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Green Day. Linkin Park. Black Eyed Peas. Red Hot Chili Peppers. Miley Cyrus. Eminem. And even Barbra Streisand…in sheet music. These are the answers to a question recently posed to a group of clients I work with weekly. “What’s the first music you bought for yourself with your money?” And here’s the most interesting part to my very informal survey over the course of a week –  no one asked me what my first music purchase was, acquired with my hard-earned money.  Insert frowny face here.   When I first began asking this question at the beginning of the weekly workshop…

You want to be a manager!  They want to promote you! Now what? Being a first-time leader, and a first-line leader, can be an exciting and scary place when one takes the next step in a corporate career setting. Many companies and organizations promote individual contributors internally, and once they arrive at their new role, leave them to their own devices, managing others, managing KPIs, managing administrative deliverables, and, um, managing to stay in control.  Oh, and all while usually making less than they did before they were promoted.  For sales professionals, the road to on-target earnings (OTE) is harder…

CS Lewis once wrote: “How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints.” That really stuck with me.  And prompted me to consider all of the leaders in my life, including myself as a leader within, and to take inventory on how many were tyrants and how many saints. Think about your inventory of leaders for a moment.  What makes them a tyrant or a saint for you?  And who came to mind first: a tyrant or a saint? The impact leaders make, whether great or terrible, changes our lives daily.  With…

I live in Florida – home of the door-to-door sales professional.  On any given day, the probability of a knock (I am doorbell-less) followed by a variety of tricks to get me to open the door to sell me most things I already have, is just about 100%. My fave is to sell me solar technology when I have it already, clearly installed. It’s on the roof for God’s sake! Chris Pratt, the quintessential everyman Hollywood superhero recently mentioned in an interview that he was a door-to-door salesperson.  “I was selling coupons for things like oil changes or trips to…

“Wow, you got an ‘A’ on that test!” “What a game! You scored an amazing goal!” “That’s your best performance; everyone stood up and clapped for you!” Now what? I come to this subject via a recently – and much appreciated – shared podcast that talked about many rich things, among them the gap, i.e. the missed opportunity, between being strictly results oriented and acknowledging the means and practices that it took  to achieve those results. This is not to say that I’m not results oriented, and that it’s OK to give out participation medals like Halloween candy and everyone…

It’s been a month since we crossed over into 2023.  Are you still saying Happy New Year? I am. How long did it take you to declare it just another year, and with that, maybe even not a happy one? Nine days in, a Monday, I already had to strain to hear it from anyone.  Launching a Happy New Year at a stranger, or even just someone in the neighborhood, resulted in anything from nonchalance and disinterest to surprise and a smile.  Already a cliche, on to Valentine’s Day everyone! What is going on here? Why are we giving up…

“Hey Joe – I see you’re based in Florida. Heard a lot of people are moving from California to Florida. You’ve probably seen that happen first hand the past couple of years, right? Wanted to know if you’re interested in how I can create 15 branded social posts for Soul Patch Hippo: Success Coaching? I’ll create the posts from scratch, so they match your branding vision.”   And throw the flag! What got me to open it was that my email box only showed the first sentence and it sounded like someone who knew me.  Though I didn’t recognize the name,…

Individual  [ in-duh-vij-oo-uhl ] – a single human being, as distinguished from a group. Contributor [kuhn-trib-yuh-ter] – a person who contributes money, assistance, etc. Let’s put them together shall we?  A single human being, who contributes money, assistance, etc…, feels under appreciated don’t you think? I originally began writing on this subject with the sales professional in mind and then thought, that’s too exclusive.  You see, all individual contributors, regardless of SIC, deliver the goods for organizations daily. There is lots and lots of attention paid to leaders these days.  When I hang out with my peers, we all, generally speaking,…

Issac Asimov, in his sci-fi classic I, Robot said; “You just can’t differentiate between a robot and the very best of humans.”  Well, Issac, I dug the book, and on this part I will disagree.  Are we ready to give up being human beings already?   Richard Branson once said “We are human beings, not human doings.”  And yet, there’s a trend right now to automate pieces and parts of one of the most compelling and personal approaches to improving a human’s performance and condition: coaching. It may be well intentioned based on recent surveys; it certainly is getting a lot…