We’re one day early with this week’s Thought for the Weekend because we wanted to wish you a very happy Halloween! When our team decided on this Halloween-themed disco anthem, it seemed only appropriate to turn the show over to the “ghouls” who keep our team strong (and, yes, thankfully they all learned how to get along!) And now they’re back…from outer space…Okay. I’m going to stop before I get carried away. Meanwhile, click on the picture below to watch our Halloween video. You’ll see a couple of new faces, team members we will
Read more →Blog
After putting 1400 miles on the road for business travel and working a busy week last week, I announced that on Sunday I intended to remain in my pajamas, sprawl out on the couch, and spend the day as a true “Couch Potato.” I told my husband that if he knew what was good for him, he’d forget any notions of being a “stud” and join me on the sofa as a “spud”. As for the children, I asked them to be well-behaved little tater tots, and warned them not to invite friends over
Read more →Recent forecasts from Cisco Systems suggest that the number of online video consumers will double to 1.5 billion by 2015, and that total online video consumption will quadruple. No business can afford to neglect video as an educational and marketing tool. Video allows businesses to create and share remarkable content with their audience in a way that plain text will never match. As an industry, there is a lot of untapped potential here. A few quick questions to a search engine illustrate the point perfectly: Google the following questions, and here’s what you get:
Read more →Last week I was on the road, traveling for business, and today, I’m traveling again while my hubby holds down the fort at home. This meant that over the weekend, I had to go grocery shopping. Sending my husband, Dale, would have been too dangerous. Humorist Jeanne Robertson has it right. She has a hilarious 5-minute bit on YouTube called “Don’t Send a Man to the Grocery Store!” Dale doesn’t grocery shop. He makes lots of trips to the grocery store, but this involves going in for a missing ingredient or two needed for
Read more →At the suggestion of a colleague in my broker mastermind group, I just started reading a book called Power Questions. You know a book is going to be thought-provoking when the opening quote makes you stop and think. The quote is from Albert Einstein, the Nobel Prize winning scientist who is considered by many to be the greatest mind of the 20th century. He said: “I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” Einstein often insisted that it was character, rather than gray matter, that set him apart from his peers. Take
Read more →We’ve heard the cliché a million times: “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. But let’s be honest: we do it all the time. At least, I do. Last week, I had a great reminder that I shouldn’t be so quick to jump to conclusions: Every Thursday night, my husband and I play in a pool league. We’re on a great team and we always have a wonderful time together. But last week, we were scheduled to play in a location 45 minutes away. A location where we had never played before. And, a
Read more →
Many Thought for the Weekend readers are extraordinary people. I’d like to introduce you to one: Pete. We first “met” when Pete sent me an email that began: “Hi Bob, You have been sending your messages to one of our crew members for some time now. He shares them with me from time to time and I really do like your thoughts. Please add my e-mail address to your mailing list…” I was honored that Pete then told me about his passion for cycling and asked my advice on how I might approach fundraising
Read more →Want to know what isn’t funny? Alegebra homework. My son is taking (and struggling with) algebra this year, and I’ve been trying to help him with his homework. Al-gebra. It sounds like a terrorist network, and for good reason. Variables and constants are truly weapons of math destruction. My son, who was good at math “before they had to go mixing the alphabet in it” keeps asking me why he has to learn this stuff. The only thing I can come up with is: “Algebra will be important to you later in life because
Read more →Press 1 if you’ve ever been trapped in phone-system hell when calling the customer-service line of a bank, cell phone company, credit card company or (ahem) government agency: “Your call is very important to us. So important that this automated attendant will help navigate you through our system. If you are calling to compliment us, press 1; if you want to spend money with us, press 2; if you want to pay your bill, press 3; if you have some other need, press 4. To continue, please enter your account number followed by the
Read more →The research isn’t promising. One study says we spend ten minutes every day rummaging for lost items from books to phones to car keys and even the cars themselves. Another claims we lose up to nine items every day, or 198,743 in a lifetime. I once lost a set of keys in my house. I found them three years later as we were packing to move to a new house. Twice, I’ve bought Christmas cards on clearance after the holiday season, and put them in a “special place” for the following year. Both years,
Read more →
