How does one develop a love for a musical instrument? Many a parent who wants to raise an aspiring Mozart wants the answer to this question. Paul Reed Smith developed a love of guitars by playing the ukulele given to him in kindergarten by his father. In his high school shop class he made his [...]

Ah, tis the season to begin dreaming of dancing sugar plums… or a nutcracker that turns into a Prince to exterminate an infestation of giant rats! Even in happy, jolly holiday times stress is a factor, sometimes more than we would like it to be, since we are supposed to be all happy and jolly [...]

Many have the idea that successful businessmen eat, sleep, and breathe their work. I can see more than a grain of truth in this, after all successful athletes eat, sleep, and breath their sports. In both cases there is a common element of intensity of focus. However athletes have an edge: their success also depends [...]

The fitful everyday reminders of how this economic crisis evolved from a pool of greedy guppies to a shiver of sharks, begs the obvious questions: “How could they?”, “Why would they?” and “Didn’t they see where this would lead?” Answers to these questions, won’t solve anything, can’t change the past, nor would they affect the [...]

One of the best ways to increase your business is to become a thought leader in your industry.  A thought leader is someone who is always on top of industry trends and highlights, and is always pushing their boundaries to stay on top of their game.  Thought leaders are often asked to speak at conferences [...]

Last week I wrote about leadership book by David Cottrell, called “Monday Morning Mentoring,” a guide to developing leadership skills, and effectively managing teams/groups. I imparted several key leadership learnings in that blog post, with the promise to finish up the lesson this week, and reveal with the “real” secret to leadership truly is.  Today, [...]

As most business people know, networking is a critical part of advancing one’s career , or advertising one’s business/services, but other than handing out business cards, attending networking events, and forming contacts with as many people as possible, what else can you do?  Surprisingly, there are a lot of new innovative networking techniques out there [...]