Ability is Greater than Money

Ability is greater than money because it can be neither lost or stolen.  

If you study the lives of very successful people you will find that they rarely climb to the top of their business or profession and stay there without challenges.  They often climb to the top and falter several times during their careers but they know that the one thing that got them where they are, their ability, is always there to help them reach the top again.

Your ability is the one thing that you exclusively own; no one can ever take it from you.

The economy and business today continue to be challenging yet those of us with true ability to provide solutions will succeed.  Builder Consulting builds better websites, our unique ability is to place websites on search engines and build long term successful relationships with customers who become partners.

What is your unique ability that will help you succeed in good or bad times?

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
BuilderConsulting.com - Building Better Websites and Technology Solutions since 1995
913-814-8844 Offices

Rich Horwath: Deep Dive - Blog Business Success Radio

Listen to Wayne Hurlbert on Blog Talk Radio

President of the Strategic Thinking Institute and author of the innovative and groundbreaking book Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, Rich Horwath, describes how a lack of strategic thinking can destroy a company or a professional career. Learn the three most critical elements of strategic thinking and how to turn them into simple and practical skills. Discover how to become a strategic thinking manager and how to avoid the mistakes made by managers who lack a strategic outlook.

Rich Horwath is my internet radio show guest on Blog Business Success; hosted live on Blog Talk Radio.

The show airs live on Tuesday, December 1, at 8:00 pm Eastern Time; 5:00 pm Pacific Time.

President of the Strategic Thinking Institute and author of the innovative and groundbreaking book Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, Rich Horwath, describes how a lack of strategic thinking can destroy a company or a professional career. You will learn:

* What strategic thinking means and why it's critical to business success

* How to add the skills of strategic thinking to your employees

* Why companies fall behind the competition and often go bankrupt

* Why strategic thinking organizations are leaders in any economy

Rich Horwath (photo left) is the author of the best-selling book on strategic thinking, Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, which has been described by the Director of Worldwide Operations for McDonalds as "...the most valuable book ever written on strategic thinking." He is a national television thought-leader on strategy, having appeared on NBC, WGN, FOX and the Chicago Tonight Show to discuss the strategic aspect of current issues.

He is the founder and president of the Strategic Thinking Institute, a former chief strategy officer, and professor of strategy at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management. He is the author of four books and more than fifty articles on strategic thinking and has been profiled in business publications around the world, including Investor's Business Daily. He was ranked the #1 speaker on strategy by the Society for Healthcare Strategy.

Rich Horwath blogs at Strategy Espresso.

My book review of Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action by Rich Horwath.

Listen live on Tuesday at 8:00 pm Eastern, 5:00 pm Pacific time.

If you miss this very informative show, it will be available for free download as a podcast for iPod, iTunes, and MP3 players; or play it right on your computer. To download this, or any other of my guest interviews, go to the Blog Business Success host page and click on Archived Segments. Once there, click on the podcast icon at the end of the episode description, to download the show free of charge for your listening enjoyment. You can also subscribe to the show feed.

To call in questions for my guest, the number is: (347) 996-5832

Let's talk with President of the Strategic Thinking Institute and author of the innovative and groundbreaking book Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, Rich Horwath, as he describes how a lack of strategic thinking can destroy a company or a professional career. Learn the three most critical elements of strategic thinking and how to turn them into simple and practical skills. Discover how to become a strategic thinking manager and how to avoid the mistakes made by managers who lack a strategic outlook on Blog Business Success Radio.

Tags: Deep Dive: The Proven Method for Building Strategy, Focusing Your Resources, and Taking Smart Action, Rich Horwath, management strategic thinking, Blog Business Success, Blog Talk Radio.

Cuban Bloggers Count

Prominent dissident Cuban blogger, Yoani Sanchez (pictured), got herself into a little trouble lately for telling the truth (criticizing?) about the Cuban government but what struck me is how strong and resilient she is.

And her blog entries (she won a top journalism prize from Columbia University but was barred by the Cuban government from traveling to New York to accept the award) are pretty powerful too.

Take a visit to where she blogs at: Mediaite. Ain't no stopping Yoani.

Amazing Autumn

"Delicious autumn (Chicago photo)! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." ~ George Eliot

Have a bountiful weekend.

Posted by: Laurel Delaney, The Global Small Business Blog

Happy Thanksgiving From The Global Small Business Blog

Thank you for your readership and comments. Without you, this blog would not be possible.

Have a great Thanksgiving (United States).

The origins of Thanksgiving can be found here. The famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is here. And if you ran out of ideas on what to cook, go here!

Enjoy.

Manufacturing Journalist TR Cutler Looks at Ei Dynamics for AutomationMedia.com

Ranked as the nation’s leading manufacturing journalist and a contributing editor for more than 300 publications annually, TR Cutler, Inc. President & CEO Thomas R. Cutler, (www.trcutlerinc.com) has been writing extensively about manufacturing for more than ten years.  According to Cutler, “The dynamic stories of manufacturers create a bounty of interesting and important business strategies.” Cutler is a proud member of the Society of Professional Journalists, Online News Association, and American Society of Business Publication editors.  Beyond Reports: Two Firms Find Ei Dynamics’ Lean Solution is a feature article authored by Cutler for AutomationMedia.com.

   1. Ei Dynamics' CTO (Chief Technology Officer) Robert Virga noted that, “Companies use our Dynamic Alerts as a business monitoring and alerting system because it’s designed to intelligently monitor data across an entire enterprise regardless of database or system.” Dynamic Alerts constantly monitors data based on straightforward user defined business rules and sends out notifications via email or text message whenever a rule is triggered. “With Dynamic Alerts deadlines are never missed and unexpected surprises are reduced or eliminated,” suggested Virga.   Dynamic Reports is a report automation solution that incorporates Dynamic Alerts to allow companies to intelligently schedule, generate, and distribute common enterprise reports. Dynamic Reports powerful reporting engine dynamically generates standard industry reports such as Crystal reports and SQL Reporting Services reports, RTF documents and any webpage or web based report. Dynamic Reports also provides companies a powerful query engine; this functionality provides the flexibility to analyze almost any data and take action based on user defined criteria. The fact that Dynamic Reports uses ODBC and OLEDB to communicate with data makes it useful to almost every company and virtually every data driven system.

About TR Cutler, Inc.:

TR Cutler, Inc. was founded by Thomas R. Cutler a decade ago. Cutler maintains extraordinary relationships with clients, journalists, editors, trendsetters, and key business leaders worldwide and has become a key resource for those writing about the manufacturing sector. Cutler founded the Manufacturing Media Consortium™ in the 1999. This extraordinary group of more than 3500 journalists worldwide is writing about trends, data, case studies, profiles, and features in the manufacturing and industrial sector. Cutler has worked with thousands of media outlets to expand manufacturing media coverage.

Cutler has authored more than 2,000 articles for a wide range of manufacturing periodicals, industrial publications, and business journals including most of the leading monthly trade publications.

By Articles Directory

Guiding Principles of World Entrepreneurship Forum

On my way to the World Entrepreneurship Forum in Lyon, France (November 18-21) and our 2009 main topic is:

How can governments, at all levels, support the development of entrepreneurship?

We will also review the nine (9) recommendations we proposed during our 2008 Forum, aimed at enabling and fostering the development of the various forms of entrepreneurship. They are as follows:

World Entrepreneurship Forum Guiding Principles

1. Reform Regulations

To promote a truly entrepreneurship-centered business climate, reform tax and regulatory environments so as to make it easier, faster, and less costly for entrepreneurs to set up enterprises, grow them if they are successful, or close them if not; minimize the time they spend on licenses, tax procedures, litigation and other similar activities.

2. Create New “Entrepreneur-Friendly” Institutions

Introduce new-style entrepreneurship-friendly support institutions that provide technological knowledge, market information, business know-how, certification services, access to capital, and other essential business support.

3. Promote Proper Governance

Set forth a governance framework which unambiguously encourages risk-taking, while also ensuring that ethics lapses, corruption, and neglect of environmental sustainability carry a high cost to reputation.

4. Foster Positive Entrepreneurial Attitudes

Foster a cultural context where entrepreneurship has a positive image and where entrepreneurial success is publicly celebrated.

5. Create an Early Education Entrepreneurial Curricula

Include within schools a curricula that promotes the development of the skills and attitudes that are the hallmark of entrepreneurship, such as: Creating a vision, perseverance, creativity, spotting needs, empathy, leadership, dealing with ambiguity, risk-taking, and follow-through.

6. Develop Young Adult Entrepreneurial Curricula

Include within an education curricula practical elements of entrepreneurship and business development so as to increase the entrepreneurial IQ within the community.

7. Promote Lifelong Entrepreneurial Education

Provide entrepreneurs lifelong learning and development platforms for sharing of experience and best practices, coaching and mentoring, mutual support, and international networking, with the strong support of key stakeholders from business and civil society.

8. Empower Entrepreneurial Women, Minorities and the Disadvantaged

Support programs must also specifically target women, minorities, and the disadvantaged. Further, governments should implement laws and policies that ensure that entrepreneurs are sensitive to gender empowerment as well as diversity promotion.

9. Understand Entrepreneurship

Make it known that entrepreneurs are positive agents of social change, wealth creation, transparency, sustainability, and innovation.

Formal Guiding Principles can be found here.

I hope to have a chance to report out to you while in France but if I get too busy, which is very likely, I will wait until after I return to provide you with key takeaways. However, in the meantime, catch a LIVE broadcast of key moments here (http://www.world-entrepreneurship-forum.com).

By the way ... here's why I am a member of the World Entrepreneurship Forum.

Photo: World Entrepreneurship Forum -- members in 2008.

Who is Responsible for Your Reputation?

Commercials, magazine articles, and billboards are all crafted for a single purpose – to present a company or product to the rest of the world. But, who and what are responsible for doing so? The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) may have some involvement but the grueling task falls solely on a company’s public relations department.

The main objective of the public relations department is to better develop a company’s reputation. They must display a message to consumers in the best light possible. Since the business world is so competitive, it is their duty to deliver information that is both interesting and appealing. Rather their marketing efforts are made through radio, TV, or magazine, every aspect should be developed to the best of its ability.

The staff that works within a public relations (also known as PR) department must be very skilled publicists. It is their duty to make sure a company keeps a praiseworthy reputation. Once a message has reached the public, they provide the necessary feedback to the business. Feedback is usually both negative and positive.

Publicists must possess certain talents in order to succeed in the marketing world. Keeping a high level of written, communication, and verbal skills is very important. Multi-tasking is also essential. To better understand the advertising work, many suggest having some type of media background or training.

The public relations department must be able to work well under pressure. Dealing with the public is not easy, so they should know how to cope with an enormous amount of questions. They must be able to handle criticism well by turning it around in order to guard the business’s reputation.

Businesses should make sure they select individuals who are able to fully present their image. Your reputation should be their number one priority above anything else.