Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy graduated from law school, but when it came time to practice law, he was having too much fun and success as an amateur actor and decided to make that his career. By 2015 Zelenskyy was the star of a wildly popular satire comedy called Servant of the People, a TV series about…
Never having smoked, I can be a little self-righteous about this, but believe me I have my own costly vices. Same principles apply to them, too. Let’s do a bit of simple math. Suppose you buy a house and have a mortgage of $300,000.00, usual terms, 5% compounded semi-annually, 25 year term, and with the…
During the American Presidential campaign, one of the candidates tried to get a rise out of the other by accusing her of “talking black to black audiences and talking white to white audiences” as if this were some form of hypocrisy. Truth is, we all practice a form of this. It’s called “code switching”. Speaking…
There are probably three major ways of generating plenty of business if you are in a service industry or profession. Any of the three will work if your objective is simply to make lots of money. Only one will work if your objective is also to have a satisfying professional life. The first is called…
In simplest terms, a partnership is an arrangement in which two or more persons combine resources and effort for mutual benefit. We typically think in terms of professional partnerships such as legal or accounting firms, or of domestic partnerships. As long as they are functioning, we think in terms of “the whole being greater than…
Notwithstanding the “reality” TV show The Apprentice, saying “You’re fired!” is incredibly difficult for most of us in the real world. You can’t just cut to a commercial break and cue for next week’s episode. We live in a real world with real people with real lives and real consequences. The truth is, though, that…
As our entrepreneurial class ages, business succession planning is becoming more of a “thing”. A recent newsletter by my friend and colleague Barb Stuhlemmer (https://blitzbusinesssuccess.com/exit-readiness-are-you-ready-to-step-back/) and ongoing workshops by my friend Derek King (https://nesbittburns.bmo.com/derek.king/meet-our-team) are examples of the level of interest on the part of planners, if not on the part of entrepreneurs and professionals….
The man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client. Abraham Lincoln Lincoln’s statement is mostly true, but let’s not lose sight of another critical truism of professional life: nobody in business or in the professions must ever forget what it’s like to be on the receiving end. From time to time,…
We know that combustion requires three things: fuel, oxygen, and ignition. The absence of any one of these means that your campfire won’t burn or your car engine won’t run. Professional success is no different. You need three elements, or you will never catch fire. These three elements are subject matter expertise, natural talent (Giftedness),…
It was a country fair in Plymouth, England in 1906. One of the booths ran a contest, a rather unique contest. The prize was an ox which had been butchered and dressed, and for a small fee you could buy a ticket upon which you would write your best guess as to its weight. Roughly…