Creative Leverage for Professional Speakers
Today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom is an interview between me and Theo Androus where he asked me about the business model of my speaking business. We discussed the concepts of gamification and leverage and how they are important for creating a successful business (of any kind). This recording was part of the “Voices of Experience” CD […]
ABC News Transcription
Here’s the transcription of my ABC News interview posted on my blog yesterday… Tory Johnson: Best practices are supposed to help your business be more efficient, but our guest today says that your company guidelines could be wasting your time and stifling your growth. Stephen Shapiro is the author of “Best Practices are Stupid: 40 […]
ABC News to Celebrate 700 posts
Today’s Monday Morning Movie marks my 700th blog entry. To celebrate, I decided to share an older video of mine that many may not have seen: my ABC News interview. In this 5 minute video, Tory Johnson asks me about 5 tips from my book, Best Practices Are Stupid: 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition. Here’s […]
In March, You Can Have Your Pi and Eat Cheese Doodles Too
Today’s Friday Fun Fact… St. Patty’s Day is right around the corner. It’s time to break out the corned beef and cabbage – that is assuming that you are not too full from eating pie this past Thursday. Wednesday, March 14th was Worldwide Pi Day. And while we may celebrate this auspicious occasion by consuming […]
What is Leverage…Really?
Today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom… I recently attended a training class where the instructor was telling professional speakers how they could leverage their content as a way of making money in their sleep. The reality is, the focus was really on how to make products, not how to make money. Let’s face it, at the end […]
Avoid Target Fixation (transcription)
Here is the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie… Although I’ve never been in the military, I’ve worked with military groups. There is a term that I believe they use called “Target Fixation.” Target Fixation basically means that if you focus too much on a target, you might end up hitting that target. If you […]
Avoid Target Fixation
Today’s Monday Morning Movie… The military knows the dangers of something called “target fixation.” This is where you overly focus on the enemy, and as a result you subconsciously end up crashing right into them. The same thing occurs in business. When we focus on the enemy (the competition) we subconsciously end up replicating what they […]
Real-World Know-It-Alls
Today’s Friday Fun Fact… We all have knowledge that has allowed us to excel in different areas of our life. But as I had discussed in my Monday Morning Movie, sometimes this knowledge can be the very thing that gets in the way of our success. But if managed properly, intelligence can be leverage to […]
Are You Playing With a Full Deck?
Today’s Wednesday Work Wisdom… Personality Poker is a tool I developed for helping organizations play with a full deck; enabling them to have a good balance of complementary styles. Why? Because opposites don’t attract. As a result, organizations naturally homogenize around one particular style. (See my article, “Your Organizations is a Cult” for more on […]
Stop Being a Know-it-All (transcription)
Here’s the transcription of my Monday Morning Movie… Today, I want to talk about the power of, and importance of, being open to new ideas and feedback. I just spent a weekend at a conference. It was a bunch of people learning about the speaking profession. I’ve been speaking for 20 years, and I’ve had […]