Build a great company on a powerful foundation!
TODAY OUR DEAR FRIEND 
Mario left the family. It was a hard decision with us, but his battle with cancer has come to an end.
I took him to the vet and was with him to the end. It was a rough experience for me personally – something I haven’t had be so up close before.
But good things come to an end. Relationships change. People leave. You lose your job. Business ventures have to be shut down.
THERE SEEMS TO BE 
a strong trend of optimism growing right now – so much that it’s even showing up on the news.
I’m greatly encouraged by the trend.
When I lost my job and launched out into business coaching full time, I had to make a conscious choice to nurture confidence and optimism. I had to look to the future and leave the past behind.
It wasn’t easy: This was 2009 Read the rest of this entry »
THIS IS THE TIME OF YEAR 
when many people consider their resolutions. I’m not a big fan of that, personally, because of the whole mindset that’s built up around the concept.
If I make a decision to do something, I’d like to set myself up for success. If I instead want to just play around at something, that’s fine, but it’s not the same as making a commitment.
THERE IS A POPULAR PHRASE, 
“You are what you eat.” If you’re unfamiliar with it, the idea is that you should be careful about what you put in your body – because it is the foundation for what your body becomes.
This is a powerful concept that can be applied to other domains as well.
A number of years ago, I started noticing that my state of mind reflected what I was watching, listening to, and reading at the time. Read the rest of this entry »
MY FATHER DIED in 1994 after a six month battle with cancer. It wasn’t an easy time, but the help given us by Hospice was a godsend. It made all the difference in the world, and saved our relationships.
I had the opportunity this week to speak with Deanna Cochran, founder of Quality of Life Care in Austin, Texas. Her specialty is as an End of Life Doula, a field I’d never heard of before.
A-MAIZE’N KETTLE CORN is a family-owned company that started up just this February by Ed and Jan Frumes.
After extensive backgrounds in the financial services industry, they decided to make a change and do something that was smaller, more fun, and would help the community.
They’ve ended up with a great family run business which sells a popular product, and is easily integrated into fundraising and charitable benefits.
NOBODY 
CAN SUCCEED by themselves. Well, at least not with any significant venture that we’re talking about in the business world.
There are several ways to get support from others:
I hope you see why these methods become more powerful as you go down the list.
THIS IS THE CRAZY SEASON 
for consumers and the companies which serve them. We’re less than a month away from Christmas, and in the US we just had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a time for family and brotherly love.
Then, OMG, we totally obliterate that goodwill with the worst bout of consumerism this planet has ever seen. It’s getting worse every year.
ACOUPLE OF WEEKS AGO I talked about expanding the way you look at employee satisfaction. 
It turns out that similar concepts can be applied to your relationship with your customers and competition.
You can really get wrapped up in worrying about your competition. You sell hamburgers, I sell hamburgers, there’s five other places down the street who sell hamburgers. There’s only a limited number of people who want to BUY hamburgers on any particular day, so your mission is to steal those customers away from the competition.
I propose that this is the wrong way to look at it.
UNITE FOR LITERACY 
is a great organization that makes books available to children in the United States and around the globe. They provide no-cost reading material to emergent readers – both young kids and those learning a second or third language.
A great concept for a charitable non-profit, right? Sure. But these folks have a unique for-profit business model that’s part of an emerging trend in companies which do good while making money.
I had a chance to talk this week with Unite for Literacy’s CEO, Michael McGuffee. He, Mark Condon and Kurt Hoeven started this company a couple of years ago, based on 20 years of powerful experience working with families who live on Native American reservations. They saw firsthand what happens when kids lack a connection to written language, whether English or their mother tongue.
The Values-Based Business 