Blogs

Have you ever been a mentor to someone—and I don’t just mean have you ever given someone else advice (who hasn’t?). What I mean is have you ever truly mentored someone? Have you been that adviser, counselor, or guide to someone who’s just starting out or to someone who’s looking to change careers or his…

September can be a “crossroads” type month. Summer’s just about over, autumn looms, and shortly after that it’s the holiday season (which seems to get bigger and longer and more drawn out every year) and then New Year’s. Some might feel tempted to coast the remaining 3-plus months of the year, figuring they’ll just run…

Most of us prefer to think that business is all about dollars and cents, profits and loss, but it isn’t. Business is about relationships, and more specifically about nurturing those relationships so that there’s something “in it” for all parties. Profit and loss are just byproducts of that relationship  . . . and likeability is…

The Holidays are fast approaching and the season of giving is upon us. It’s also a time for service and reflection. Last year around this time, I wrote a Blog about the “art” of serving and honoring others, which seems an especially fitting theme again this year. My wish is that we could all serve…

I am always being approached by friends, colleagues, and sometimes even strangers who are thinking about starting their own small businesses. They want my advice, my insight, a glimpse at whatever “secret sauce” I’ve been cooking that’s allowed me to start-up several successful small businesses in the last decade. On one hand, I want to…

Why do we serve others? Is it because we expect something (usually monetary) in return? Is it because of some religious or philosophical conviction? Or is it simply because serving others makes us feel good? For most of us, the reasons we serve others are probably some combination of the above, weighted differently depending on…

Without question, making your voice heard is important to the social and moral “health” of America. I’d hate to imagine where we’d be as a country (even as a world) without the right to speak and assemble freely. And yet, as people around the country “occupy” this and “occupy” that, I can’t help but wonder…

It would be easy these days to become so preoccupied with what’s going on in Washington DC (or “not” going on, for that matter), your state capital, or your local business environment, that you start to lose sight of the task at hand: to live well, love well, work hard, and make a difference in…

For the past few weeks, I’ve focused on “entitlements,” mainly from the perspective of how some feel they’re entitled to something they’re not necessarily owed. Given recent events and the overall financial plight of our country, it shouldn’t take a simian with super intelligence to figure out why such thoughts were foremost in my mind.…

Job Oportunity—Safe to say that 54,000 new private sector jobs a month isn’t likely to create a sense of economic euphoria anytime soon, but it’s sure better than negative job growth. As our economy sluggishly signals an overall upswing, the hemorrhaging seems to be over for the most part: companies are growing revenues and there…