Friday, November 27, 2015

Marketing Tricks To Learn From Black Friday

It's BLACK FRIDAY, which means that thousands will be already up and out of the house shopping for deals by the time this post hits the web. One of the largest retail days of the year, Black Friday offers opportunities to score some really great deals. It also offers up the opportunity to recognize some key marketing tricks, which you can leverage for your business at other times of the year. Try to see if you can recognize how the most successful retailers utilize these and brainstorm how you might use them to help your own business.

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you are able to enjoy time with family and friends and reflect momentarily on what you have that you can appreciate. We all have so many blessings and sometimes the small stresses of the world can get in the way of remembering that.

I'm thankful for my family and friends and so many other things. This year, though, I am also thankful that I have been able to share quite a bit through this site. I hope there are many more to come!

Have a happy holiday.

Image credit: Schmucki via Pixabay

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Seeing The Bigger Picture

You have certainly heard the expression, "can't see the forest for the trees." The statement implies that someone focuses completely on the tactical items and has a difficulty or fault in observing the big picture.

But how can you avoid being the person having difficulty seeing the forest? What if you are the one scratching on the bark of an elm tree and telling everyone it is important? Here are some questions that can help you get to a bigger vision.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Where Does Your Time Go?

Have you ever reached the end of a week and thought to yourself, "Where did all of my time go?"

We've all been there. The weeks that appear to be the most busy can disappoint the most when at the end, you realize you have not accomplished anything you can recall worthwhile.

How can you command control of your time, to avoid it slipping away? Here are a few tips to keep the time from slipping through your fingers as easily as sand through an hourglass.

Monday, November 23, 2015

6 Tips to Engage Your Audience

You thought you had your speech worked out perfectly. The content, the cadence, and the visual aids all aligned perfectly. And yet, just a few minutes into your presentation, you start to notice a few audience members glazing over or nodding off.

How can you keep them plugged in? The good news is that you have several tools at your disposal that can help pull the audience in and keep them in. Some of them require preparation, so they might not all be an on-the-fly fix, but they can all help engage your audience.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

What's the Most Important Thing to Work On Today?

Last week I attended a training teaching how to improve the quality of our conversations by focusing on the most important topic to discuss. Great session, to say the least, but it also got me thinking about how that hyperfocus could help in other areas. For instance, asking "What's the most important thing to work on today?" to get started in the morning.

Friday, November 13, 2015

Book: The Phoenix Project

So, the latest book I checked out happened to actually be a fiction book. More accurately, it's a nonfiction walkthrough of how to transform an IT department towards DevOps concepts wrapped in a novel that pays repeated homage to The Goal, a book I read in my Operations Management class in college.

Remember, as always, links in my book posts are affiliate links and I make the smallest amount of money possible if you were to actually buy this book.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

What's the Scariest Thing in Business?

Last weekend, we saw little ghouls and goblins racing around the neighborhood in search of candy. As an adult, you likely weren't afraid. You probably didn't even jump when you were rewatching Halloween and Michael Myers jumped out to attack Jamie Lee Curtis.

In fact, as adults, we have conditioned ourselves to not fear imaginary and pretend villains or ghosts. We save our fear for real threats, most of which get recapped on the nightly news. But we also fear some intangibles that, in the end, boil down to one thing: a fear of failure.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Starting Anew

Starting new projects always excites me. The potential that the new project has to be something great, the allure of learning along the way, and the anticipation of change from whatever path I had been previously walking all give a thrilling boost of confidence to the beginning of a new challenge.

Somewhere along the way, the shiny newness fades and the project transforms into real work. At that point, you may be tempted most strongly to abandon the project and start another new initiative. Doing so only guarantees that you fail to finish the first project.