Category Archives: Leadership

A Divorcee, a Dentist and a Marketing Wonk Walk Into a Bar*

Don’t you just love stock images?

True story: One man marries and divorces 6 wives in 10 years.

True story: A woman tells 7 different dentists over 5 years that none of them know how to make good dentures.

True story: A business owner hires 5 marketing consultants in 7 years, yet the business continues to decline.

Question: What do the man, the woman, and the business owner have in common?

Are they unlucky in love, periodontal disease and commerce?

Or, are they willingly unwilling to find success?

The man in the first story is a terrible husband.

The woman in the second story is a lousy patient.

The business owner in the third story….well, you get the picure.

Moral: As you navigate the stormy waters of life, spend some time in self-examination. Failure isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can learn from it and apply what you’ve learned in the future.

The Flip Side

Question: What do the 6 wives, 7 dentists and 5 marketing consultants have in common?

Each of them likely ignored many warning signs that they were about to be engaged by an asshole.

Moral: As you strive for love and success, find a way to steer clear of people who refuse to be happy. This often involves trusting your gut feelings as well as your closest advisors. Sometimes that’s hard to do.

*In Ad-Writing 101 we learn that the purpose of the headline is to get you to read the next line. Did it work?

BrandingBlog Radio: Ari Meisel of LessDoing.com

This week I got to spend about a half hour interviewing Ari Meisel. We connected a couple weeks ago when I found his “Less Doing” productivity blog and he asked me to be a guest on his podcast to discuss Shortcut Blogging and how we are making it easier for CEOs to blog.

I was fascinated with his approach to productivity and how it sprang from his battle with Crohn’s disease. His victory over his disease and how he approached the battle is the basis of Ari Meisel’s TEDx talk from May, 2011.

In this podcast, Ari tells his story and shares some of his favorite and most effective productivity tools. He is an advocate of doing away with your To Do List and using systems that simply make your tasks appear at the moment you need to work on them. He is also a big advocate of using virtual assistants to take your focus off of your more mundane tasks. Pretty cool stuff.

All of the links we mentioned can be found on Ari’s site in the description of his Achievement Architecture coaching program.

I really like his approach and enjoyed talking about all of these geeky tools with him.

BrandingBlog Radio: Shawn Phillips of Full Strength

Confession: I never feel more out of my element than when I’m hanging out with athletes.

I met Shawn Phillips a few years ago and have slowly gotten to know him a bit in the last 6 months. I’m one of those “unfit” clueless people who never heard of his brother Bill’s book “Body for Life” back when it was changing the world. I managed to be totally clueless while they grew their EAS supplement company and sold it. I

Yep, that was me, sitting on my ass watching TV while Shawn was changing the shape of the world.

So, why am I interviewing Shawn? Hey, it’s never too late to start paying attention to getting stronger and eating better and growing older with a bit of grace. Is it?

It’s an admittedly awkward interview on my part. It’s half confession, half therapy session.

Shawn’s passion is men’s health in those “middle” years. We’re not young guys any more and we’re not old-timers.

I like his idea of sustainable fitness. I like his Full Strength protein shakes. I like Shawn’s passion for education and his concern for the state of men’s health.

Here’s a chart from his book, Strength For Life, that will help you understand the phases of fitness that he and I discussed. I hope you enjoy the interview.