I like it when people agree with me. I think most of us do. It’s hard not to enjoy hearing that others think our ideas, attitudes, and beliefs are right. In fact, I’m sure the world would be a much simpler place if everyone just agreed with every single thing I ever did or said. …
A few days before Christmas, I felt rather stressed and frustrated. Hardly a shocking statement, since most of us feel that way at least once during the holidays. My reasons were for feeling stressed and frustrated were not unique – I was trying to finish up shopping, tie up various loose ends with work, figure…
Every meeting planner knows that keynote speaker fees are all over the place. They can range from literally free to six-figure sums. This article is intended to help meeting planners understand the keynote fee structure in order to find the right speaker for your next event. There are five fee tiers every meeting planner should…
Sometimes when I’m stressed I like to go down into my basement and play the drums. I’ve been playing them since I was 10, and one of the things I’ve always liked about them is that you can hit them as hard as you want. You’re supposed to hit them, in fact – that’s the…
I figured a title like that might pique your interest. Most of us want to figure out how to get what we really want out of life. And don’t worry – I actually do know how to make that happen for you, even if I have no idea what exactly you want out of life. …
Over the years I’ve developed several different keynote presentations on a variety of topics. And over the years, those presentations have changed and evolved so much that the current versions look very different from the original versions. But one piece of information that has remained consistent in my “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant” leadership presentation involves…
Sometimes life doesn’t turn out the way we expect it to. At least, that’s the phrase we use, which is at least a little dramatic. Life? Like, all of it, the entirety of our existence, just somehow went entirely the opposite direction from what we wanted? That’s probably not the case. What’s actually happening is…
A couple months ago I wrote an article about how to avoid allowing a mistake to challenge your sense of self-worth. This month, though, I realized I left something out of that conversation. It focused on the personal benefit of learning to accept that mistakes are a natural part of the learning process. This month,…
The April 2025 issue of National Geographic featured an awards show of sorts – 33 individuals around the world whose work (at least according to National Geographic) is improving the world in some way. Many of them, as you might imagine, are doing things related to the environment. Several, however, were businesspeople, and two in…
I recently had a conversation with my 8-year-old son about how to deal with failure – and then had an almost identical conversation with a 37-year-old friend about the same thing. It made me realize that, for many of us, our attitude toward failure doesn’t change much as we get older – we don’t like…