My hindsight can be your foresight
Links to interesting personal finance blogs that I like and follow.
I have this printed out and sitting on my desk to remind myself about these ten essentials basic actions. Everything else seems to fall into place when one works on the basics. Skipping over the basics drags the process of learning and implementation at the expense of long-term follow-through. Many of these are referenced in “The Leader List” from an earlier post. Go back to it and see if you can find them in that blog.
Simon Sinek is my current favorite leadership teacher. He takes leadership and human motivation and puts them in incredibly simple terms. Most can identify with his style. He states out loud what I have been thinking for years but could never articulate the message the way he does. In the spirit of leadership, I have begun to compile a list of skills that we all will eventually master at various levels. These are the basics of my career management that I picked up along the way. They are in no particular order or priority. Continue reading “The Top 10 Skills You Will Master”
What’s the difference between a “Shortcut” and a “Hack”? It was not clear to me, so I decided to write this piece based on the image above that came from Lifehack.org.
I’ll take a stab at differentiating the two.
To me, a Hack is related to a soft skill and a shortcut is something I took when walking home from school by cutting through a couple of neighbor’s yards to get home faster.
There is no shortage of hacks/shortcuts and everybody loves a shortcut. Once you find and used a shortcut regularly, 80% of the time you don’t even realize that you are using it. Over time, a shortcut becomes your normal routine. Continue reading “Every Hack You Need Located In One Place”
In my favorite blog to date, I wrote a story about the Leaders that influenced my development over forty years. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the death of Elvis Presley. Continue reading “Where Were You on August 16, 1977?”
Often times you might find yourself sitting in traffic on the highway stopped, just stopped, on the road that should be flowing steadily at 60+ mph. The stop-and-go process ensues. A few miles into it, the brake & gas foot/ankle exercise, you come upon what it might be. Usually, it’s the aftermath of a fender bender that has moved to the side of the road or a trooper with lights flashing giving a driver a “safety citation” to redeem in court at a future time. After that, things open up and traffic flows as usual. For me, as I mash down on the gas pedal and let all eight cylinders light up, and let the Challenger run free for a bit, I wonder why the hell people have to slow down and “rubberneck” the scene when in fact there is nothing left to see. A few events are happening in some linear order that created this mess in the first place. Continue reading “7 Easy Steps To Move Your Comfort Zone”
When I started my technical sales career at Pharmacia Biotech, the sales department had a well-planned sales and product training program that to this day remains my gold standard of training. It consisted of a comprehensive course: two weeks at headquarters for sales/marketing product lectures, hands-on product training, and Professional Selling Skills training. After the second week, the trainers sent you into your territory with your manager for two weeks applying everything that you just learned. After that, back to HQ to focus on different product areas and more selling skills for another two full weeks and then back into your territory. This cycle repeated for over four months and the team selling/coaching sessions with your manager lasted another three or four months after. During this period, it was also expected that you continue with your self-study on the products and your customer’s business. On top of that, you were required to hit your monthly sales targets and complete your admin duties consistently. It did get a lot easier once you mastered the product line, and your customers, and learned what’s important to manage your manager. (See the 80/20 rule.) This methodology of constant and never-ending improvement became part of a very healthy corporate culture and a team driven to lead the market in best-in-class products, technical sales, and customer satisfaction. The lifelong skill that this method taught me is not only learning new skills and how to apply newly developed skills. Knowing is not enough, one must apply. Continue reading “The Five Books You Must Read”
According to the Pareto Principle, 20% of all activities produce 80% of all results. To put it in another way, people tend to expend 80% of their efforts on activities that have minimal effects on the results. The Pareto Principle can be validated by looking at many of your past successes that you are most proud of. In hindsight, it seemed so easy because we focused on the right or the best 20% of the activities, whether it was expertise, guidance or sheer luck on how things fell into place. People who are focused on activities that produce results are those who have created goals and plans and follow these plans while making minor adjustments to them. Who has time for goals? We’ll get back to that in a minute. Here’s another question: Who even has the time to read all of the content that lands in your feed? Believe it or not, you are utilizing the 80/20 rule as you purposely filter things out. We tend to filter out 80% of the online content that requires thought, learning, or reflection and head right to the 20% that the reader finds entertaining. If it was a choice between entertainment or learning and applying a new skill, most people go right for the entertainment. Continue reading “20 Rules That You Should Follow 80% of the Time”
Price vs Cost Re-imagined
Very interesting article. Wake up, folks!
Out-of-pocket expense for a daily “required” and a luxurious cup of coffee for a person is about $1,000.00 per year for high-end coffee. That’s two plane tickets for a vacation or funding a Roth IRA.
For a field-based team, my cost center could take an annual hit of $10,000.00… For Coffee!!. If one adds up all of the field people expensing a daily coffee run to their favorite Barista, it could add up to the value of one headcount during budget time. I could use that headcount to increase customer satisfaction and grow my company’s business.
Not there’s nothing wrong with spending $4.00+ every day on a coffee brand that you love, it’s merely an observation.
Is Anyone Out There?
I started posting content on LinkedIn®/Twitter® as a way to learn more about social media methods in general.
During the past nine months, my postings and updates were consistent, and learned a few things that may not be obvious to the casual user. Did you know the items that are “published” on LinkedIn® are discoverable during a Google/Yahoo search and the “updates” are not? Neither did I until last week.
Here’s how I spent some morning coffee time “sharpening my saw” and sharing a few thought-provoking ideas. Continue reading “Is Anyone Out There?”