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03 February 2009, 00:43
Seeds of greatness exist within each of us by Robert Stuberg
Your growth as a leader starts right now, wherever you are at this very moment. You don’t have to be president of a billion-dollar company to be a leader. You can begin with your present relationships, your family and friends, your community associations, your school or your place of work. Developing your leadership skills can prepare you for larger challenges in the future.
If I were to ask you to think of leaders you admired and those who had an influence on your life, who would come to mind? How about your parents or a particular teacher or coach who had a significant influence on you? Or maybe a mentor at work?
For most of us, leadership is a day-today matter of how we strive to do our best, as well as how we get others to do their very best. Leadership involves our responsibilities at work, in the community, at church or in our families.
Great leaders are often all around us. Very often, it is people closest to us who are doing great deeds with little means. The seeds of greatness exist in any of us who strive to lead, even in the most modest undertakings.
It’s quite possible that, until now, you haven’t really considered yourself a leader of any kind. Whether or not that’s so, you may be surprised to learn just how many ways you, indeed, are a leader, especially to those closest to you. You could be a leader to a group or maybe only one or two people. It could be in your work, in a special interest you have or perhaps the quality of a relationship you have with someone, such as your children or loved ones. There are people around you looking up to you, believing in you as a role model and as a leader.
Believe me when I say you are already a leader in ways you may not be fully aware. Never underestimate the influence you have on the lives of others.
"The ability we have to make our world better starts with how we live our life."
You can read more there http://www.successmagazine.com/Developing-Everyday-Leadership/PARAMS/article/527/channel/210
Or you can wait, i'll bring to you.
ENJOY!
Sincerely,
Margarita Nomeikiene
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27 January 2009, 00:15
Success Stories - Adam Slutsky
Rare and fortunate is the entrepreneur who is so successful that his very first business is not only parodied on network television, but the joke goes on to become something of a national phenomenon. But that is exactly what happened to Adam Slutsky not long after he started his first business at the ripe, old age of 25.
It was back in the '90s, the seventh season of Seinfeld, and Kramer gets a new phone number. People begin dialing it by accident, thinking it is Slutsy's business, and so Kramer finally decides to go with it.
Answering his phone: Hello, and welcome to Moviefone. If you know the name of the movie you would like to see, press 1.
Indeed, Adam Slutsky's first entrepreneurial venture was a little business called Moviefone, which he eventually sold to AOL at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999. Selling price? A cool half-billion dollars. Those were the days!
That Slutsky has created not one, but two businesses that routinely gross more than $100 million a year really should be no surprise. He caught the entrepreneurial bug early and has run with it ever since.
Back in college, at Cornell, he started out selling T-shirts to make some extra money, and by the time he got to Columbia Business School, he knew that entrepreneurship was for him, even if all of his classmates were s et on conquering Wall Street.
It was not long after he graduated and started working that the chance to pitch some business ideas to a group of investors presented itself. Moviefone was but one of 10 ideas Slutsky suggested. The immediate challenge with Moviefone is one familiar to any entrepreneur: You may have a cool idea, but how in the heck are you going to make money off of it? "It's all in the execution," Slutsky says.
Eventually, he and his partners decided on a short, 15-second ad at the beginning of the phone call, hoping it would be unobtrusive enough that people would hang on to get the info they wanted about the movie they wanted to see. Good thinking, that.
It turned out the embedded ads had a direct result on how many people went to see a movie; movies that were promoted in the ads showed a consistent 20 percent increase in business.
With results like that, Moviefone was able to expand to 30 markets fairly quickly, and then make the leap to the Web in late '94. In fact, Slutsky says, "Moviefone made history in another way once we went online. We sold the first-ever online, e-commerce ticket, for a movie in Los Angeles in 1995."
Within a few years, near the height of the Internet boom, Slutsky says, "Companies began to pay extraordinary sums for dot-com businesses that didn't even have a viable revenue model." (Think Pets.com) "So what Moviefone offered was actually unique and valuable at that time: An online business that not only made sense, but made money."
Not surprisingly then, a bidding war ensued for Moviefone, with AOL winning. As part of the deal, Slutsky went to work for AOL, but not long thereafter, AOL famously and disastrously merged with Time Warner, and the entrepreneur knew it was time to move on. Corporate gigs are not his bag.
After taking some time off, Slutsky's entrepreneurial bug-bite began to itch again. Fortunately, he could afford to be picky about his next venture.
He decided there were three criteria he wanted in his next business, and notes that entrepreneurs could use these principles when analyzing their own opportunities and options:
1. The business had to have a smart, viable business model that generated sufficient income. "Remember," he says, "this was a time [2000] when lots of Internet businesses had no viable business model at all." Slutsky was looking for a fairly new business that generated at least $20 million a year. "You need enough money to make the business grow," he notes.
2. The business needed to have a strong convenience value for the customer. Slutsky is a big believer that people will pay for convenience. "That's what Moviefone offered —convenience."
3. The management team had to believe in marketing. "With tech companies especially," he says, "stakeholders tend to believe in the technology above all else. But I know that in order to grow, sales and marketing are vital."
All of this led Slutsky to a company called Mimeo.com. "Mimeo offered a strong convenience and value proposition: online printing and overnight delivery." In the old world, Slutsky explains, "People would go to their local copy shop, make copies and then overnight them. In this digital age, that is terribly inefficient."
Mimeo allows customers to go online, create on-demand documents, print them and then distribute them anywhere—all from the convenience of their desks.
Slutsky clearly is onto another winner, with Mimeo revenue now topping $100 million, and the number of employees totaling more than 500.
There is no telling what Act III will look like for the entrepreneur, but if past is prologue, a few things are certain: Whatever he does, Adam Slutsky will be innovating, leading and making things more convenient.
And this entrepreneur won't be copying anything.
From http://www.successmagazine.com
Enjoy!
Margarita Nomeikiene
Content
17 January 2009, 14:47
Techniques to Finding Happiness from Burt Goldman
Hi friends.
I thought it would be nice to share with you something I received in my email inbox not too long ago from Gerald O’Donnell.
Christmas has passed. The New Year celebrations are over, and now it’s January and a new start. So, given our current context, I think you’ll find the following beneficial. Here it is.
Awareness Exercises to help you “surf” and stay smiling through the end of one era of time and the beginning of a new one.
The next three exercises are intended to be done at home on a daily and ongoing basis. They will open up a new level of awareness and prepare you for advanced personal and spiritual development.
Exercise 1: A New Way of Being
This first exercise is a pleasurable and powerful life-changing tool. The effects of daily stress associated with materialistic obsession (and its by-products: anxiety, isolation, frustration, fear, anger and depression) can be dissolved by this technique. It is at the same time simple and very profound. It increases greatly the vibratory rate of your non-physical Higher Self. Its premise is “smile at the world and the world will smile back at you.”
As you go about your daily activities, from the moment you get up in the morning up to the the time that you go back to sleep, constantly imagine that you are smiling inwardly at your outer reality as you go about your daily activities. Imagine that you are smiling from the deeper recesses of your mind, originating from within your heart area, and that you are projecting that happiness and smile outward through your eyes and expression. No matter what the circumstances are. You will find increasingly that your eyes will be smiling and so will your mouth, that will often curl up to a slight smile.
At the same time imagine that your heart constantly expresses a great inward smile filled with pure joy of being alive, no matter what.
After 2 weeks or so, you will notice an incredible amount of changes, not only in the way you interact with the ‘outside’ world, but also in how the ‘world’ acts and projects reality toward you. Your fears will begin to abate and an inner feeling of peace and love will emerge. Notice how people seek your presence and ‘Inner Love.’
ENJOY!
From The American Monk's Blog
http://blog.theamericanmonk.com/2009/01/16/techniques-to-finding-happiness/
Margarita Nomeikiene
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