Reading List: Powers of Two
What attracts creative duos to each other? How do they align as well as differentiate their talents? Joshua Wolf Shenk blends psychology with neuroscience, business and leadership theory in his analysis of how famous pairs such as DNA discoverers James Watson and Francis Crick, the Beatles’ John Lennon and Paul McCartney, or South Park’s Matt […]
Reading List: Dream Year
Sixty-six percent of Americans hate their jobs. Are you part of that statistic? Ben Arment, founder of the coaching organization Dream Year, wants to help you reinvent your life and launch your dream career. Frustration is the accelerant that sparks our creative fires and motivates us to realize our entrepreneurial dreams, asserts Arment. According to […]
The 5 Parts to Your Credit Score
I am truly amazed—and a little scared, frankly—by this fact: It is 2014 and not everybody knows what a FICO score is. In this day and age, if you don’t understand FICO, you simply don’t understand your money. So here we go. FICO stands for Fair Isaac Corp., the company that over 50 years ago […]
Reading List: The Power of Noticing
Failure to notice and register what we observe can be a conduit to “poor personal decisions, organizational crises and societal disasters,” writes Max Bazerman, co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. The Power of Noticing is based on a combination of the executive decision-making class Bazerman teaches, extensive research, firsthand experiences […]
5 Keys to a Viral Campaign
You’ve probably seen it 1,000 times on Facebook: Everyone, it seems, is dumping buckets of ice water over their heads. The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge has taken over social media this month as Americans have risen to the challenge to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, a condition of the brain […]
John C. Maxwell: The Daily Routine of Successful Leaders
Whenever I speak, I like to chat with people, shaking hands and signing books afterward. Often during those times, someone will say something like, “I wish I could spend a day with you.” It makes me chuckle because, well, my days are pretty dull. Yes, it’s exciting to speak to an audience, and I truly […]
3 Ways to Adapt to Your Customers’ Shopping Styles
“Can you text me your best price on that car?” The salesperson on the phone probably thought I was crazy. Did I really want him to text me the price of a new car I had seen on his website and was thinking about buying? (Uh, yes. That’s why I asked for it.) I also […]
Reading List: Fewer, Bigger, Bolder
When Sanjay Khosla joined Kraft Foods International in 2007 to head developing markets, he faced many challenges. Chief among his immediate concerns was figuring out the future of Oreo cookies. Stateside, the iconic cookie was celebrating its 100th anniversary and yet, despite multiple efforts, the Chinese market wasn’t buying it. Khosla set about streamlining Kraft’s […]
Stumped? Borrow Someone’s Brain
What makes salespeople successful? Jill Konrath, author of Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today's Ever-Changing Sales World, reveals their success habits. Here, in an excerpt from the book, she shares one strategy—brain borrowing—that helps people learn fast and move past the anxiety of little experience, in sales or other unfamiliar business and […]
Joseph Gordon-Levitt Unleashes Creativity on the World
In a world where young creative geniuses often implode before they even break past their teens, former child actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt has blossomed into a noted actor, director, screenwriter and producer. He’s also added entrepreneur to his résumé, after founding the online production company hitRECord in 2004. Gordon-Levitt, 33, connects artists from his global online […]
Reading List: The Art of War for Small Business
Written in the 6th century B.C., Sun Tzu’s 7,000-word treatise on military strategy was first translated into English in the early 1900s. Although concise, “its contents are immeasurably dense and its applications infinite,” the author states. After writing her first book, Sun Tzu for Women, Sheetz-Runkle realized that The Art of War had profound insights […]
How 20,000 Rabid Fans Gave a Referee His Million-Dollar Idea
Ron Foxcroft thought he was a dead man walking. He would have preferred to run, but that’s not his style. It was May 17, 1984, and he was refereeing a pre-Olympic basketball game in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The stadium was rocking with 20,000 rabid fans. Brazil was playing Uruguay, and a place in the Los […]
