$2 Billion Decision; Car Giveaway; Biggest Waste; Feb 15 Cambridge Album Release
February 6, 2014Wine Deal; Being Brief; Amazon’s Best Practice; APN; Stanford Water Systems
February 20, 2014Staying Out of Jail; Huge Mistake; 14th Feb Deadline; 19th Feb Webinar
"…keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Need to Pump Up Sales? — Complimentary Dave Kurlan 48 minute Sales Webinar 19th Feb 2pm (any time zone!), more below, but first…
Staying Out of Jail — Ben Horowitz's CFO eventually ended up in jail, but Ben didn't. One key was a speech he regularly gave to his finance department — "In this business, we may run into trouble. We may miss a quarter. We may even go bankrupt, but we will not go to jail. So if somebody asks you to do something that you think might put you in jail, call me." If you only read one thing this week, read Ben's blog post about what happened. And it underpins the power of having the right advisors. I had the wrong one last year and it cost me $450k (thank goodness it was only money). Penny wise and pound foolish couldn't be a more accurate description of my blunder.
Atlas Medical's Q4 Celebration Message — take 2 minutes to watch as Bob Gregory, Chief Business Officer for Atlas Medical, walks through the success of their Q4 priorities. This was shown while they hosted celebrations in each of their six offices. The extra effort to produce a 2 minute video like this shines a light on the importance of setting and achieving priorities – plus people like video! Thanks to Gazelles coach David Chavez, Assured Strategies, for sharing his client's video.
Monk and Ferrari — if "4 Hour" makes you think of Tim Ferriss; the words monk and Ferrari should conjure up Robin Sharma, author of the huge bestseller The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Sharma's latest book is entitled The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life. One of the most sought-after leadership advisors in the world to the Fortune 500 and successful entrepreneurs (and a highly entertaining and inspirational speaker) Sharma is keynoting the upcoming Leadership Summit Presented by Fortune May 13 – 14, Orlando. GazellesPro and book club members will receive a copy of his book next week. Go to the last page of Chapter 7 – page 190 in my copy – then photocopy and post his list near your desk!
Free Kindle Book until Feb 14 — EO member, serial entrepreneur, and popular professor at the famous IESE University in Barcelona has his latest mini book entitled Keep Wonder Alive available as a Kindle book for free until 14th February. Notes Conor "I don't think it will cut the mustard as a Valentine's Day gift – but help me share this with as many people as you can." Notes Conor about the book "between now and 2024 one billion jobs will be taken over by machines. Google cars will replace taxis. IBM's Watson will replace customer service staff. We cannot out-reason the machines. We must change the way we teach, the way we parent and the role of 'I don't know' in our society. The book starts with a question that my 6 year old daughter asked me last summer: 'Daddy, what are stars?' and explores how poor my answer was and my journey to find a better answer to this question." Sounds quite monk-like!!
Co-Leader Mess — dissolution of a venerable 40-year-old Canadian law firm Heenan Blaikie is big news in the legal community. Marc Benoit, co-founder of Montreal-based Benoit & Cote, who has some insight into the situation notes "It seems that the founder/president stepped down two years ago and appointed national co-directors of the law firm from two different cities. It seems that's when everything started to go wrong." He referenced my recent Fortune column on the challenges of co-CEOs.
Free 19th Feb 2pm Webinar — Dave Kurlan, author of Baseline Selling, is founder of the #1 sales assessment tool in the world. We're hosting his 48 minute "Baseline Selling" online seminar for free Feb 19 at 2pm (2pm YOUR time wherever you are in the world). Note, the first few minutes are quite basic, as are the first steps in any sale process. However, as the sales process moves toward closing, the logic of Kurlan's 4 steps become increasingly important. Every time I watch his seminar it reminds me of some key selling point that is worth listening to the entire program – I picked up one idea that helped me land a significant contract last week (I play it in the background while I crank through email). This is the start of a bi-weekly complimentary executive education series we're offering insights readers through 2014. Let this free growth series drip irrigate ideas into your brain. Here is the link, then
- Sign up at the event registration page (name, last name, email, and phone).
- You will receive an email with a customized link
- On the day of the event click or copy/paste the link from step #2 and that's it.
NOTE: it will air for free from 2pm – 2:48pm 19th Feb whatever time zone you're in. Otherwise, there is a small charge if you want to watch it any other time.
COACHING:
