I Got Off My Ass . . . My First Podcast.

Enjoy!

$14.27 Can Change Your Career. Guaranteed.

Every so often, a person comes along, writes a book, and changes the way people act. Napoleon Hill did it with"Think and Grow Rich". Dale Carnegie — "How To Win Friends and Influence People". Peters and Waterman — "In Search of Excellence". Stephen Covey — "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". And Keith Ferrazzi — "Never Eat Alone".

Seth Godin has been writing books, speaking, and blogging for over 10 years. I first was introduced to him with his first book, "Permission Marketing". I then drifted off from Seth after reading a few of his other books but have been following him lately with his blog.

Michael Hyatt turned me onto his latest read, "Linchpin — Are You Indispensable?". I bought it yesterday on my Amazon Kindle and proceeded to stay up most of the night finishing it. This book is going to change the way people think, act, and work.

Everyone knows there is something wrong with business today. Seth crystalizes what the REAL problem is and delivers to the reader clear instructions on how to find their way on how to succeed in the new business world.

Bottom line: Seth espouses what I do every day with my clients.

A short summary from Amazon: "Linchpin is a most unusual, well-organized, concise book about what it takes to become indispensable in the workplace - whether you work for someone else (at any level) or are self-employed. It's about how business has rapidly changed and how treating employees like factory workers (or doing your job like one) doesn't work any longer. We must make choices and take action to "chart our own paths" and add value that others do not. We cannot wait for a boss or a job description to tell us what to do, rather we must just take the initiative ourselves. Only then can we become indispensable "linchpins," rather than replaceable "cogs." "You don't become indispensable merely because you are different. But the only way to become indispensable is to be different. That's because if you're the same, so are plenty of other people."

Stop what you're doing right now and go out and buy this book. It will change your life.

How To Be Successful Every Day.

  Time to hit work after a wonderful weekend . . . check your email . . . get ready for all those wonderful meetings . . . and make sure you schedule for all the work coming down the pike this week.

Whoops! Forgot to tell you something . . . Most executives tend to forget that their job isn't supposed to crank out work (okay - that's part of your job - but just follow my thinking for a bit).

You are also expected to IMPROVE. CONSTANTLY.

Of course you work. But to be successful in your position, you need to be a machine. A machine that constantly strives to:

1. Do better.
2. Take on additional responsibilities.
3. Never wear out (keep on running and have a bright smile every day).

But how do you do that? Your schedule is ALWAYS full. You come in early, you stay late, and you bring work home. How are you going to IMPROVE CONSTANTLY?

There are three little letters that will help you do that EVERY DAY:    S   D   R

S = STREAMLINE Regularly look at your workload and apply the 80/20 rule to it. Why? Candidly, if you work day-to-day, you tend to get into little ruts in your work habits, your responsibilities, and your inter-personal connections. Not major ruts - small ones. What eventually happens is that they take over your schedule, eking out more and more time, until you find yourself working 60-70 hours a week and 10-20 hours at home.

These ruts steal precious time from those high-value, high-impact tasks that move you forward quickly. So on a monthly basis, stand back and look at your litany of responsibilities, and make highly critical assessments of each one. See how you can eliminate steps in accomplishing each task. Instead of a report, will an email suffice? Instead of an email, would a quick 2 minute phone call be in line? Instead of a phone call, how about a personal drive-by their office? Cut your email in half by using some quick tips (call me - 203.500.2421).

When you regularly cut small steps out of your responsibilities and accelerate your interpersonal communications, they go faster and get done quicker.

D = DELEGATE Take a close look at your responsibilities and see what ones can be delegated to your staff. Or delegated to technology.

That is your job as a manager - to constantly motivate your team and get them to take on more complex and harder tasks. So give them a taste of what you do. Here's the hint - don't give them the fun stuff - give them the tasks that  you HATE to do. They will feel empowered that they are working on management-level responsibilities and you will have more time for more important things.

Or figure out how technology can come to the rescue. Review reports online rather than printing them out.

You'll find that your day gets more fun and you get to work on the stuff that really matters to your business and your success.

R = RETIRE Which tasks take up a lot of time but don't really deliver the impact that merits their priority?

Begin to prioritize all of your responsibilities and pick off one or two - stop doing them - see what happens. It might be a regular meeting that you have, a report that you do, a task that no one really appreciates. Try it - you might realize that no one notices that it's gone.

Candidly - this one is the hardest one to do - but when you get good at it - you'll find that this step delivers the biggest bang for your buck. Try it!

Sunday Funnies.

Woody Allen - The Moose (1965) I love this skit. It's one of my favorites. Business-wise, watch it and pay attention to Woody's timing. His rhythm and cadence is so spot on - the story is funny - but his delivery makes the skit.

Next time you do a presentation, pay attention to your rhythm and cadence - it is really important when making a point. As I always say - it's ALL Broadway! Enjoy.

What's The New Phrase For This Economy?

Do you know what my new phrase for this economy? Is it: "Beg For That Job"? No. "Ask Your Friends For Connections"? No.

It's a bit more simple than that. Simply put, it's:

"GET OFF YOUR ASS."

I know — a little blunt — a little in your face. But spot on.

In economic times like these we all have ample opportunities to grow. To take advantage of the upheaval in our marketplace. Up is Down. Down is Up.

I always say: "There are people who make things happen. There are people who watch what happened. And there are people who wonder WHAT HAPPENED!"

Which one will you be today? Take charge of your life:

• Take a risk at work. Ask to be on that new project. Present your new ideas to your boss.
• If you're unemployed, take a chance, call a CEO at a company that you really want to work for and set up a lunch with him.

Don't wait for a better time or when you will have more information. As I also say. "We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good." Don't wait for perfection - Do it now.

Bottom line — Step out of your comfort zone and MAKE IT HAPPEN.

Hiding Is Not Good For Your Career.

During times like these, most executives tend to worry if the axe will be falling near their neck. So what do they do? They power down, think small, take no risks and ensure that they don't appear in anyone's crosshairs.

Unfortunately, this not only does nothing (if they choose, they're going to fire you anyway), it can actually hurt your career.

Why might you be next to be laid off in this economy . . . let's look at the facts:

1. You make too much.
2. You make too little.
3. You're working on a low-level or non-strategic project.
4. You're working on a high-level, very strategic project.
5. You've worked much too long at that company.
6. You are the last one hired, first fired.
7. You're boss doesn't like your face.

What am I really saying here? Firing is capricious. It can happen for a number of reasons and most (if not all) of them have nothing to do with your performance. The reality is: 99 times out of 100, mass firings are due to bad planning by management, not by you. And they have to move fast, cut deep, and recover quickly to SAVE THEIR OWN NECKS. Or they will see the axe coming around the conference table for them.

SO . . . what am I REALLY saying here? In times like these, it is in your best interest to STEP OUT OF YOUR COMFORT ZONE. Don't hide.

For example . . . Take a little risk:

1. Speak up at meetings. Let people know your point of view.
2. Have strategic lunches — meet with key executives inside and outside of your company.
3. Ask for more work — but choose carefully — get on that key project.
4. Make it a point of bumping into higher-ups and building relationships with them.

In times like these, companies have NO IDEA what to do. They're juggling all the balls in the air and NO ONE wants to catch one. They just keep juggling and praying they don't drop one.

Smart executives that are go-getters take advantage of this craziness and grab one of those balls. So . . . time to grab some balls.

Sunday Funnies.

America's "Can't-Do" List.

Lately, I've been studying the melting of glaciers in the greater Himalayas. Understanding the cascading effects of the slow-motion downsizing of one of the planet's most magnificent landforms has, to put it politely, left me dispirited. By Orville Schell at The Los Angeles Times.

It is impossible to focus on those Himalayan highlands without realizing that something that once seemed immutable and eternal has become vulnerable, even perishable. Those magnificent glaciers are wasting away on an overheated planet, and no one knows what to do about it.

Another tipping point has also been on my mind lately, and it's left me no less melancholy. In this case, the threat is to my own country, the United States. We Americans too seem to have passed a tipping point. Like the glaciers of the high Himalaya, long-familiar aspects of our nation are beginning to seem as if they are, in a sense, melting away.

In the last few months, as I've roamed the world from San Francisco to Copenhagen to Beijing to Dubai, I've taken to keeping a double- entry list of what works and what doesn't, country by country. Unfortunately, it's become largely a list of what works elsewhere but doesn't work here. In places such as China, South Korea, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland and (until recently) the United Arab Emirates, you find people hard at work on the challenges of education, transportation, energy and the environment. In these places, one feels the kind of hopefulness and can-do optimism that used to abound in the United States.

China, a country I've visited more than 100 times since 1975, elicits an especially complicated set of feelings in me. Its Leninist government doesn't always live up to Western ideals on such things as political transparency, the rule of law, human rights and democracy. And yet it has managed to conjure an economic miracle. In China today, you feel an unmistakable sense of energy and optimism in the air that, believe me, is bittersweet for an American pondering why the regenerative powers of his own country have gone missing.

As I've traveled from China's gleaming, efficient airports to our often-chaotic and broken-down versions of the same, or ridden on Europe's high-speed trains that so sharply contrast with our clunky, slowly vanishing passenger rail system, I keep expanding my list of what works here at home and what doesn't.

Over time, the list's entries have fallen into three categories. There are things that are robust and growing, replete with promise, the envy of the world. Then there are those things that are still alive and kicking but are precariously balanced between growth and decline. Finally, there are those things that are irredeemably broken.

Here is the score card as I see it:

Aspects of U.S. life that are still vigorous and filled with potential:

• , which is delivering much of the world's most innovative research and ideas.
• Silicon Valley, which has enormous inventiveness, energy and capital at its disposal.
• Civil society, which, despite the collapse of the economy, seems to be luring the best and brightest young people, and superbly performs the crucial function of goading government and other institutions.
• American philanthropy, which is the most evolved, well funded and innovative in the world.
• The U.S. military, the best-led, -trained and -equipped on the planet, despite being repeatedly thrust into hopeless wars by stupid politicians.
• The spirit and cohesiveness of small-town American life.
• The arts, including our film industry, which remains the globe's sole superpower of entertainment, along with the requisite networks of orchestras, ballet companies, theaters, pop music groups and world-class museums.

Aspects of U.S. life that still function but need help:

• Higher and secondary school education, in which America boasts some of the globe's preeminent institutions. Increasingly, though, many of the best institutions are private, and jewel-in-the-crown public systems such as California's continue to be hit with devastating budget cuts.
• Environmental protection, which compares favorably with that in other countries despite being underfunded.
• The national energy system, which still delivers but is overdependent on oil and coal, and depends on a grid badly in need of upgrading.

Aspects of U.S. life in need of drastic intervention:

• Public elementary education, which in most states is desperately underfunded and fails to deliver on its promise to provide all children with high-quality schooling.
• The federal government, which is essentially paralyzed by partisanship and incapable of delivering solutions to the country's most pressing problems.
• State governments, which are largely dysfunctional and nearly insolvent.
• American infrastructure, including highways, docks, bridges and tunnels, dikes, waterworks and other essential systems we aren't maintaining and upgrading as we should.
• Airlines and the airports they service, which are almost Third World in equipment and service standards.
• Passenger rail, which has not one mile of truly high-speed rail.
• The financial system, whose over-paid executives and underregulated practices ran us off an economic cliff in 2008 and compromised the whole system in the eyes of the world.
• The electronic media, which, except for public broadcasting and a vital and growing Internet, are an overly commercialized, broken-down mess that have let down the country in terms of keeping us informed.
• Print media, which from newspaper publishing to book publishing are in crisis.
• Basic manufacturing, which has fallen so far behind it seems headed for oblivion.

I started keeping these lists because I was searching for things that would banish that dispiriting sense that America is in decline. And yet the can-do list remains unbearably short and the can't-do one grows each time I travel.

American prowess and promise, once seemingly as much a permanent part of the global landscape as glaciers, mountains and oceans, seems to be melting away by the day, just like the great Himalayan ice fields.

Orville Schell is the director of the Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. He is the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley and the author of many books on China. A longer version of this article appears at tomdispatch.com.

Why I Love Twitter.

I've been using Twitter regularly now for exactly one year. And during that year, I have followed lots of friends and colleagues, and have made a lot of important business connections. Looking back, there is one constant that I can attribute to Twitter. It's one of the only avenues of information and connection that I utilize daily. I laugh, I learn, I follow very interesting tweets. I also have a lot of incredible people that I follow. Thank You for all your great tweets this year!

The constant: Twitter makes my life better. Not the NY Times, or the Wall Street Journal. Not the Huffington Post or Talking Points Memo. Twitter.

I find that the more that I surf news-oriented sites, the more I worry, the more I fret, the more depressed I get. I get the feeling that the job of media is to get us to worry, fret and lose hope. Why? So we come back for more.

I have a charge for you. For 30 days, I am asking myself and everyone out there to take a media fast. No more newspapers, News TV, news web sites . . . nothing. To fill that time - I'm just going to Tweet and read Tweets. How about you?

See what happens. Oh yes . . . and let me know.

Move Your Money.

Let's talk about the huge, growing chasm between the fortunes of Wall Street banks and Main Street banks. Let's start discussing what concrete steps individuals can take to help create a better financial system.

Let's get practical — and with some help from friends in the world of bank analysis, a video and website were produced devoted to a simple idea: Move Your Money.

Please watch and send to all your friends. Thank you.

2009 - The Best of Rich Gee.

It's almost 2010.

But there might be a lot of stuff that you missed in 2009.

So for everyone's benefit, I am presenting the Top 10 most clicked/read posts in an easy-to-scan format.

So here goes:

Breakthrough Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2069

10 Ways To Grow Your Career In A Bad Economy — Part One Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1870

10 Ways To Grow Your Career In A Bad Economy — Part Two Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1877

Five Reasons Why Leaders Fail (& Why Failures Lead) Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2030

3 Powerful Tips To Energize Your Team Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1802

Ethical Leadership — You Need A Mentor Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1439

How to Be an Effective CEO Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=1265

4 Ways To Coach Your Team Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=880

Great Leaders Empower Others Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=749

Get Ready For Annual Reviews! Click Here - https://richgee.com/?p=2005

Enjoy and have an UNBELIEVABLE 2010! - Rich

I Love Michael Hyatt.

Who is Michael Hyatt? Well, let me tell you about a man called Mike in Tennessee. I first 'met' Michael on Twitter. The topics he spoke about and the 'traveling' tweets that he posted immediately appealed to me. There was an innate energy about him and what he was accomplishing.

I then visited his site. Two words: "Blown Away". This man — who not only is the CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, is an accomplished speaker, leader, and social media guru. He's also a devoted family man — married for over 32 years and has five daughters and four grandchildren.

But what really attracted me to him is his focus on Leadership and Ethics. You see — Michael is rare in today's business world. He actually embraces a strict ethical and moral stance (in business and life) and strikes a decided separation from today's "laissez-faire" attitude of business leaders.

Since I also write about these topics — I was happy to stumble upon a fellow traveler.

So check him out — he just launched a new site — and I love his quote about it:

"My personal philosophy is that if you aren’t continually reinventing yourself, your company, and your brand, it’s only a matter of time before you become obsolete, irrelevant, or go out of business."

Someday, I would like to meet and speak to Michael. I think we have a lot in common.

Happy Holidays!

The Unexpected Power of $10 to $20.

Gary Ribble would not be able to read this story if not for people like you.

By Jim Kavanagh at CNN

Ribble, who has chronic lymphocytic leukemia in addition to severe diabetes and impaired hearing, needed new eyeglasses last spring but couldn't afford them after losing a job he'd held for more than 40 years.

Then he found out about the Modest Needs Foundation. The grass-roots charity pools thousands of small donations to help people get through short-term financial crises. Donors direct their dollars to the requests they want to fund.

"I need these glasses very badly or I will have to stop doing a lot of what I do: reading, writing, and working with my computer; I just can't see that well at all," Ribble wrote in his request.

Eleven visitors to modestneeds.org pitched in, and within a week Ribble, who lives in a trailer in Nappanee, Indiana, received a $364 check that changed his life.

"When I found my message from Modest Needs today that help was on the way, I cried a few tears of happiness knowing that I would be able to see again," he wrote in a thank you note.

Stories like that make Modest Needs Foundation founder and CEO Keith Taylor giddy.

"It is so much fun to read these testimonials," Taylor said. "It's like Christmas every day."

People often don't realize how powerful just 10 or 20 dollars can be, Taylor said. In many cases, a small amount can stop a crisis in its tracks.

"It's wonderful to see what this does for people," Taylor said. "You don't find out until after the fact what kind of an impact these little contributions that people are making; ... you have no idea what kind of a change you really are making in the person's life."

Cady Stanton, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University, gave $20 to help fund Ribble's request.

"Glasses are such a small thing, right?" she said. "I mean, the man's worked 40-some years and he has cancer. The least he should be able to do is have some glasses. Our social contract with our country -- we should have glasses. I mean, come on. It's not that big of a deal."

Ribble wrote a beautiful thank you note that was passed along to the donors. Stanton keeps a copy of it on her desk.

"Your generosity overwhelms me and I just can't say in words how very happy I am and I thank God that someone cared enough for a disabled man, in a very hardship situation, to help me out to see better," the note read in part.

Taylor founded the site seven years ago out of a similar sense of gratitude.

One evening in 2002 he was marveling at how happy his life was, and remembered a few singular acts of kindness that had helped him get there.

For example, while in graduate school in Tennessee, he incurred a car repair bill that used up his rent money. His boss at his part-time job at a movie theater paid the rent for him -- not a loan, a gift.

As he reflected on his good fortune, Taylor pledged, "When I'm really rich I'm going to start an organization to help the working poor."

That's when his "aha!" moment came.

"It occurred to me all of a sudden that no one who had ever helped me had ever been wealthy, they had just been nice. They'd just had compassion," he said.

Taylor decided to set aside $350 to help one individual per month get through a crisis. He created a crude Web site inviting requests, expecting his effort to remain small, personal and obscure -- "on the millionth page of Google."

But this was the Internet. A well-meaning friend posted a link on the widely read blog Metafilter.com, and the next day Taylor was swamped with 1,100 e-mails. Many were asking for help, some were skeptical of Taylor's motives, and a surprising number of people wanted to contribute, he said.

At first he fended off would-be donors, because his vision for the project was limited, he said. But the e-mails and offers to donate kept coming, along with more requests for help. Taylor soon incorporated Modest Needs as a nonprofit organization.

Modest Needs' first grant saved a woman's life: It paid for a mammogram that found a tumor, Taylor said.

The organization has done nothing but grow ever since. By the end of December, Taylor expects to have made $2.4 million in grants in 2009.

"Every day is another miracle," Taylor said. "It's beyond my imagination."

Here's how it works: People e-mail their requests -- help with rent or a car repair or a medical bill, for example -- to Modest Needs, whose seven-person staff researches and verifies their legitimacy.

The vetted requests are then posted on ModestNeeds.org, where donors can choose which ones they want to help fund. Once the funding level is reached, a check is sent out.

Gift certificates are available. A donor can contribute any amount and then let the gift recipient decide where it should go.

"You're talking about huge, huge numbers of individual people giving just a little bit of what they have to make the lives of people who have short-term emergencies a little bit better by just keeping them on track, keeping them out of the social services system altogether," Taylor said.

Those individual contributions are multiplied by matching grants from larger donors, including musician and recording company executive Herb Alpert and his wife, Lani Hall Alpert.

"We really wanted to help him [Taylor] grow that community of small giving," said Rona Sebastian, president of the Herb Alpert Foundation.

The Alperts were also struck by how many Modest Needs grant recipients -- 68 percent, Taylor said -- turned around and became donors to the organization, Sebastian said.

"That was extremely exciting to us because that was something we found to be very powerful," she said.

Ribble is among those rebound donors: Despite his poverty, he donates $5 a month to help others through Modest Needs.

Editor's note: In the first six hours after this story was published on CNN.com, Modest Needs Foundation had set records by receiving $54,413 in individual donations and distributing $42,000 to fulfill 57 requests, CEO Keith Taylor told CNN. The donors "all came from CNN," he said. "Literally all of them." All the donations will be multiplied by matching gifts, he noted. "This is like the greatest day we've had in forever," Taylor said. "We are having so much fun. ... Everybody is just happy, happy, happy. ... If we can keep it going for just another four or five hours, we will have not just our biggest day in history but we'll have one that won't be beaten for a long time, and a lot of people will get the help they need."

Who is Ben Kennedy? He's not Ebenezer Scrooge.

Unless you live in Helena, Mont., you’re unlikely to have any notion of who Ben Kennedy was. And even if you live in Helena, you may have never knew his name. By Verlyn Klinkenborg at The New York Times.

You might have seen him on the street or in the alleys behind buildings downtown, collecting cans and flattening cardboard boxes for recycling. He probably would have caught your attention if you drifted downwind of him, for, in truth, his scent was high and overripe. His hair was wild, and his mouth had long been going bald of teeth.

Ben Kennedy was a native of Belt, Mont., a few miles east of Great Falls. You could be forgiven for thinking he was homeless, but he died in his subsidized housing in Helena on Dec. 2, just short of his 87th birthday.

On Dec. 16, the anniversary date of his birthday, there was a posthumous celebration of Ben Kennedy’s departed life at the Windbag Saloon. The party — crowded and filled with emotion, according to reports — wasn’t just to commemorate a perplexing local figure. It was to honor the passing of a benefactor.

Ben Kennedy lived on little more than his Social Security. Out of that pittance, he regularly scraped together enough to make sizable donations to a number of charities, including the Nature Conservancy and the Montana Land Reliance, a land trust. His gifts were usually made in cash, in person, after a considerable, and sometimes daunting, search of his pockets, and often in crisp hundred-dollar bills. The surprise, at the Windbag wake, was how many of these gifts he’d made — and how few recipients knew about his other contributions.

There’s surely a lot more to tell about Ben Kennedy, nearly all of it beyond telling now. He was a public figure but a private man, and he kept most of his autobiography quiet. It would be good to know what impelled him to make the gifts he made. But then, it would also be good to know just why his gifts surprise us, why his charity seems so exceptional. Perhaps he saw it as his responsibility, as the sign of a wealth he felt lucky to have — and a duty to share.

Sunday Funnies.

Thank You Central Connecticut State University!

It was a real pleasure last night presenting to your chapter of the American Marketing Association! I had a great time, I hope you all went away with lots of information and we all had some great pizza! The article that I mentioned is linked here. You will find it a powerful ally in your hunt for a career after graduation.

Professor Green and Kho were consummate hosts - thank you for everything.

If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to give me a call — ANYTIME!

Regards - Rich

There's No Speed Limit (Lessons That Changed My Life).

Whether you're a student, teacher, or parent, I think you'll appreciate this story of how one teacher can completely and permanently change someone's life in only a few lessons.

Another Incredible Story By Derek Sivers at http://sivers.org.

I met Kimo Williams when I was 17 – the summer after I graduated high school in Chicago, a few months before I was starting Berklee College of Music.

I called an ad in the paper by a recording studio, with a random question about music typesetting.

When the studio owner heard I was going to Berklee, he said, “I graduated from Berklee, and taught there for a few years, too. I’ll bet I can teach you two years’ of theory and arranging in only a few lessons. I suspect you can graduate in two years if you understand there’s no speed limit. Come by my studio at 9:00 tomorrow for your first lesson, if you’re interested. No charge.”

Graduate college in two years? Awesome! I liked his style. That was Kimo Williams.

Excited as hell, I showed up to his studio at 8:40 the next morning, though I waited outside until 8:59 before ringing his bell.

(Recently I heard him tell this same story from his perspective and said, “My doorbell rang at 8:59 one morning and I had no idea why. I run across kids all the time who say they want to be a great musician. I tell them I can help, and tell them to show up at my studio at 9am if they’re serious. Almost nobody ever does. It’s how I weed out the really serious ones from the kids who are just talk. But there he was, ready to go.”)

He opened the door. A tall black man in a Hawaiian shirt and big hat, a square scar on his nose, a laid-back demeanor, and a huge smile, sizing me up, nodding.

After a one-minute welcome, we were sitting at the piano, analyzing the sheet music for a jazz standard. He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic scale. How the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a minute, I was already being quizzed, “If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tritone, then so does another flat-7 chord. Which one?”

“Uh… the flat-2 chord?”

“Right! So that’s a substitute chord. Any flat-7 chord can always be substituted with the other flat-7 that shares the same tritone. So reharmonize all the chords you can in this chart. Go.”

The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was challenging me – keeping me in over my head – encouraging and expecting me to pull myself up, quickly. I was learning so fast, it had the adrenaline of sports or a video game. A two-way game of catch, he tossed every fact back at me and made me prove I got it.

In our three-hour lesson that morning, he taught me a full semester of Berklee’s harmony courses. In our next four lessons, he taught me the next four semesters of harmony and arranging requirements.

When I got to college and took my entrance exams, I tested out of those six semesters of required classes.

Then, as he suggested, I bought the course materials for other required classes and taught myself, doing the homework on my own time, then went to the department head and took the final exam, getting full credit for the course.

Doing this in addition to my full course load, I graduated college in two and a half years – (got my bachelor’s degree when I was 20) – squeezing every bit of education out of that place that I could.

But the permanent effect was this:

Kimo’s high expectations set a new pace for me. He taught me “the standard pace is for chumps” – that the system is designed so anyone can keep up. If you’re more driven than “just anyone” – you can do so much more than anyone expects. And this applies to ALL of life – not just school.

Before I met him, I was just a kid who wanted to be a musician, doing it casually.

Ever since our five lessons, high expectations became my norm, and still are to this day. Whether music, business, or personal – whether I actually achieve my expectations or not – the point is that I owe every great thing that’s happened in my life to Kimo’s raised expectations. That’s all it took. A random meeting and five music lessons to convince me I can do anything more effectively than anyone expects.

(And so can anyone else.)

I wish the same experience for everyone. I have no innate abilities. This article wasn’t meant to be about me as much as the life-changing power of a great teacher and raised expectations.

A professional musician (and circus clown) since 1987, Derek started CD Baby by accident in 1998 when he was selling his own CD on his website, and friends asked if he could sell theirs, too. CD Baby was the largest seller of independent music on the web, with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. In 2008, Derek sold CD Baby to focus on his new ventures to benefit musicians, including his new company MuckWork where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work”. His current projects and writings are all at sivers.org.

Laid Off? Check This Out.

Recommended by Chris Brogan (he's the best!), this message and movement will ROCK YOUR WORLD.

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Five Reasons Why Leaders Fail (& Why Failures Lead).

It's hard to be a leader in today's economy. Add that you need equal parts of courage, vision, empathy, and reality (Peter Koestenbaum's Leadership Diamond) AND get your work done, it's almost impossible. I've reduced my list of hundreds down to five — and here they are: 1. You move from confident to cocky. There is a fine line between confidence and cockyness — my definition:

Confident - fully comfortable in their skin, able to hold their own in most situations, but always willing to learn from others to better oneself. Cocky - fully comfortable in their skin, able to hold their own in most situations, knows it all - and let's everyone know that fact.

Be more humble — keep your mind open to new ideas. This leads me to my next reason:

2. You speak more than you listen. Pontification is a rampant disease of leaders. Candidly, as you move from communicating to pontification, you slowly lose the attention of the very people that you are speaking to. Communication is a two-way street — so feel free to let your people know what you are thinking and impart key information, but please fit in a bit of listening to complete the circle. It will go miles whenever you communicate with your team.

3. You care more about your performance than your team's performance. This primarily affects new managers than accomplished ones, but it does creep in sometimes when times are hard for the company. We all fall back on touting our own laurels rather than bringing up the rear with stories of the real performers of your company — your team. Try to pick one person and one action every so often and message it to the people that matter. It will pay dividends in exposure and good will from your team.

4. You manage upwards significantly more than downwards. A corollary to the previous reason — when we focus on ourselves, we tend to manage upwards to hone impressions of our performance. When we spend time doing this, we tend to forget that our job is to manage our people — which is quite easy to do:

a. Give them the information they need to do their job. b. Motivate them when required. c. Help them get rid of any obstacles.

If you spend more time on your people, everything else will fall into place. If you would like to read more on leadership, read this.

5. You care more about where you're going than where you are. Everyone becomes enamored with shiny objects — add to that a bit of executive ADD, and you tend to look elsewhere for better vistas. I'm not saying not to do this (it's always good to keep your options open), but you also need to pay attention to where you are. Too many executives come onto the scene, make a big splash, pull in a big client or coup, and then immediately get distracted and look for other shores to conquer. Slow down, enjoy the accolades and see if there are bigger beasts to manage where you are — it might pay off in the long run.