Category Archives: Motivation/Inspiration

Determine Who And What You Are Regardless Of Others

May I talk about myself as a leadership trainer and mentor for a minute?

Those of you who know me know that I write a blog on the subject of leadership and other things I believe are associated with leadership. I’ve been writing that blog for since 2005, and I’m getting close to 1,400 articles there. I’ve written two books on the subject of leadership, and I’ve spoken in 9 states, 8 of them on the subject of leadership, though sometimes mixed with another subject.

hustle-till-asked-if-hiring

Susan Ackeridge via Compfight

Anyway, three different things happened this week, all in the space of 48 hours. The first one is the last one. Someone reached out to me on LinkedIn to announce a new list highlighting top people who write about leadership. The message wasn’t necessarily something I was expecting:
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The Bowling Tournament In Maine

Let me share a story with you. When I was a kid, I lived on an Air Force base in Limestone, Maine. People used to ask who my dad made mad enough to send us that far up, but so be it.

I used to bowl in Saturday morning leagues, and I wasn’t bad as a kid. One year, a group of us decided we wanted to go to this state tournament for kids our age; I have no idea where it was at this point, but I wish I could remember it. Anyway, we left with our chaperone on a Friday, headed to this particular town somewhere in Northern Maine, south of where we were already living. I knew things were going to be somewhat different as soon as we went into the hotel.
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What Do You View As Failure?

There are a lot of articles and videos on the topic of “failure”. They tell stories of people who have, in their words, failed multiple times, only to get back up and try again. Sometimes they succeed at what they were trying to do; other times they discovered something else useful out of all the other failures they had to work through.

This concept of “failure” is a tough one for me to deal with because of its strong negative connotations. I don’t like the word in general, which is why I wrote on my other blog years ago that I prefer experimented instead. While motivational and sales training types try to turn the word “failure” into something that helps you become better, I find that having words like that lingering too long in one’s mind is more depressing than encouraging.
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You Can’t Just Be “Comfortable”

Years ago I wrote an article asking Why Is Everyone Busting On A-Listers. At that time it seemed that many people kind of missed my point. That was okay because some people thought I’d missed their point. I’m going to take that on first.


by Jeremy Eades via Flickr

I didn’t miss the point about A-listers and how many of them don’t respond to comments on their blogs anymore. I get it, and I don’t like it anymore than they did. No matter how big someone gets, I feel they should respond to at least some of the people who comment on their blogs. As most of you know, I’m big on bloggers not only approving comments when they’re moderating but also commenting on them, and it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re A-listers. I’ll give those who receive lots of comments a break because, truthfully, some comments are pretty lousy, but many of them deserve to be responded to.
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Wasting Time? Maybe Not…

I used to be really productive. I had periods where I could write upwards of 10 articles a day. Once I wrote 19 articles in one day; short articles but all on different topics. Part of that explains why the first 3 years of this blog saw me writing 300 articles a year. It’s taken me 9 years to write the other 900; isn’t that a shame?


I wasn’t only writing at the time. I had a blog commenting regiment where I made sure to comment on at least 10 blogs a day, including weekends. It was part of my marketing and publicity strategy; it worked wonders.
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