One-Armed Bandit

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For the past two weeks, I’ve had my arm in a sling. That’s because a week ago Thursday, I had rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder. Apparently, this is pretty significant stuff, and so for the month or two leading up to the event, I was focused on the surgery itself. Fortunately, all went well. But, as I soon learned, the procedure, at least from the patient’s perspective, is not the hard part – all I had to do was show up on time and go to sleep (insert your […] Click to read more…

Should You Speak For Free?

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My friend Steve is the lead singer in a terrific local cover band. They play at nearly every big event here and in surrounding towns, not to mention showing up regularly at nearby craft breweries, fundraisers, and the occasional high-end birthday party. I see him most Tuesday nights at our town’s dive bar, a regular occurrence for five or six of us that’s punctuated with beer and idiotic conversation. Sometimes, if he has an upcoming gig (it’s fun to say “gig”), Steve will share the set list with me. That’s when […] Click to read more…

Ice Ice Baby

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We were on vacation last week in Iceland, a country that has almost as many beautiful waterfalls as it does words containing silent consonants. It was, as you have no doubt heard or perhaps even experienced, spectacular. Like most visitors, we ran the table of available activities… …hiking on a glacier; horseback riding on the beach; bathing in a hot spring; pushing an unsuspecting sheep over the edge of a cliff (don’t write to me; I am kidding). All in all, a terrific week … although it was not what I expected. […] Click to read more…

Lessons From King Henry

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You know me, I don’t like to brag, but… I just conquered one of the most difficult challenges known to mankind. Peace in the Middle East? Harder. Cure for cancer? Please, you are not thinking big enough. No, my friend, what I did was successfully transition my family of five from one cell phone carrier to another. (Insert loud cheering noise here.) Not only that, but despite the fact that we live in four different states across the country, by the time the dust had settled, we each had new phones in our […] Click to read more…

Coffee Shop Marketing 

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Tell me if this sounds familiar… You’re sitting in a coffee shop with a friend or colleague who utters the following phrase: Can you recommend …  From there, it could be anything. … a tutor for my son? … a financial planner? … a facilitator for our offsite meeting? You close your eyes, give it some thought, and try to come up with the name of someone who might be a match. Congratulations, you have just lived an example of word of mouth. One person with a problem asks another person […] Click to read more…