Jeffrey Gitomer

FRESH BREW FOR YOUR BRAIN
by: Jeffrey Gitomer

Don’t just thank. Remember the lessons and stories.

It’s likely you will be with family over the holidays.

Great times. Reunions. Happiness. Tears of sadness and joy. Great food. Gifts. People you love. People you kind of love. And did I mention great food?  Most people (not you of course) celebrate by adding to their waistline during these times. But I’m going to share a major strategy that will fatten your wallet.

Whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas, families will gather and talk about old times. Growing up, vacations, past holidays. They all start out, “Remember the time that…” and they go on to tell a funny or poignant story. THESE STORIES ARE GOLD.   In your presentations and informal meetings, telling and exchanging stories are at the core of rapport, relationship building, and creating a buying atmosphere.                                                                                                                                                                                       

Now that I have whet your holiday appetite, let me give you the strategies and details of story collecting.  More..

I admit it.  With my passion for business and affinity for capitalism, I should know a lot more about Ayn Rand than I already do.  At the least, I should have read her books by now but alas I have not.  This article published in Inc. Magazine is getting me closer to understanding the author before I’ve opened her books.  Whether you are a Rand devotee or a newcomer to her work, this article will interest you as well.

The Real Ayn Rand

By Leigh Buchanan |  Nov 1, 2009

A groundbreaking new biography paints a surprising — and surprisingly lurid — picture of the writer and thinker.

LOVE AND WAR In 1947, Rand testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (left and right) about pro-Russian sentiment in Hollywood movies

Ayn Rand was capitalism’s Helen of Troy: the brain that launched a thousand wild ambitions. A Russian Jew forced to flee her home of St. Petersburg in the wake othe Bolshevik revolution, Rand immigrated to a United States erupting in skyscrapers and highways and championed a new philosophy with man at its center and rationality, work, and self-interest as its principles. Novels like The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957) set millions of feet marching to the beats of different drummers. If readers sometimes came for the volcanic sex scenes, they stayed for the titanic vision of individual achievement.  More..

Jeffrey Gitomer

I tweet,
therefore I am.
Who am you?

I resisted as long as I could – partially because my understanding of it was somewhere around zero, and partly – okay mostly, because I thought it was going to be a waste of my time.

I was wrong. Way wrong. Way, way wrong.

After a brief, but intensive education by my friend Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?, and continued prodding by Kadro Solutions CEO Rick Johnson, I completely changed by opinion. And made a plan of action.

I registered. I obtained my name (Gitomer). And I tweeted three times in the first 24 hours. At the end of the first day I had more than 300 followers. At the end of the first month I have almost 5,000 followers. At the end one year I hope to have 100,000 followers.

And I’m doing it without gimmicks, spam, or reporting news (other than mine). I have a Twitter strategy and philosophy.  More..

Jeffrey Gitomer

What’s so social about social media? How social are you?
It started like a small bunch of burning leaves. A little MySpace here and there – a blog or two. And then the wind picked up. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. Growing from a windstorm to a firestorm, social media is a tornado running wild over the Internet plains.

How social are you? How serious are you about social media? 

REALITY: You can’t ignore it. Hundreds of millions of people are involved so far, and it’s just a few years old.   More..

DIGITAL INDSUTRIALISTS Derek Elley (left) and David ten Have, founders of Ponoko, in their hometown of Wellington, New Zealand

THE FUTURE OF MANUFACTURING

by Max Chafkin (of Inc. Magazine)

It’s easy to mistake the laser cutter that sits in the Ponoko headquarters for an ordinary office appliance.

“It’s basically a big-ass printer,” says Ponoko’s CEO, David ten Have. “But it gives you an idea of where things are headed.”  MORE..