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Let's start with an amazing message . . .




Time Management with Randy Pausch . . . great presentation, great tips, from a man who has months to live.



Here's something fun . . .This is a GREAT place to work!
Made by the team at Connected Ventures.
Song: Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger.

Filmed on the first take - incredible.




Next up . . . Women In Art
500 years of female portraits in 3 minutes . . .

Site: Zen Habits
"We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit." - Aristotle
Zen Habits covers: achieving goals, productivity, being organized, GTD, motivation, eliminating debt, saving, getting a flat stomach, eating healthy, simplifying, living frugal, parenting, happiness, and successfully implementing good habits.

Newspaper: Wall Street Journal
No excuses, you have to read this every day.

Magazine: Fast Company
Greatest site to get the mind humming.

Magazine: Experience Life Magazine
Healthy. Happy. For Real. That's the promise of Experience Life. No gimmicks, short cuts or hype - just in-depth, articulate and practical information on health, fitness and quality-of-life topics that really matter to you and your family.

Magazine: Business Week
Track how business is doing and respond.

Site: Execunet
THE place to find a new job.
In addition, I am good friends with the president, Dave Opton,
and he is a great guy.

Training: Dale Carnegie
BEST training on the planet - Just Do It.

Meeting: Toastmasters
Find a location near you - GO TO IT - no excuses.
You will meet more influential people in a night than you have met all year.

Meeting: Business Network International
BNI is the largest business networking organization in the world. It offers members the opportunity to share ideas, contacts and most importantly, business referrals. I have grown my business three-fold since joining.

Site: ThinkArete
Brian Johnson's mission is to distill the wisdom of the world's great thinkers and help people define their own philosophy that works for their 21st century lives.

BOOKS . . .
That will change the way you do business.
(Each link takes you to Amazon.com, my preferred vendor - great prices and reviews! In fact, many of the descriptions below come directly from Amazon!)



How to Win Friends & Influence People
By Dale Carnegie - This is the bible - buy it and live it. This grandfather of all people-skills books was first published in 1937. It was an overnight hit, eventually selling 15 million copies. How to Win Friends and Influence People is just as useful today as it was when it was first published, because Dale Carnegie had an understanding of human nature that will never be outdated. Financial success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to "the ability to express ideas, to assume leadership, and to arouse enthusiasm among people."

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
By Daniel Pink - Lawyers. Accountants. Radiologists. Software engineers. That's what our parents encouraged us to become when we grew up. But Mom and Dad were wrong. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind. The era of 'left brain' dominance, and the Information Age that it engendered, are giving way to a new world in which 'right brain' qualities - inventiveness, meaning, empathy - predominate. That's the argument at the center of this book - a story that uses the two sides of our brains as a metaphor for understanding the contours of our times.

In the tradition of Daniel Goleman's Emotional Intelligence and Marcus Buckingham's and Donald O. Clifton's Now, Discover Your Strengths, Daniel H. Pink offers a fresh look at what it takes for individuals and organizations to excel. Drawing on cutting-edge research from around the world, A Whole New Mind reveals the six essential aptitudes on which professional success and personal fulfillment now depend: Design, Story, Symphony, Empathy, Play and Meaning. It also includes several hands-on exercises and examples culled from experts around the world to help readers sharpen their necessary abilities. This book will change not only how we see the world but how we experience it as well.

In addition, this book will also show you:
- Why a seismic - though as yet undetected - shift is now under way in much of the advanced world.
- Differences between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.
- Why three huge social and economic forces — abundance, Asia and automation - are nudging us into the Conceptual Age.
- Why people who master high concept and high touch are setting the tempo of modern life.
- How six essential aptitudes can help you make your way across the emerging landscape.

Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn without Blowing It
By Peggy Klaus - Brag! is a whip smart tool kit--one that tampers with our beliefs about humility by defining bragging as an act of authenticity. Peggy Klaus, a Fortune 500 communication coach, sharpened her strategies in Hollywood, "the bragging capitol of the world," where she learned the art of tooting your horn, without blowing it. "To brag is to talk about your best self with pride and passion in a conversational manner." explains Klaus. She includes a snappy "Bragging Dictionary" with highly practical techniques including instructions for the "Bragalogue," a brief memorable elevator pitch and a "Brag bag," the collection of your greatest hits with colorful details that can be easily accessed.

Executive Charisma: Six Steps to Mastering the Art of Leadership
By D.A. Benton - A proven six-step process for acquiring the style, flair, and credibility needed to make it to the top According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, managers who do not exude an all encompassing self-confidence, style, poise, and energy, in short, "executive presence," are highly unlikely to make it to the corner office. Unfortunately, the vast majority of managers, even the most talented and ambitious ones, are not born with these personal qualities. In this breakthrough book, bestselling author and world-renowned executive development coach D. A. Benton helps readers acquire executive charisma.

The Pursuit of Wow!
By Tom Peters - As is the case in The Pursuit of Wow!, Tom Peters is head-and-shoulders above any other management guru. Peters is all about simplicity and excitement, both in his language and in his message. His basic mantra never changes: The workplace is becoming ever more competitive, so you need to make yourself and your company stand out. Do this by viewing your work as a series of critical projects and injecting limitless enthusiasm into each one. In delivering this consistent message, Peters tosses out scores of common-sense lines that are so insightful that you just have to jot them down. You'll find quite a few such keepers in this book, but you won't find too much of an overriding theme. Instead, Peters presents a string of 210 observations that flow together loosely. If you want to get going, I recommend this motivational booster.

Do It Now! : Break the Procrastination Habit
By William Knaus - Do It Now! has already helped thousands of people overcome procrastination, a troublesome, almost universal trait that can block both personal and professional fulfillment. Using the "awareness/action" approach developed during over 25 years of clinical experience, therapist William Knaus shows readers how to first identify the root causes of their procrastination problem and then find workable solutions for overcoming them. This revised edition includes fresh insights and techniques based on the latest research.

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
By Michael Porter - Porter is a Harvard Business School professor and a leading authority on competition and strategy. This book is a landmark in the field of strategy/strategic management, which later has become known as the positioning school. The book provides a great framework. The book consists of three parts - General Analytical Techniques, Generic Industry Environments, and Strategic Decisions. In addition, the two appendices - Portfolio Techniques in Competitor Analysis, and How to Conduct an Industry Analysis - should also be mentioned as they are very useful.

In Part I, Porter discusses the structural analysis of industries (with the world-famous five forces), the three generic competitive strategies (overall cost leadership, focus, and differentiation), an excellent framework for competitor analysis, competitive moves, strategy toward buyers and suppliers, structural analysis within industries (strategic groups, strategic mapping, mobility barriers), and industry evolution (life cycle, evolutionary processes).

In Part II, Porter discusses competitive strategy within various generic industry environments, such as fragmented industries (with no real market leader), emerging industries (e-commerce and Internet are excellent examples, although not mentioned in this book as it was written in 1980), mature industries, declining industries, and global industries.

In Part III, Porter discusses strategic decisions which businesses/firms can take, such as vertical integration (forward, backward, partnerships), capacity expansion, and entry into new industries/businesses.

Even after 20 years, most of this book still stands strong, although some people will argue this. Michael Porter has responded to his critics in the 1996-Harvard Business Review article 'What is Strategy?' also available at Amazon.com. It is still a MUST for MBA-students and all other people interested in strategy/strategic management. The book is simple to read with plenty of examples and thus does not become a struggle.

Staying Street Smart In The Internet Age : What Hasn't Changed About the Way We Do Business
By Mark McCormack - The title just uses the buzzword "internet" to get your attention. It could have been called "career and business tips," which is basically what it is. McCormack's writing has gotten better since his earlier books, so I found this one good on that account. His tips have a bit more depth here, too. He mentions how his 2nd wife has helped him learn to "stop and smell the roses," a nd perhaps that's why this book seems less "combat"-like than some of his past books. Plus, his arrogance, that would bleed between the lines in past books was, thankfully, missing. (For example, in earlier books he said, "I made a lot of money at a young age, so I never resented others who did," not considering that perhaps some readers are young and broke, or old and broke, and might resent HIM. And also he said, "99% of people should work for someone else," which conveniently puts him in the elite 1%, and, never mind that through most of history, until the industrial revolution, most people were self-employed.) Anyway, this book is readable and helpful, with some tips I don't think I would have seen anywhere else. He does reuse anecdotes that he uses in other books, but I didn't mind.

Self-Powerment
By Faye Mandell - Organizational consultant Faye Mandell explains how people can obtain greater clarity and productivity in life by letting go of negative thoughts. "Most of us do not realize how much power our thoughts have over us," Mandell writes. "When we begin to grasp this we can begin to shift that power so that we can use thought for our own self-powerment." Her Self-Powerment Model examines thought processes in terms of where they take us in time (past, present, future) and space (where our attention is focused), and emphasizes how recognizing these tendencies can help people avoid the negative thoughts that keep them from living full and productive lives. Focusing attention on the present, Mandell says, enables individuals to benefit from heightened concentration and joy from living in the moment, a state of consciousness the author calls the "Here-Now." Simple charts illustrate potential distractions that can pull one away from the center (or the present "I AM"), and sample dialogue instructs the reader how to keep living in the now. Readers searching for in-depth spiritual ideology or profound musings will likely be disappointed, but those seeking an accessible guide to combating negative thinking (and to becoming more productive) may benefit from these principles.

The Secret Language of Success: Using Body Language to Get What You Want
By David Lewis - I found this book to be inutterably fascinating. It's the jewel of my library. Have you ever felt that you could walk into a room without being noticed and leave and not be missed? Your inability to make your presence felt has probably made you frustrated on more than one occasion (as well as costing you $$$ in business matters). This book teaches you some of the secrets of the secret language of silent speech and body language. My, my, my, did this book ever open my eyes to what a profound impact that your body language makes on the impression that you leave with others. Mastering the use of body talk, or "Impression Management", will enable you to take control of almost any exchange, whether formal or informal, intimate or public. Did you know that the size of your pupils varies according to our degree of interest and physical arousal? According to the psychological tests detailed in this book, of which the reader can take, when we meet someone attractive, our pupils get larger.

This book taught me that being a good listener is actually a more effective way of making a good impression than being a gifted speaker. And before you can create any sort of impression it is, of course, essential to be noticed. But this book demonstrated to me that it's almost never efficient to attract attention with sledge-hammer tactics. Instead, projecting a successful self-image demands perception, confidence and the ability to control any strong emotions, such as anxiety or irritation. It means presenting yourself in a way that matches the desires and expectations of your audience. It requires the development of what stage people call 'presence', that special sparkle which transforms a person into a personality. This book gives you some tips on how to have presence whenever you walk into a room. Another great point that I found within one of the chapters within this book (the chapter on self-esteem and body language) is that you should try to match your level of esteem to that of the other person if you seek their cooperation. The chapter presents a couple of fabulous real world examples of how a person goes about that.

This wonderful book also offers tips on perfecting your posture in order to create a favorable impression. Chapter 8, entitled "Anatomy of an Encounter" was a wonderful one. This chapter analyzes and examines the typical human encounter from acknowledgment (like the eyebrow flash), contact, all the way through to disengagement. Other downright fascinating pieces within this chapter is the explanation of the power of a gaze, how we view faces, and the meaning of smiles (classifications of smile: simple smile, upper smile, high intensity smile, etc). I gained precious knowledge of how people feel just from being aware of what kind of smile they exhibit. Chapter 9 details where you should stand, either directly opposite or adjacent, in an encounter. It goes on to adduce where each gender prefers to interact. Again, fascinating information. This chapter also analyzes the handshake and the connotation attached to it's duration and style. Chapter 13 was my favorite. It details power plays. How people can dominate via taking up as much space as physically possible. The chapter tells how one can counter power plays initiated by others towards you. All in all, this book is one of the best books out there on body language. I am confident making this statement only after reading many other books on body language, none of which I believed to be as good (certainly not worthy enough to take time out to write even a poor review on) as this one. By adding this book to your library, you'll gain a tremendous edge when communicating with others.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
By Edward Tufte - You know what's so good about this book? The research, that's what. In showing both good and bad graphic design, Tufte has examples from as far back as 1686, and many examples from the 18th,19th & 20th centuries and from many different countries.

Good graphic design, he argues, reveals the greatest number of ideas in the shortest time with the least ink in the smallest space. Interestingly, some of the best examples of this come from the pre-computer era, when graphics had to be drawn by hand (and therefore more thought had to go into their design, rather than the author just calling up the Bar Graph template on the desktop.) For example, that picture you can see on the front cover of the book is actually a train timetable that packs a whole list of arrivals and departures at many different stations into a single little picture.

A better example (and the "best statistical graphic ever drawn") shows Napoleon's route through Europe. It shows a) the map b) where he went c) how many people were in his army at each point and d) the temperature on the way back that killed off his army. At a glance you can see the factors that led to his army losing. AND it was drawn by hand in 1885 and is little more than a line drawing!

He also gives examples of really bad design, (including "the worst graphic ever to make it to print"), and shows what makes it so bad. His examples prove that information-less, counter-intuitive graphics can still look dazzlingly pretty, even though they're useless. In some examples, he shows how small changes can make the difference between an awful graphic and a really good one. My favourite example of this is how he drew the inter-quartile ranges on the x and y axes of a scatterplot, thus adding more information to the graphic without cluttering it up.

How Would You Like A FREE Coaching Session?

If you've gotten this far, you're probably a likely candidate for coaching. I'm so sure coaching can work for you that I'm offering a complementary coaching session to talk about your goals and dreams.

And yes, it really is an actual coaching session. You can talk about any subject, ask as many questions as you like on the issue of your choice.

Why Would I Do This?

Because the only way to really know how coaching works is to experience it firsthand.

But even if you just want the free coaching and have no intention of ever signing up, that's okay, because you may tell someone about it, and that is of tremendous value to me.

Act Quickly.

Pick up the phone and call me now at 203-500-2421 (or email - free@richgee.com) and we'll schedule your session. Since I only offer two free sessions a week - act quickly - they do fill up early!

Have an INCREDIBLE day! - Rich