving their over-baked opinions on how

Social Media is Crap.

  Sorry.  Can I just get that off my chest?  (of course I can, I write this thing)  :-) Isn’t media by nature social? a VHS tape when passed hand-to-hand

FREE is the New "Black"

If you have not thought about the competitive power of a new currency I am now calling “smart FREE” (as opposed to “dumb FREE”) you should seriously it.

Stopped listening…

  If the average conversation lasts 2.3 minutes and the average sales pitch is 23 minutes…. something tells me our prospects stopped listening more than 20 minutes ago. Might be time to change something?

Breakthrough

Experiencing success is not so much about getting to the goal line as it is about getting past the point of breakthrough. Thomas Edison took more than 10,000 tries to experience his breakthrough.

Focus on Priorities

  What would you be doing if today were the last day for you to be alive? Would you work harder, take the day off, or just spend the day with regrets?

How far would you go?

What would you do to accomplish your goals? More telling is what you wouldn’t do in your quest to accomplish your goals…. Have you thought about this? Have you had to? Would you lie? Would you steal?

What's not being said….

I get asked all the time to take a look at a business plan or review a sales process (which I usually find intriguing).  There is something about a new idea with plenty of potential that gets me pumped up.

Wrong, stupid, and half as bright as you

That’s me by the way (the topic and scary pic)… Some of my recent blog posts seem to have touched a raw nerve in the business world.  Besides the stupid comments I deleted from this blog about how stupid I

De-Crippling Fear

Fear Cripples… Because I only fear what I have not already conquered, I must conquer all to fear nothing.* We don’t ask “how much longer” on a trip we have already taken…  We don’t agonize over puzzles

Selling Susan Boyle!

So I am out of the Susan Boyle fan club! I really loved her.  I did. I wrote about the effects of her “Unexpected Inspiration”… Susan’s first performance will go

Sales is Life or Death

It is.  If you can’t get sales, you die.  That’s why I am so intense and polarizing about this issue. Sales (and selling) is not a “gray issue”.  It’s black-and-white.

Effort: The Great ROI

  UPDATE: Thanks to @JakeWHayes for his vigilant proof-reading wizardry… Investing in a sales book, sales group, or sales class can mask personal inadequacies around putting in the necessary effort to be successful.

An Open "Twetter" to US Airways

I just got off the phone with a multi-national company that continues to assualt my sense of service with their “half English speaking” reps  who manage to stumble through a script that neither helps my problem nor attempts to really

Time Heals the Wound…

Last Thursday around 5:30PM I was in my office preparing to wrap up a few West Coast calls and get things in order for an early morning call to Poland and I get a frantic call from Sara that I

I don't want to hear what you think you need to say to me to close the deal…

  …and the title is basically the entire content of my thoughts on the subject. (a.k.a “Shut Up, Sell More”) Why do sales people feel the need to splurt out their entire sales pitch every time they

"Joe Courageous"

I was traveling with my brother earlier last week to Washington, DC on some business and after a day of long but exciting meetings I made the observation that no matter how far we pushed ourselves there was always another

Being the Square Sales Peg…

Confucius said: “Worry not that no one knows of you; seek to be worth knowing…“ Do you have your business card within reach?  Take a look at it for a minute.

"Pay It Forward" Salesmanship

A lot of sales people bring no value to the marketplace.  They take! They bother us with their nonsense about “you can trust me more” and “I’m not here to sell you anything”.

'Tis a Way of Life…

  Sales is a religion! To be explosively effective, you have to be a cult member — drinking the punch…  Any other level of commitment doesn’t really work!  It’s draining — emotionally and financially…

What Was Your Name Again?

I put this presentation together about 6 months ago for an internal presentation to our team about the need to create a compelling message in spite of all the NOISE surrounding our business. After recent sales discussions with entrepreneurs,

Read the Road Signs

Life being me is an adventure! Case in point: My casual 5 mile run this afternoon that turned into a half-marathon… I put the boys down for a nap and mapped out on

Your Call is Making Me Angry

I had two different calls today regarding some high level revenue opportunities that just drove me up the wall –my own little version of  Nightmare on Sales Street… Instead of pitching anyone, I was being pitched and it wasn’t so

Unexpected Inspiration

Definition: When the courage to succeed and a personal dream combine to bring hope and heart to those who observe…. Example: Susan Boyle sings “I Dreamed a Dream” to almost a 100 million people

Create A Legacy of Trying

This could also be subtitled something like: NOT “Putting out” Only Works When You are Looking for a Girlfriend (and then sometimes “not-so-much”)… or  The “E” for Effort stands for “Everytime”… And so I give you some musings on “trying”

Thank Me Later

John F. Kennedy said that: “Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought”. And my experience in making “big deals” mirrors that statement exactly…

Disappointment!

  Think about the last time you were really disappointed — truly, deeply, certainly disappointed. Maybe it was a few days ago, earlier this week, or even something you are dealing with right now. We all go through disappointment at

First Task for the Day: BUYING

Strategy Thoughts…. I turned 30 a few months ago in November and while I won’t pretend to be the ‘grey haired’  Oracle of all things business (although I do have more grey hair then I should have), I have learned

Fuel for the Last Lap

This week I have a pretty crazy schedule that includes about 2000 miles in my car traveling up and back down the East Coast.  Cramped up in tthe tight spaces of my car driving the first 475 miles from Greenville,

Putting it all into perspective

I just read the following thought-provoking insights from Lynn Scheurell:

If Life Were Only a Treadmill

I love running! My track shoes and a bottle of water and I am good…  Sometimes, I even skip the water (because I forget before I get started).  There is something pure (and refreshing) about the singular effort to stay

Hope Starts With Passion!

Nothing changes until people get passionate about a cause! It’s true!  And if you want to stop reading right now and jump to the conclusion, here it is: Start Living Your Dream!

Joe Learns, Joe Kicks Ass…

Joe Learns to Kick Ass! If you happen to need a good real estate agent or more importantly, really want (or need) to sell your home, then Joe is my recommendation to you.  He handles my personal business because someone

What is YOUR Success About?

  I have a page here on The DEW View that is just there to get your feedback on three simple questions: What is most important about success…

Transparency = 1990's Snake Oil

CAUTION: This is kind of a worthless rant! I just went to Amazon.com and ran a search on the subject of transparency and I got 111, 327 books on the subject — let alone DVDs, a few VHS options, and

Meaning…

  H.M. Tomlinson said that: “We see things NOT as they are, but as WE are…”

Stop Sucking and then I Might Care

I was just on the phone last week with Seth Godin (who is one of my heros) and I couldn’t help but be blown away by his amazing take on marketing that works.  I love that practical sense of “let’s

The Power of Me…

  Ever wonder what you are spending your life doing? I certainly do… I got to thinking about this blog and started analyzing what I spent most of my DEW View time writing about.

Limiting Your Success

  Success is not worth sacrificing your integrity.

Fail Fast!

I seem to always have subscribed to the “Fail Fast so You Have More Time to Work on Being Successful” mantra of life. I used to be afraid of making the wrong decision and then I realized that I had

Executive Toolbag At The Ready

  Every now and again I get around to using LinkedIn.  Since I do not actively market my “linking in”, I am not on the site as much you might think. I was just on the site this evening and

Using Everything to Get Something

  I just wrote about the fact that a lot of times in negotiation what is “not said” is exactly what “should be said”…  More succinctly: when the other party explicitly states that an point (such as money or time

It's Always What It's Not

  2009 is going to be great year…  Thanks for hanging with me at The DEW View!  It has been a fun ride.  I hope to write more in the coming days about my recent experiences and observations about the

Urgency unDefined…

  I want to write an article about urgency based on my experience and somehow I never finish what I start on this subject. And that’s not because I don’t have something to say about it… Ask many of the

Burning Passion…

  I told my wife this weekend that I am finally feeling the urge to go back to the gym after my hospital incident a month or so ago. Up until the ER visit and subsequent ICU “hotel stay”, I

Inspiration from Gratefulness!

This holiday season is really playing monkey business with a huge product release I am attempting to mastermind with the team. Nevertheless…

Frank is Right…

  If you are not following Frank Rumbauskas, then you are missing out on some sales refinement. He, like my buddy Shamus Brown (@ShamelessShamus), seem to breathe common sense into the whirlwind craziness of the sales process.

Karma, the Cosmos, and Stupid People…

  (don’t you just love that title?) Many times over, I have been accused of “letting people walk all over me”… (and that might be the case). I would admit that I find myself avoiding controversy unnecessary controversy.

My 1/3 Life Crisis…

  On the 11th, I will be the big 3-0, officially wiping one-third of my chalkline off the blackboard of life. And yes, I am aiming to hit 90 (if I can stay out of the way of random buses…).

…a BOLD advertisement… or not!

  I have been waiting for the last months to get my hands on the brand “spanking new” Blackberry to end all smartphone wars — otherwise known as the Blackberry Bold. RIM had pushed back the deadline so often I

Politics… Vote for yourself!

  Today is national election day in the good ol’ US(of)A… And that’s a wonderful 4 year cycle for us (let me apologize upfront for the satire oozing from this part of the post). For the last 18 months we

“TEST” Musings from my Convention Seat

  I’m sitting in the LA Convention Center in a room with more than 5,000 other technologists on the third day of Microsoft’s PDC2008 unveiling. Almost everyone in the room is at least 7 times smarter than I am (which

Making a Difference…

As many of you know from reading this blog and following me on Twitter that about a week a ago I left the company that I had previously been CEO and moved to South Carolina to become a partner in

Stop What You are Doing…

  Sales people are notoriously stupid human beings…  While we make our living based solely on our performance, we rarely take the time to IMPROVE our performance. 

A Time NOT to be reverent…

  I read the following quote from Bob Lefsetz who writes the ever irreverent Lefsetz Letter… The reason I add it as even being slightly engaging is that ALL I read about these days is doom and gloom.

Strength: Physical or Mental?

  In the classic “chick or the egg” routine, I ask which is most important: BRAINS or BRAWN or BOTH? —

An "E" for EXTRA Effort…

  Pardon the long silence… I spent some time in the hospital (the ICU to be exact) – which happens to not be the best place to write blogs entries… (more coming on that later, I promise) However, it does

Sometimes Quitting Means Forward Progress…

  (So…. I just have to get this off my chest!) If you know me at all, then you would be surprised to ever hear me mention that I quit something. I am not a quitter. That’s not what I

Being Memorable (Part2)

I just put together my thoughts on the idea of being memorable in differentiating business models… and then I read the following article on www.lifehack.org which added fuel to my fire! Fundamentally, it is crucial to develop the art of

Destiny Directed by Attitude…

Fighting for our dreams…

  On the subject of dreams: “The greatest discovery one can make is that NOTHING is impossible…”

Different or Memorable… BOTH?

  I have long been a proponent of NOT following the crowded marketplace in business – or even in my personal goals.  The aspect of being a “sheep” is certainly NOT appealing and creates a mental state of “just being

Why I Love "Remember the Titans"

  We ALL have those movies that move us…  deeply change our outlook on the possibilities of the future.  For me, one of those movies is Remember the Titans…

What I Need in My Life….

  RUTHLESSNESS…. So true…and sad! As I ran about 7 miles today and did my workout, I realized how weak I am. Athletically I can force myself into all kinds of painful situations, YET

Thoughts on Vision…

I have been doing quite of strategic thinking recently especially after the purchase of the company over which I was CEO…

Thoughts on the Sleep I'm Missing…

  It’s almost 3AM and I’m up working with my partners in Hong Kong putting together technology solutions for a remote IIS connection that’s pretty warped…. Sleep… AHH…

Maybe I'm just "odd"…

  So…  I haven’t stopped working all weekend…  It’s nuts.  I am reading contracts, evaluating pages of “legalese”, and generally hoping I contract a Amazonian virus so I can be bed-ridden for the next 4 months (not so much…).

40 to ZIPPY… 3rd Quarter…

  Right now the Redskins are really taking a beating… Good thing it’s the preseason where results don’t matter! What? Can we at least put up a field goal?

Being Lulled into Sleep…

  A half-finished thought for the weekend: Life comes at you fast! Regardless of how “high profile” an executive you might be or not be, circumstances have a way of exploding around us in a way that can be unnerving…

What am I Doing With My Life?

  I haven’t had the time to write too much over the last few days as my schedule has flown at me from all directions. I will be writing more about how I got booted from my executive peer group

Goal: Continue…

  From a man who understood the concept of trial and error, Churchill noted that:

Life Passage…

  “You can’t really appreciate the joy of WINNING, until you’ve FAILED along the way…” (DEWism) More and more I am convinced that getting to the destination without enjoying the journey is a soulless endeavor…..

50 Things Successful People Have in Common…

Self-help books are an amazing channel for finding nuggets of “betterment” for personal development. HOWEVER, the truth is that 90% of ANY self-help book is pretty much worthless. The author has a brilliant concept that is then repeated 2000 times

Go Skins! Beat Favre…

Isn’t it interesting how one individual can make all the difference in a team’s perspective on “WINNING”? Be that guy!

"Lydia's Challenge"… (i.e. TRYING = Winning In The Moment!)

  Thank you, Lydia, for the hard challenge in your comments yesterday.  For those of you who missed it, here is what Lydia had to say about my thoughts on “TRYING”:

The Courage to Try.

Mary Anne Radmacher had the following thoughts about COURAGE:

Knowing What you Want…

  Life comes at you fast and you can spend a massive amount of time surviving rather than pursuing your destiny….  It can be a sad part about being a leader.  There is always a tremendous amount of effort going

Why I Fight…

  As I have mentioned in my previous posts, I am training toward a fighting event in a few months. When I first mentioned to my peers and friends that this was something that I was attempting to do, I

Catching Up On My Sleep…

  …while you finish your demo! (Admit it. You’ve walked away from many a WebEx session from hell) That’s why I am a stickler about demos… They should be fun, engaging, and leave the other party gasping for breath

KUDOS, Redskins, on the Win!!!

  Sure, it was just the pre-season… and sure… this stuff doesn’t really matter….  I don’t care.  A win is a win is a win is a WIN!  And we won! Winning is always cooler than the opposite!  Just as

Executive Nerd-dom!

Knowing technology is key in defining realistic POSSIBILITIES…  If it exists, you don’t have to build it (pretty much common sense, right?).  If it’s already built and FLEXIBLE and FREE… well then… you pretty much have everything you need…

Know Thyself…

OK. I had a wonderful treat this morning in having my mentor Shamus Brown write a review of me and The DEW View…   This is an even bigger reward than having ALL TOP select my blog as a top resource

Inspired by Greatness…

  My older brother (@peterwald) turned my onto TED (http://www.ted.com/) more than a year ago… and since then I have watched dozen of their videos from famous speakers, musicians, and other “over achievers”…

What does WINNING really mean…

  If you don’t know Rob Johnson from Eventvue then you need to reach out and get to know him and his amazing organization.  Rob’s startup just won “CSIA Rookie of the Year” a few months… and… as you can

EGO Blows…

I am living through an experience right now where ego is killing a perfectly good business deal — a logical (aggressive, of course) deal that would net all parties a HUGELY profitable outcome with MASSIVE returns over a very short

Feeling Better About Being a Criminal!

In my zest for tracking the coolness that is Web 2.0, I came across the Criminal Searches website… and yes… unfortunately I found myself displayed! So of course I had to search for all my friends

The Ultimate in Candor….

  Not too long ago (minutes ago…) the New York Times released the news that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn died at the age of 89 — of massive heart failure. The thought occurs to me that Alek set the standard several decades

Stimuli Provided…

  I keep not only a library full of excellent reading material, but I also keep great videos on hand for days when I need a “pump up”…  I have included some of those videos to you on the side

Perspective on Achievement…

  I just heard the following line from Tony Robbins about excuses people make for not achieving their goals: “The distinction is NOT resources but resourcefulness…” Ever have an employee, friend,

Tough Choices… (mistakes happen!)

  Don’t you wish life gave you options as to the choices that you HAVE to make?  It seems like the easy choices come so EASILY that we often take for granted the fact that we are actually making a

Doing Something About It…

  Found (copied, appropriated, etc…) from my buddy Frank Rumbauskas’ blog:

WELCOME to the "new" DEW!

We are alive and well now on www.theDEWView.com…  The DNS servers have been redirected, I have paid my fees to WordPress, and with my iPhone plug-in I can work from anywhere in the world…

Techno-charge your Performance!

  I have talked before about leveraging technology to help increase effectiveness at the executive level… I want to reiterate that focus today with some highlights on technology that can help you perform more with the same or less effort

Learning DOWN!

  Just read an interesting article on sales from Gitomer where he makes the interesting point that “children” are the best sales people in the world… Fascinating in simplicity!

Swimming Without the Sharks!

I am terrified of the ocean! Well, not exactly terrified, but certainly respectful… I was at the beach earlier this summer (with @floorqueen and my boys) and I had the crazy thought to swim out as far as I could

NOT so Cuil!

  So the new “google-killer” (pronounced “cool”) just dissed The DEW View!… CUIL (www.cuil.com) just launched last night with over 12 trillion indexed webpages… AND… Guess what? I got zippy results when

Sensible… leading ALL…

  Being a leader means that you see things differently than everyone else in your organization. You are looking for the “big picture”… The concepts that tie together the rest of the plan. I was messing around on a new

Carefully Cognizant…

  Just finished up a plan on creating a more targeted approach for revenue generation… and (surprise, surprise) I am left musing about how screwed up the state of “as is sales” remains. Come on people!  This is 2008.  Zig

…the pursuit…COSTS…

It’s 10:10PM and I am watching The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith… and I am reminded NOTHING is more powerful than the WILL of man to rise above himself to achieve GREATNESS… The fierceness of the conquest is the

She's ALIVE!

  Customer service that is… Did you just fall off your chair? Send me the Emergency Room bill… (please don’t really… I’m broke…). Not sure there is a provision in your policy for “Blog Reading Induced Trauma”…

Try NOT to Care TOO much!

Peter Drucker made the observation that: “Business has only two functions: Marketing and Innovation…”

Does "Fitting In" Matter?

Let me cut to the conclusion and then we will Tarantino this discussion backwards? NO! (Fitting in DOES NOT really matter… at all… ever…) What’s the deal with Peerville telling us we

Stop Worrying About Burnout….

….FIX IT! Dinosaurs DIED out — they didn’t BURN out… NOTE: This really a dialogue with myself that I am foolishly writing about here..

Tour de Flooring… (i.e. a sore winner)

Right now in France, a few hundred bicyclists are fighting to wear a yellow jersey as the penultimate champion of days of stages of racing. DAYS of racing…

Getting Your Executive Picaso On…

Over a year ago my wife purchased 3 very large oil originals… After a year of being in storage, I had them framed and hung in our house. (By the way, the process of framing was amazing with all the

You Own Opinion Matters Most…

I need to buy TV time around 2AM in the morning and start selling my “Magic Time Finder”… For 7 easy payments of $6.99, you can “Find Your Lost Time”… Never run out of “Precious Seconds”when you need them most!

Leading to Death… (it's flawed)

Leading your followers to death may seem like a valiant ideal, but it just doesn’t work… ZIMBABWE….can teach us a thing or two… We think leadership is hard in the corporate jungle. And it is! BUT, imagine watching as your

The Courage to Dream…

  I read the following thoughts from Nadia Henderson which passionately and eloquently describes her thoughts on “dreams”:

Stop being Stupid!

  I have concluded that most of us have a tendency of “being stupid”…  

Just be Genuine…

  I LOVE the business of sales and and overall business development… Sure, I take it all a little too seriously. That’s what you get when you work with me… (Deal with it!)

BEST of the REST!

  I just received a final confirmation email last night that The DEW View! was selected by AllTop as one of the BEST BLOGS on the internet for motivation and sales…. You may notice the badge on the side of

11th Commandment: Remember Thy Mentors…

Damn That Last Straw….

At a time of critical failure we hear that a most recent activity was “the straw that broke the camel’s back”… Like many people, I was constantly wondering how heavy that last straw could be… Is it made of lead?

REJECTION: It's just in your mind!

(Let me get some “house cleaning” out of the way… numerous of you asked for NO MORE funky-sized text… I hear you loud and clear… Consider it history……..) Ever hear the word “NO”?

What If I Fail?

  “The Probability That we May Fail in the Struggle Ought not to Deter us From the Support of a Cause We BELIEVE in…”

The Business NINJA…obsession

(By the way, KUDOS to all of you writing to me about how this blog is part of your day… You comments are an inspiration to me…) Combat… the thrill of injury… the lust for battle… NO. I am NOT

Why I Hate Pettiness…

Pettiness is the suicide-bomber of healthy morale…. (DEWISM)

New Muscles…it Sucks to be weak…

  So the daily visits to the gym (in the heart of the day) have been fun… Since I limit my time from prep, exercise, shower and re-dress to no more than 1.5 hours, there is no time for “chilling

Conflict Happens…Deal With It…

CONFLICT… (For most of us, a shiver just went down our spine…) How many management books have been written about how to appease employee personality

Reading to Learn to NOT Repeat…

  Ever try to buy just ONE book on Amazon.com? You can’t — especially if you enjoy reading… Here’s how it happened: I was advised that Flight of the Buffalo was a good book to read; so I did the

Mastery Through Discipline…

So I have to recap on my goals for 2008. My largest (most scary) goal of the year is to compete in an Ultimate Fighting event. Laugh break…. OK. Now that you got that out of your system. Let me

FIGHT or FLIGHT…right now…

  As I sit here, amidst paperwork, unfinished tasks, and (7) finished RockStar energy drinks, I am reminded that despite all the books, “head games”, and motivational theory I have learned I still am fighting the urge to run away

Good News: There Are More "Nut Jobs" Out There…besides me…

  I get razzed all the time about my lack of sleeping, drinking of VAST amounts of coffee, and a few dozen energy drinks… OK. So it is a little less safe…than sleeping the requisite 8 hours per day and

Serving it up soon…

  I have a series of articles that I hope to post shortly. Here is what I am working on: Conflict Happens = The connection between UFC and Boardroom…

Loving the Game…

I had breakfast a few days ago with a CEO that I admire. After an hour talking about different challenging matters, I left certainly aware that there would be much more to achieve before I could be in her same

Because Winning Matters…

  I received an email from a close adviser who has been a tremendous source of leadership to me over the year. In his short email, my friend made the follow accusation comment:

Illusion of Normality…

  (I have given a lot of thought to this area in so much as people are telling me to “get real” and/or “why can’t you be a normal guy…) Wikipedia lists normality as: ” a lack of significant deviation

Open Door Policy for Inspiration…

A few mornings ago I had a cold visit for “franchising” our business. (Immediate reaction: What in the world?) I gave the gentleman 2 minutes to present his case. 120 seconds…

…Skymall Wisdom…

  Saw the following quote on a plane:

Wanted: Mobility

  Part of my 2008 Goals was to create at least 50 blog posts (that along with reading 50 books and training to become an “amateur” ultimate fighter). The experience of blogging consistently has certainly led me to analyze why

30,000 Feet of Motivation

  Yesterday, I had a quick junket to Atlanta in pursuit of a Fortune 1000 client (surprise, surprise — the flights were on time). After finishing USA Today and The Wall Street Journal, I was left looking at the SkyMall

A Thought on Excellence…

    “Jealousy is the price mediocrity

The Science of Motivation: Self-Inertia…

Isaac Newton (refresh your high-school science if you forget who this guy is…) understood that without an attractive force (such as gravity), INERTIA caused objects to fly in a straight line rather than in a circular motion. Example: A baseball

Social Dominos…

  A Brief Background: I am prone to an over-obsession with news. It’s a strange mix of curiosity and “need to learn” paranoia. And now that NewsGator opened up their

Succeeding to Fail…

    The SOONER you FAIL the more time you

You Have to Live It!

  So after my agreement with Jason Calacanis about only “hiring workaholics” for a startup… I then read Brad Feld’s thought’s on taking a vacation. (First I had to look up “vacation” in the dictionary…)

A "Fighting" Thought…

  I think about the quest for being successful like running a race… Hitting the finish line is many times a function of consciously putting one foot in front of the other — a focus on fighting rather than winning!

The "Change the World" Gospel…

Calacanis one day, Sequoia the next — the gospel according to the godfathers of successful start-ups and entrepreneurial investment. (Enough with my rambling…) What does a VC, banking partner, or PE look for in a company that will change

Commitment Matters … everything!

  Jason Calacanis (of Netscape relaunching infamy) recently published a hotly debated blog regarding how to build a successful startup. TechCrunch, Mashable and a series of other tech blogs fueled the fires of this candid take on what it takes

Choices Matter…

While I am certainly no fan of Hillary Clinton (or her politics) I have to admire her ability to soldier on in the primary process… Down more than a few points, she continues to press on – ALWAYS STAYING ON

When an"E" for Effort Means Something…

  … or rather Everything! (Let me start by saying that I have largely laughed at Mark Cuban’s attempts over the past year to position himself as part of the technorati.  His posts about P2P and HDNet have a self-serving

Giving to OURSELVES…

The holiday season is a time when we usually reflect on others and what we can give to them. There are many reasons for giving. We give because

Fighting THROUGH…

  It goes without saying that we all get tired.  We are human, and that’s what humans do.  So how is that we artfully compensate for the lack of focus and concentration from the fatigue of our pursuits. 

The Power of Thinking Better…

  The power of mental stimulus as means of increasing performance is NOT about telling yourself that you somehow ARE what you ARE NOT, but rather about focusing on maximizing what you ARE and cognitively evaluating the priority of adding

Personal Power of Responsibility…

I have a choice … and I will not let my life be ground under the rocks of failure and despair to be broken open and devoured by the will of others.”

Success' Secret Formula…

  CQ + PQ > IQ or Curiosity Quotient + Passion Quotient > Intelligence Quotient Tom Friedman makes the case that brawn trumps brains in a battle for success. While at face value that seems silly (certainly hard to prove…),

Because I Could…

  "I ran a half-marathon yesterday…" 

Making Time for More Time…

  Hysteria, Mayhem, Out-of-control – and that’s just a few hours into a tightly scheduled day.  All sense of organization is out the window – along with my scheduling book…  The art of  time management becomes all the more important

Knowing…is "MOST" of the battle!

  Most personal conquests (work, relationships, sports, etc…) are rooted in very tangible success-failure outcomes – a new car, a bigger house, a silver medal (the list goes on…). Why is that?

Relationships With Purpose…

  There is a certain truth that business gets done via personal relationship. The bigger the deal, the better the relationship needed to pull it off. So how is it that certain sales people are highly productive

COURAGE – a road less traveled?

COURAGE: a quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear… (Princeton) No mention of there not being fear. No mention of there not being danger.

Mediocrity Costs More…

  Underperformance can be attributes to many factors, not the least of which being lack of motivation. Prevailing business theory advances the idea of the 10-70-20 principle. The top 10% of the group are successful,

The Trail to Success…

Ralph Waldo Emerson has been credited with giving us the inspiration to: “Do not go where the path my lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail…’ It is strangely ironic (yet somehow understandable) that

Vision for Tomorrow…

  Vision is the energy that fuels the exercises of attaining tomorrow. We are most productive when we can focus our efforts passionately through reaching goals rather than immediate gratification.

Results Never Lie… Conclusions might!

  RESULTS are an OUTCOME from which we create CONCLUSIONS and mold PERCEPTIONS… Results are nothing more than the static location of processes at a given time. What we derive from them show that:

Balancing Excitement with Purpose

  Excitement without purpose is merely hype… We see that purpose with excitement grows mundane and dull. And clearly hype is the adversary of all that is mundane and dull. The strength of each is the existence of the other.

Growth of daily success…

  The importance of daily successes should NOT be underestimated. Life successes do no emerge as such over night. Indeed the first appearances of success become seen in the late hours of daily accomplishment.

Creativity Under Fire…

  Nothing is free in life. Not respect. Not vision. Not even passion for a purpose. And what importance does a purpose have it is doesn’t change people – people within the purpose. Although vision is lauded as the potential

Creativity and Zeal

  Only those who can see the invisible can challenge the impossible… Life is about making tea out of tears, lemonade out of lemons. Instead of trying to get a “fair break” from

DISCIPLINE beats TALENT…every time

  One of the most overlooked facets of attaining success is DISCIPLINE. While emotions are a part of each of our lives, a successful person learns to harness his feelings. We would think it preposterous for a car to refuse

ATTITUDE before APTITUDE…

  I have found that personal motivation starts with the right view of every situation. I was sent this story which I find to be inspiring.

ALL The Time SUCCESS

  Success is an “all-the-time” attitude. You can’t start success and drive it away like a new porchse. In fact, many times you stumble across success over the 15th cup of coffee at the end of a tired week.

Purposed Pursuits…

  Living by principles is paramount to personal fulfillment. Living by a belief system will help inspire one’s self. People who are solely motivated by wealth or personal advancement are always on the hustle. ME, ME, ME is a stench

Being Tired Is No Excuse

  Hyrum W. Smith made the startling accurate quote that: “Character is the ability to carry out a worthy decision after the emotion of making that decision has passed.” Being tired is never an excuse for doing less than your

One Hurdle Crossed

  Every day is about accomplishing micro-goals – tasks that appear small, but add up to a larger end. Goals are made up of small parts that often get left undone – largely because we are so concentrated on what

Life Principles

  PHILOSOPHY – ATTITUDE – ACTIONS – RESULTS – SUCCESS – LIFESTYLE This is a life principle that I have come to embrace. Each item leads to the next. There are endless books and articles about “getting results” that miss

Blog Extravaganza

  Everyone else is doing it… Well that’s not a good reason. USA Today ran an article yesterday about executive blogs. It made me curious. Maybe it is therapeutic. Maybe it is just a self-serving waste of time. We’ll see.