Saving Your Marriage; Selling Sunshine; Quarterly Vacations; Australia Summit

  "…keeping you great"

HEADLINES: 

Australian Growth Summit — Join me Feb 15 – 16, Sydney, along with Tom Peters, Liz Wiseman, Brian Halligan, Alan Miltz, Peter Rowe, and Frank Romano. Here's a link.

How to Keep Your Business from Killing Your Marriage — do any of you have ideas/ experience? My next Fortune column is focused on this topic. Regular date night? Not recommend going into business with your spouse? Email-free vacations? What has worked for you? Please send me your ideas — and you don't have to write paragraphs, just share the idea and we'll give you a call to get the details.

Brad Feld Saved His Marriage — last month I read Brad's outstanding book Do More Faster. Aimed at tech start-ups, there are plenty of lessons for all of us in the book given Brad's background as a serial entrepreneur and well-known tech investor (and founder of two EO chapters!). In the book he discusses work-life balance and how a lack of it contributed to a failed first marriage and his current wife, Amy, almost calling it quits. Here's a link to what he did – which also served as a short chapter in his book.

Spend Time Away — if you're looking for a New Years' Resolution, consider one of the ways Brad rebuilt his marriage and found more work-life balance. To quote Brad "Amy and I take a weeklong vacation each quarter (which we fondly refer to as "Qx Vacation" depending on which quarter of the year it is) where we completely disappear. No cell phone, no email, no computer, no conference calls – my assistant knows how to find me in case of an emergency; otherwise I'm completely unavailable for the week." If your business is five years old and it can't survive you leaving for a week each quarter, it's time to make changes.

Selling Sunshine — Tony Hartl built one of the top US tanning salon chains, rocking the industry with legendary marketing and customer experience innovations. After 13 years in the business, he successfully sold to Palm Beach Tan. This week Tony's book (ALL proceeds donated to NFTE) about the experience was released. Entitled Selling Sunshine: 75 Tips, Tools, and Tactics for becoming a Wildly Successful Entrepreneur, the book details concrete and specific ideas that will help any business grow. I specifically liked Tip 67 "The Brand is in the Details." You'll enjoy reading about his journey and I guarantee you'll pick up one big idea for your own business.

7 Email Etiquette Tips For Business Introductions — I spend a lot of time making business introductions via email. Mark Solon, managing partner of Highway 12 Ventures, shares 7 etiquette tips for handling these introductions in his latest Fortune article. I particularly like tips 2 and 7. Take 1 minute and skip the first few paragraphs of his article and scroll down to his short, succinct tips – worth the read!

How to Keep the Government From Killing Your Business — and here's a link to my latest syndicated Growth Guy column where I suggest "5 Imperatives for the New Congress": Tort Reform; Reducing Corporate Taxes; Eliminate Credit Card Reporting; Drop Expat Tax; and Dramatically Reduce the Budget.