Archive for October, 2008

Seth Godin is one of my favorite authors. His unique world view on business, marketing, and personal development is engaging and brilliant. Currently he is offering his new book –Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us– for only 95 cents on iTunes.

This is pure marketing genius and this simple price point has taken this book to the number one spot in the Audio books section. The great thing is, there is a lot of value in this three hour audio book.

The ideas he presents are timely and things that each one of us can do.

Are you a leader?

Do you lead a tribe?

If not, there is surely a tribe just waiting to be formed and lead by … YOU!

I have had the pleasure of being a member of a Book Writing Tribe for the last few weeks. My good friend, Karen Hobson, has taken the leap and created a six week program for the person who wants to get serious about writing a book.

She calls it the Start 2 Finish Writers Workshop and it has really fired me up to get my book done. The interesting thing about this workshop is the location. We meet in a local Coffee Shop and our small tribe has become very interactive. As we go through the exercises, each person shares their writing with other members.

This small group experience is a powerful way to share ideas, critique each others work, and learn many new writing techniques. If you live in the Temecula area of Southern California, I highly recommend her seminar. For the rest of you, her free monthly newsletter will be a valuable asset.

If you want to start your own tribe, you should definitely download Seth’s free tribes casebook. This 240 page PDF is packed with ideas about starting, leading, and being successful with your own group. Highly Recommended!

Seth Godin has a great post today about how, during bad times, we tend to focus on one thing–what is bad. He suggests that our business life is like a 4×4 grid. We have 16 different areas of focus such as location, reputation, staff etc. If this is a personal grid it might be your resume, your network, your skill set, etc.

When things get bad in one area, we tend to focus on just that one area to the detriment of everything else. He puts it this way…

When something is going wrong, when the economy is out of sync, we panic. We obsess about just one of the sixteen boxes and ignore the others. We talk ourselves into hysteria about how, “none of our customers have any money,” or, “in this bleak economy, we’ll never make a sale.” Instead of using the relative downtime to build up the other 15 boxes, we just sit in the corner, keening, worrying about that one box that’s out of whack.

Boy is this ever great advice. It’s so easy to just focus on the negative–why things can’t possibly work, get better, or recover–that we lose sight of everything else.

Those other 15 boxes may not be affected at all. Why not focus on them instead of the one with trouble–build them up–and be just that much farther ahead.

He puts the consequences this way…

The problem with whining is this: human beings like to be right. If you persuade yourself and your friends that times are really tough and that you’re bound to fail, you’ll probably do the things you need to do to make that true in the long run.

Maybe today is the time to Focus on Fifteen!

Many of us work in Microsoft Windows on our jobs or at home. We open programs all day long as well as doing file maintenance. In my daily job working for a large technology department, I run into users that have never heard of the popular hotkey’s in Windows that can save you time and help you become more productive.

Here are Seven common ones that I use every day

1. Ctrl + C  Copy
2. Ctrl + X  Cut
3. Ctrl + V  Paste
4. Ctrl + S  Save
5. Ctrl + A  Select All
6. WindowsKey + E Opens Windows Explorer
7. WindowsKey + F Opens the Find or Search Box

These seven hotkey’s save me considerable time in Windows XP and Vista and also when working in many of the programs in Microsoft office.

Make these a habit or print them out and keep them in view to increase your daily productivity. Just learning a couple of keystrokes can save you considerable time every day.

(The WindowsKey is the key in the bottom row of your keyboard that has the Microsoft Windows logo on it.)

Have Fun!

Over the last month, I’ve started to put together a life long dream. This is something I’ve tried many times to start, only to be overwhelmed by the size and scope of the project.

I’ve been well meaning and even set aside time, created an outline, did some research, but month after month and year after year the project has gone un-started.

That is until this labor day weekend.

I did something unthinkable.

I started writing.

And the words flowed and the first chapter came into being.

This became exciting and pictures started flowing in my mind, characters were created, and dialog was put on the written page.

My first book is on its way.

The interesting thing is it’s totally different than I thought it would be.

The story is created in my mind and the words just flow.

As the chapters have come together, I realized that I wanted to take this thing called writing to a higher level. I want my chapters to be more colorful, the characters more exciting, and the places more vivid.

I searched the bookstore for help and picked up a few books on writing. After buying a few of them I became frustrated. I knew what I wanted, but I just had trouble creating it. And these books really didn’t help.

Then I saw it, a simple little six dollar book called The Lively Art of Writing, written in 1965 by Lucile Vaughan Payne.

This book, in just a few hours has revolutionized how I write. It has taken my sentences, and made them more complete. It has opened up a vast world of active verbs that add color, action, and vivid description.

And it has given me a new confidence. A confidence that I can truly put on paper the vivid pictures and stories in my mind

Pick this little jewel up and add it to your library.

Soon your writing will shine like the spit shined shoe of a Marine!