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Personal Development

Am I The Only One?

By Organizational Development, Personal Development

Are you the only pink flamingo in your work group? My friend Pete retired about a month ago from a thirty-five year career as a “wholesaler” in the financial services industry. He enjoyed his work, his colleagues, and most of all the end users of his offering – the financial advisors he served. His vocation offered a great living for he and his family and is now providing a very comfortable retirement life-style. I answered a phone call from him last week with a typical “hello”. My greeting was countered by hearty laughter on his end of the line, followed by,…

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#1 Reason You Need A Good Financial Advisor

By Personal Development No Comments

“The market is too high – get me out before it crashes!” This is what Rudy said to me when I answered his phone call on December 2, 1996.  Within an hour, I received the exact same message from Edwin.  Neither of these gentlemen knew each other, but it was as if they did. The S&P 500 Index closed that week at 757, up 25.1% from the previous 12 months and up a whopping 66.7% since the first week of December 1994.  Rudy and Edwin, both in their sixties, wanted to get out and take their profits, wait for the market…

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What’s My Line?

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Where do you draw your line? A few years back my wife noticed a persistent beeping noise coming from the garage.  Upon further investigation she realized that it was originating from the control panel of Buddy’s invisible fence.  Buddy was our family pet at the time, a high-energy yellow lab.  The beep is a warning signal that is transmitted whenever the electronic fence has been compromised.  When the boundary was broken, Buddy’s shock collar no longer worked, and he had the ability to escape the confines of his half-acre playground, without a sharp pain to his neck. But here’s the…

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Are You In The Drone Zone?

By Personal Development No Comments

Do you sometimes feel like the regulators are running your practice instead of you?  Like your business  lacks direction?  Trying to find purpose in your role as an Advisor?  If so, you may have entered the “drone zone.” Everybody knows what a drone is – a flying robot known as an “unmanned aerial vehicle.”  These flying machines got their name from the real drones – male honeybees. A few hundred drones live in a colony (hive) with about fifty thousand females called   worker bees and one queen bee.  Drones gather no nectar or pollen and have no stinger.  The…

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Suffering From Hurry Sickness?

By Personal Development No Comments

Do you find yourself with no time to think?  Running at an unsustainable pace?  Need a retreat?  You’re not alone! General Oliver P. Smith was a highly decorated combat veteran and Commander of the 1st Marine Division in the Korean War.  In November of 1950, he was given orders to go as fast as he could north to the Yalu River, the border of China and North Korea.  Rather than move at the pace commanded, he continuously slowed his division’s march to the point of near insubordination. But he didn’t just drag his feet.  All along the way he established…

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7 Ways Nick Saban and Mark Richt Can Help Your Career

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If you’re the head football coach of an NCAA Southeastern Conference (SEC) Football team, don’t expect much help with your career from Nick Saban. In fact, you should expect him to be a career saboteur. Just consider the fate of Mark Richt, who was fired three days ago after he fell short of benefactors expectations, finishing the year with 9 wins and 3 losses. In his 15 year run as head coach of the University of Georgia Bulldogs, he won 74% (145) of his 196 games. Not bad, but not good enough to keep his job. The two time SEC…

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2 Lunch Eaters That Will Destroy Your Effectiveness

By Personal Development No Comments

There’s 2 things that eat the lunch of successful people and sabotage effectiveness: Thing 1 – Time Thing 2 – Stress Thing 1 – Time. Who among us has not at one time or another attempted “time management”. The problem is that you can’t manage time – you can only manage your schedule. Time doesn’t stand still for anyone. Time is a non-replenishable commodity, unlike money. You can lose all your money and be down to your last dollar, but you can take that last dollar and invest it properly and turn it into fortunes. Time spent is time gone, whether…

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Need a Halftime Career Detox?

By Book Briefs, Personal Development

According to best-selling author Bob Buford, “halftime” is something all successful people will go through. But it’s not just a break in the action to rest and re-group for the second half of the same game. It’s more like a type of career detox, or midlife renewal for the second half. We’re not talking about a football game here. We’re talking about the game of life. Specifically, developing a new game plan for the rest of your life. In his book simply titled Halftime, Buford says, “After a successful first half, I needed a break to make some changes in how…

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How to Get Unstuck

By Book Briefs, Personal Development No Comments

What can you learn from a music major who’s first job out of college was that of a secretary for a retail brokerage firm in New York City; who went from there to being an investment banker, and on to become a top ranked equity analyst, to writing a children’s book, and then a blogger on work-life issues, to a hedge fund manager? You can learn how to disrupt yourself! You might say Whitney Johnson has taken an unconventional career path, or perhaps it might just be the normal path for knowledge workers in the twenty-first century. Johnson adapted the…

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Heroes Among Us – The 1000 Year Flood

By Organizational Development, Personal Development No Comments

It’s been heartwarming and humbling for me to witness the heroism of friends, neighbors and total strangers as a frontline participant to what many are referring to as the “The 1000 Year Flood”. To stand beside a neighbor that I barely know and hear him talk about rescuing two other neighbors neither he nor I knew, is surreal (see attached video).  These poor souls I’m referring to were clinging for their lives to the entrance of our subdivision gate after a surge from a local dam break released millions of gallons of water down-stream, immediately creating whitewater rapids that swept through parts of…

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