One of our biggest priorities for the month of August was to lock in a location for our “Serve Those Who Serve” effort here in Franklin.  We are extremely happy to have hooked up with Carol at Graceworks Ministries in order to make this happen.

Obviously, each business would approach realizing and reacting to each of these four “core values” differently.  Here are a couple ways that Classic Reflections chooses:

1. We set an example for the Middle Tennessee businesses around us, and we encourage them to take up the responsibility of realizing and reacting to these four principles as well.
2. We assume that serving our Nashville customers with excellence begins at washing their boat, waxing their car, or tinting their windows.  From there, we think Albert Einstein was on to something when he said, “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”  Therefore, we strive to provide as many Nashville volunteer opportunities as possible with our Serving Those Who Serve campaign.
3. Picking up where number 2 left off—We host, participate in, and encourage our customers to get involved in events that serve our local community.  We also give a portion of our profits back in the form of local donations on a monthly basis.
4. We challenge one another to grow in the areas we’re strong in, we continue our education in the detailing/tinting world, and we expand our servant-leadership skills by constantly feeding our minds.

Please read the entry “Nashville doesn’t need another auto detailer.” first.

Why does Classic Reflections even exist—if we’re being honest—when there are already too many people waxing cars and tinting windows in the Nashville area to begin with?

To me, the answer to this question hits so close to home and creates so much anticipation for the future, that I often worry I don’t communicate it well.  It’s like when you see an amazing movie, or when you have a really great moment with a close friend… It’s just really hard to put that stuff in to words, isn’t it?  But here’s my best shot…

What Nashville needs are many, many more small business that make it a point to realize and react to four things:

1. The only reason we are successful is because we have been blessed through the consistent support of the community around us.
2. Serving our clients to the best of our abilities should include striving to ensure that each of them feels just as impacted through their relationship with us.
3. If our business were to fail, then our employee’s and client’s should not be the only lives that are negatively affected.
4. The highest level of excellence we are able to achieve today should be the point which we start and grow from tomorrow.

As Dave Ramsey says, “If you help enough people, then you don’t have to worry about money.”

As stated on our opening page, we really don’t think that Middle Tennessee needs another guy running around tinting windows or washing cars. Not including paid-for advertisements, a quick search on YellowPages.com shows 37 different companies in Nashville that specialize in window tinting alone.  37!!  There are only 70 Walgreen’s stores, and they’re located on every corner!

I’m not even going to tell you how many car wash business there are; because the number is so high, you probably wouldn’t believe me anyways.

But it’s true.  Franklin, Brentwood, and Cool Springs don’t need another “Middle Tennessee’s Number One Auto Detailer.”  And neither does Murfreesboro, Spring Hill, Thompson’s Station, Green Hills, Belle Meade, Bellvue, Forest Hills, or Leipers Fork, either.

So, then.  Why are we here?  Why have we gone to the trouble of getting the website, the business cards, the equipment, and the products?  Why does Classic Reflections even exist—if we’re being honest—when there are already too many people waxing cars and tinting windows in the Nashville area to begin with?

Click here to find out what we think Nashville does need.

• Peck: You have described the vase—no you haven’t. What sort of blue is it, how tall is it and what is, approximately, it’s greatest diameter? Does it set on a base or does it not? Is it a solid blue, or is it figured?
• Along his way, Peck remembered the stack of papers waiting on his desk.  He had promised Mr. Skinner a few short hours earlier that he would file them before he left, despite the cold man’s insistence that they might wait.  “I wonder if there’s anyone down at Ricks Logging & Lumbering that could take on one or the other,” the young man mused, but then recalled that he’d given both Cappy Ricks and Mr. Skinner his personal word.  he was the man to get both jobs done.
• Peck: I may have misunderstood.  I’ll telephone his house and ask him to repeat.”  Nobody was at home except a butler, and all he knew was that Mr. Ricks was out.  So Mr. Peck went back and scoured once more every window in the block.  Then he scouted two blocks above Powell and two blocks below Stockton.
• He tried the door but it was locked, as he had anticipated it would be.  So he kicked the door and raised a racket, hoping against hope that the noise might bring a watchman from the rear.

Citation Information: Kyne, P. (2003). The Go-Getter: A story that tells you how to be one. New York, NY. Times Books.

• In “The Go-Getter,” Bill Peck, a war veteran, persuades Cappy Ricks, the crusty founder of the Ricks Logging & Lumbering Company, to let him prove himself with a sales assignment that everyone knows can only lead to failure.
• Cappy: If Matt makes a mistakes, it’s your job to remind him of it before the results manifest themselves.
• Cappy: When did you become a killjoy, throttling the neck of industry with absurd theories that a man’s back must be bent like an ox-box and his locks snowy-white before he can be entrusted with responsibility and a living wage?  This is a smart man’s world, a persistent man’s world, not an old man’s world.  And the go-getters of this world are as often as not under thirty years of age.
• Cappy: Courage is more important than experience.
• Peck: The surest way to give your competitors a run is to know them better than they know themselves.
• Cappy: Good gracious, how empty life would be if I couldn’t butt in and raise a little riot every once in so often.
• Cappy: Bill, I have been informed by my daughter that this crazy little blue vase just fills the order.  Understand?
  Peck: Yes, sir. You feel that it would be most graceful on your part if you could bring this little blue vase down to Santa Barbara with you tonight. You have to have it tonight, because if you wait until the store opens on Monday the vase will reach your hostess twenty-four hours after her anniversary party.”
  Cappy: Exactly, Bill.

Citation Information: Kyne, P. (2003). The Go-Getter: A story that tells you how to be one. New York, NY. Times Books.

• A leadership team is more effective than just one leader. For teams to develop at every level, they need leaders at every level.  Keep in mind that visionary leaders are willing to hire people better than themselves.
• Leaders are needed at every level of the organization.  If a team starts out with a leader but without a vision, it will do fine because it will eventually have a vision.  Leaders are always headed somewhere.
• Leading successfully at one level is a qualifier for leading at the next.  To find out if a person is qualified to make the jump, they look at that person’s track record in his or her current position.  Leadership is a journey that starts where you are, not where you want to be.
• Good leaders in the middle make better leaders at the top.  Today’s workers are tomorrow’s leaders in the middle of the organization.  And today’s leaders in the middle will be tomorrow’s leaders at the top.
• 360-degree leaders possess qualities every organization needs including: adaptability, discernment, perspective, communication, security, servanthood, resourcefulness, maturity, endurance, and countability.

Citation Information: Maxwell, J. (2006). The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence From Anywhere in the Organization. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

• What makes 360-degree leaders unique—and so effective—is that they take the time and effort to earn influence with their followers just as they do with those over whom they have no authority.  As a 360-degree leader, when you lead down, you are doing more than just getting people to do what you want.  You are finding out who they are, helping them to discover and reach their potential, showing the way by becoming a model they can follow, helping them become a part of something bigger than they could create on their own, and rewarding them for being contributors on the team.
• 360-degree leaders get more out of their people because they think more of their people.  Always see people as they can become.  Let them borrow your belief in them.  Catch them doing something right.  Give them the benefit of the doubt.  And understand that people usually rise to the leader’s expectations.
• Developing people while helping them get the job done at the highest level makes you an exceptional leader  As a leader, your first responsibility is to help others define the reality of who they are.  Sometimes that means having difficult conversations.  They thing you need to remember is that people will work through difficult things if they believe you want to work with them.
• Successful leaders find the strength zones of the people they lead.  When you place individuals in their strength zones, you change people’s lives for the better, their jobs becomes rewarding and fulfilling, and you help both the organization and yourself.
• Followers become like their leaders.  That’s why we must always be aware of our own conduct before criticizing the people who work for us.  If you don’t like what your people are doing, first take a look at yourself.
• As a leader in the middle of an organization, you will be transferring what is primarily the vision of others.  If there is no passion in the picture, then your vision isn’t transferable.
• Whatever actions leaders reward will be repeated.

Citation Information: Maxwell, J. (2006). The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence From Anywhere in the Organization. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

• You have to give your colleagues a reason to respect and follow you.  If you will help them win, you will not only help the organization, but also yourself.
• Make an effort to get to know them as individuals.  You should also strive to see others’ unique experiences and skills as resources and try to learn from them.  When you go out of your way to add value to your peers, they understand that you really want them to win with no hidden agenda of your own.  Affirm them by praising their strengths and acknowledging their accomplishments.
• Winning at all costs will cost you when it comes to your peers.  When it comes to your teammates, you want to complete in such a way that instead of completing with them, you are completing them.
• Playing politics is changing who you are or what you normally do to gain an advantage with whomever currently has power.  In the long run, integrity, consistency and productivity always pay off — in better teamwork and a clear conscience.
• Gossip is a poison and you should avoid it at all times.  The definition of gossip is: Complaining to anyone about something which they can’t help fix.
• Don’t let the personality of someone with whom you work cause you to lose sign of the great purpose, which is to add value to the team and advance the organization.  Listen to the ideas of people with whom you have no chemistry, or worse, a difficult history.
• Since nobody is perfect, we need to quit pretending.  People who are genuine concerning their weaknesses as well as their strengths, draw others to them.  They are a breath of fresh air in an environment where others are scrambling to reach the top by trying to look good.

Citation Information: Maxwell, J. (2006). The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence From Anywhere in the Organization. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

• Most leaders want to lead, not be led.  If you take the approach of wanting to add value to those above you, you have the best chance of influencing them.  Your underlying strategy should be to support your leader, add value to the organization, and distinguish yourself from the rest of the pack by doing your work with excellence.  If you do these things consistently, then in time the leader above you may learn to trust you, rely on you, and look to your for advice.
• Nothing will make a better impression on your leader than your ability to manage yourself.  To become someone your leader turns to when the heat is on, manage your emotions, time, priorities, energy, thinking, words, and your personal life.
• If you help lift the load, then you help your leader succeed.  It also gets you noticed and increases your value and influence.  Do your own job well first.  When you find a problem, provide a solution.  Go the second mile and do more than is asked.  Also, stand in for your leader whenever you can.
• Successful people do the things that unsuccessful people are unwilling to do.  Take the tough jobs.  Good leaders also find a way to succeed with people who are hard to work with by finding common ground and connecting with them.
• For all leaders, time is precious.  For that reason, you must always be prepared when you take any of your leader’s time.  Don’t make your boss think for you.
• Successful leaders make the right move at the right moment with the right motive.  When it comes to gaining influence with your boss, timing is equally important.  It’s wise to wait for the right moment to speak up.
• Few things elevate a person above his or her peers the way becoming a go-to player does.  Everyone admires people who find a way to make things happen no matter what.  if you adopt the positive tenacity of a go-to player and take every opportunity to make things happen, your leader will come to rely on you.

Citation Information: Maxwell, J. (2006). The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence From Anywhere in the Organization. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

• The reality is that 99 percent of leadership occurs not from the top but from the middle of an organization.  You can learn to develop your influence from wherever you are in the organization by becoming a 360-degree leader.
• You don’t need to possess a position at the top of your group, department, division or organization in order to lead.  If you think you do, you have bought into the position myth.
• The true measure of leadership is influence — nothing more, nothing less.  Leadership is dynamic, and the right to lead must be earned individually with each person you meet.  Leadership is a choice you make, not a place you sit.
• If you want to succeed, you need to learn as much as you can about leadership before you have a leadership position.  If you don’t try out your leadership skills and decision-making process when the stakes are small and the risks are low, you’re likely to get into trouble at higher levels when the cost of mistakes are high.
• People should strive for the top of their game, not the top of their organization.  Sometimes you can make the greatest impact from somewhere other than first place.
• Championing the vision is more difficult when you did not create it.  However, the more you invest in the vision, the more it becomes your own.  Even though your own vision may excite you more than someone else’s, to get the opportunity to pursue your own dreams, you will almost certainly have to succeed in achieving the dreams of others.
• 360-degree leaders work to change their thinking from, “I want a position that will make people follow me,” to, “I want to become a person who people will want to follow.”

Citation Information: Maxwell, J. (2006). The 360 Degree Leader: Developing Your Influence From Anywhere in the Organization. Nashville, TN: Nelson Books.

• People don’t believe what you tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. What leader do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change.
• Mobilize a tribe and do it in a way in which every person involved comes out ahead.
• Leadership is like this: No one gives you permission or approval or a permit to lead. You just do it. The only one who can say no is you. Every tribe leader I’ve ever met shares one thing: they made the decision to lead. You can choose to leader or not. You can choose to contribute to the tribe, or not.
• Once you choose to lead, you’ll be under huge pressure to reconsider your choice, to compromise, to dumb it down, or to give up. That’s the world’s job: to get you to be quite and follow. The status quo is there for a reason. But once you choose to lead, you’ll also discover that it’s not so difficult. That the options available to you seem really clear, and that yes, in fact, you can get from here to there. So go.

Citation Information: Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• There is a small price for being too early, but a huge penalty for being too late.
• Leadership is very much an art, one that’s accomplished only by people with authentic generosity and a visceral connection to their tribe.  Hope without a strategy doesn’t generate leadership.  People won’t follow you if they don’t believe you can get to where you say you’re going.  Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work.
• What most people want in a leader is something that’ very difficult to find:  we want someone who listens.  Part of leadership is the ability to stick with the dream for a long time.  Long enough that the critics realize that you’re going to get there one way or another… so they follow.  Compromise may expedite a project, but is can kill it as well.
• If it’s about your mission, about spreading the faith, about seeing something happen, not only do you not care about getting the credit, you actually want other people to take the credit.  There’s no record of Martin Luther King Jr or Gandhi whining about credit.  Credit isn’t the point.  Change is.

Citation Information: Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• Every organization needs at least one thermostat.  These are leaders who can create change in response to the outside world, and do it consistently over time.
• The key elements in creating a micromovement consist of five things to do and six principles.  1) Publish a manifesto.  2) Make it easy for your followers to connect with you.  3) Make it easy for your followers to connect with one another.  4) Realize that money is not the point of the movement.  5)  Track your process.  The principles:  1) Transparency really is your only option.  2) Your movement needs to be bigger than you  3) Movements that grow, thrive.  4) Movements are made most clear when compared to the status quo or to movements that work to push the other direction.  5)  Exclude outsiders.  6) Tearing others down is never as helpful to a movement as building your followers up.
• The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way.  The secret to leadership is simple:  Do what you believe in.  Paint a picture of the future.  Go there.  People will follow.
• The organizations that need innovation the most are the ones that do the most to stop it from happening.  It’s a bit of a paradox, but once you see it, it’s a tremendous opportunity.

Citation Information: Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• First, if you want to reveal your talents, monitor your spontaneous, top-of-mind reactions to the situations you encounter.  While they provide the clearest trace of your talents, here are three more clues to keep in mind: yearnings, rapid learning, and satisfactions.
• Yearning reveal the presence of a talent, particularly when they are felt early in life.  Rapid learning offers another trace of talent.  Something a talent doesn’t signal itself through yearning.  It is the speed of which you learn a new skill that provides the telltale clue to the talent’s presence and power.  Satisfactions feel good when you perform the activity.  As you rush through your busy life, try to step back, quiet the wind whipping past your ears, and listen for these clues.  They will help you zero in on your talents.
• The StrengthsFinder profile was designed to help you sharpen your perception.  It presents you with pairs of statements, captures your choices, sorts them, and reflects back your most dominant patterns of behavior, thereby highlighting where you have the greatest potential for real strength.  You can take the test by buying the book: StrengthFinders 2.0
• [Robbie Here] For those interested, my top five are:  Competition, Achiever, Significance, Focus, Futuristic.

Citation Information: Buckingham, M. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York, New York: The Free Press.

• Talent is any recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior that can be productively applied.  By this definition even seemingly negative traits can be called talents if they can be productively applied.
• Out talents can so easily to us that we acquire a false sense of security.  They feel so natural to us that they seem to be common sense.  But in truth our sense isn’t common at all.  The sense we make of the world is individual.  Our “sense,” our recurring pattern of thought, feeling, or behavior, is caused by our unique mental network.  As an individual employee responsible both for your performance and for directly your own career, it is vital that you gain an accurate understanding of how your mental connections are grooved.  As a manager, you must take the time to identify the distinct talents of your staff.
• By defining your talents as your strongest synaptic connections, we can now see why it is impossible to build a strength without underlying talent.  Unable to intellectualize every minute decision, you are compelled to react instinctively.  That explains why it is virtually impossible to create near perfect performance by simply reaching someone a new skill.  Skills determine if you can do something, whereas talents reveals something more important:  how well and how often you do it.
• You should not always forgo weakness fixing.  You should see it for what it is:  damage control, not development.
• Talents have not only an “I can’t help it” quality to them but also an “it feels good” quality.  By imbuing talents with their own built-in feedback mechanism, nature has ensured that you will keep trying to use them.  Your talents, your strongest synaptic connections, are the most important raw material for strength building.  Identify your most powerful talents, hone them with skills and knowledge, and you will be well on your way to living the strong life.

Citation Information: Buckingham, M. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York, New York: The Free Press.

• Strengths do not emerge perfect and whole.  Each person’s strengths are created—developed from some very specific raw materials.  You can acquire some materials, your knowledge and skills, with practice and learning; others, your talents, you simply have to hone.
• For the purpose of building your strengths, there are two distinct kinds of knowledge.  First, you need factual knowledge, which is content.  Factual knowledge won’t guarantee excellence, but is excellence is impossible without it.  The second kind of knowledge is experiential, which isn’t taught in classrooms or found in manuals.  Rather, it is something that you must discipline yourself to pink up along the way and retain.  Clearly, to develop your strengths it is your responsibility to keep alert for these opportunities and then to incorporate them into your performance.
• Talents, like intelligence, are value neutral.  If you want to change your life so that others may benefits from your strengths, then change your values.  Don’t waste time trying to change your talents.  The same applies to self-awareness.  Over time each of us becomes more and more aware of who we really are.
• Skills bring structure to experiential knowledge.  They enable you to avoid trial and error and to incorporate directly into your performance the best discoveries from the best performers.  But be careful.  Skills are so enticingly helpful that they obscure their two flaws.  The first flaw is that while skills in help you perform, they will not help you excel.  Without underlying talent, learning a skill is a survival technique, not a path to glory.  The second flaw is that some activities, almost by definition, defy being broken down into steps.  A skill is designed to make the secrets of the best easily transferable.  If you learn a skill, it will help you get a little better, but will not cover for a lack of talent.

Citation Information: Buckingham, M. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York, New York: The Free Press.

• When it comes to your job, the “what” always trumps the “why” and the “who.”  People tend to take a job because of the “why.”  They stay in a job because of the “who” they work with.  But then, as time drags on, they gradually become aware of the “what” they are actually doing isn’t what they want to be doing.
• Always ask, “What will I be paid to do?”  It’s up to you to make it clear.  Whenever you find yourself interviewing for a new job, push your potential boss to tell you what you’re going to be paid to do.  And use that exact words.
• Ask yourself two questions:  1) “Can I see myself doing these actual activities?”  2) “How can I use my strengths to get this job done?”
• Think about the most effective person you know. You look at them and think, “You lucky devil.  How did you find that job?  How did you find a job that fits you so well?”  Yet when you look at them closely, you discover that they didn’t find this job.  They built it.  They took a generic job description and deliberately pushed their time toward those activities that strengthened them and away from those that didn’t.
• In order to do this, you must write a Strong Week Plan.  Each week, every week write down two things you are going to do this week to tip the scales toward your strengths.  It doesn’t matter what your job is, or who your manager is, over time you’ll discover that you have the freedom to slowly change your job to fit your strengths better.  Each week you are going to say to yourself, “I am not going to let the week go by without doing these two things.”  And every time you do this, you’ll talk to your manager about it in terms of how it will help the team succeed.  Some weeks you’ll get turned down, but there’ll be many weeks where they will say, “Why not?  Let’s try it…”
• First, your job will change—your job description will look like it was written specifically for you.  Second, you’ll gain a reputation—the right kind of reputation.  And third, people will look at you and think, “You lucky devil.  How did you find that job?  How did you find a job that fit you so well?”

Citation Information:  Buckingham, M. (2008). The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

• Look inside yourself, try to identify your strongest threads, reinforce them with practice and learning, and then either find or carve out a role that draws on these strengths everyday.  Whenever you interview people who are truly successful at their chosen profession—from teaching to telemarketing, acting to account—you discover that the secret to their success likes in their ability to discover their strengths and to organize their life so that these strengths can be applied.
• For the sake of clarity let’s be more precise about what we mean by a “strength.”  The definition of a strength that we will use throughout this book is quite specific: consistent near perfect performance in an activity.  By defining strength in this way, we reveal three of the most important principles of living a strong life.
• First, you must be able to do it consistently.  And this implies that it is a predictable part of your performance.  You must also derive some intrinsic satisfaction from the activity.  The ability is a strength only if you can fathom yourself doing it repeatedly, happily, and successfully.  Second, you do not have to have strengths in every aspect of your role in order to excel.  That excellent performers must be well rounded is one of the most pervasive myths we hope to dispel in this book.  When we studied them, excellent performers were rarely well rounded.  On the contrary, they were sharp.  Third, you will excel only by maximizing your strengths, never by fixing your weaknesses.  Find ways to manage around your weaknesses, thereby freeing you up to hone your strengths to a sharper point.
• The first revolutionary tool is understanding how to distinguish your natural talents from things you can learn.  “Talents” are your naturally recurring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior.  “Knowledge” consists of the facts and lessons learned.  “Skills” are the steps of an activity.  These three combine to create your strengths.  In many roles you can acquire the relevant knowledge and skills to the point where you are able to get by, but no matter what the role, if you lack the necessary talents, you will never able to to have consistent near perfect performance.  Thus, the key to building a bona fide strength is to identify your dominant talents and then refine them with knowledge and skills.
• The second revolutionary tool is a system to identify your dominant talents.  You must lead the search for your own talents.  The StrengthsFinder Profile will help identify your dominant talents.
• The third revolutionary tool is a common language to describe your talents.  The sorry truth is that the language available, the langugae of human strength, is still rudimentary at best.

Citation Information: Buckingham, M. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York, New York: The Free Press.

• Guided by the belief that good is the opposite of bad, mankind has for centuries pursued its fixation with fault and failing.  Psychologists have investigated sadness in order to learn about joy.  Therapists have looked into the causes of divorce in order to learn about happy marriage.  This advice is well intended but misguided.  Faults and failing deserve study, but they reveal little about strengths.  So as you read this book, shift your focus.  Suspend whatever interest you may have in weakness and instead explore the intricate detail of your strengths.
• We wrote this book to start a revolution, the strengths revolution.  At the heart of this revolution is this simple decree:  The great organization must not only accommodate the fact that each employee is different, it must capitalize on these differences.  Only 20 percent of employees working in large organizations we surveyed feel that their strengths are in play every day.  Most bizarre of all, the longer an employee stays with an organization and the higher they climb the traditional career ladder, the less likely he is to strongly agree that he is playing to his strengths.
• Most organizations are built on two flawed assumptions about people:  1) Each person can learn to be competent in almost anything.  2) Each person’s greatest room for growth is in his or her areas of greatest weakness.  Most organizations take their employee’s strengths for granted and focus on minimizing their weaknesses.  They become expert in those areas where their employees struggle, delicately rename these “skill gaps” or “areas of opportunity,” and then pack them off to training classes so the weaknesses can be fixed.
• Here are the two assumptions that guide the world’s best managers: 1) Each person’s talents are enduring and unique.  2) Each person’s greatest room for growth is in the areas of his or her greatest strength.  Moreover, how can you possibly lead a strengths revolution if you don’t know how to find, name, and develop your own?  The real tragedy of life is not that each of us doesn’t have enough strengths, it’s that we fail to use the ones we have.

Citation Information: Buckingham, M. (2001). Now, Discover Your Strengths. New York, New York: The Free Press.

• Leadership almost always involved thinking and acting like the underdog. That’s because leaders work to change things, and the people who are winning rarely do. Changing things—pushing the envelope and creating a future that doesn’t exist yet (at the same time you’re criticized by everyone else)—requires bravery.
• Initiating is really and truly difficult, and that’s what leaders do. They see something others are ignoring and they jump on it. They cause the events that others have to react to. They make change.
• Leading when you don’t know where to go, when you don’t have the commitment or the passion, or worst of all, when you can’t overcome your fear—that sort of leading is worse than none at all.
• Past performance is no guarantee of future success, and the best time to change your business model is when you still have momentum. Industries don’t die by surprise. What is missing is leadership—an individual (a heretic) ready to describe the future and build the coalitions necessary to get there. This isn’t about having a great idea (it almost never is). The great ideas are out there, for free, on your neighborhood blog. Nope, this is about taking initiative and making things happen.
• Think for a second about the people you know who are engaged, satisfied, eager to get to work. Most of them, I’ll bet, make change. They challenge the status quo and push something forward—something they believe in. They lead. “Life’s too short” is repeated often enough to be a cliche, but this time it’s true. You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy and mediocre. It’s not just pointless, it’s painful. Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from.

Citation Information: Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• When you identify discomfort, you have found the place where a leader is needed.  If you aren’t uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain that you aren’t reaching your potential as a leader.  Not all leadership means getting in the face of the tribe.  It takes just as much effort to successfully get out of the way.
• Tribes do not cater to everyone.  There are insiders and there are outsiders.
• You get to choose the tribe you lead.  You don’t need a majority or even a plurality.  Trying to lead everyone results in leading no one in particular.  You don’t even have to know where your tribe is.  Just state your message and they will join.  You aren’t going to grow your tribe by going after “most people.”  Most people can’t hear you regardless of how loud you yell.  Almost all the growth that’s available to you exists when you aren’t like most people, and when you work hard to appeal to folks who aren’t most people.
• They only thing holding you back from the kind of person who changes things is lack of faith.  Faith that you can do it.  Faith that it’s worth doing.  Faith that failure won’t destroy you.  Faith is critical to all innovation.  Religion is just a set of invented protocols, rules to live by (for now).  Heretics challenge a given religion, but do it from a very strong foundation of faith.  in order to lead, you must challenge the status quo of the religion you’re living under.  Faith is demonstrated by the actions you take.
• When you lead without compensation, when you sacrifice without guarantees, when you take risks because you believe, then you are demonstrating your faith in the tribe and it’s mission.
• Leaders who set out to give are more productive than leaders who seek to get.  Real leaders get their compensation from watching the tribe thrive.  As the ability to lead a tribe becomes open to more people, it’s interesting to note that those who take that opportunity (and those who succeed most often) are doing it because of what they can do for the tribe, not because of what the tribe can do for them.
• One person with a persistent vision can make change happen.  Each employee now has the responsibility to change the rules before someone else does.  Odds are that growth and success are now inextricably linked to breaking the old rules and setting your organization’s new rules loose in an industry too afraid to change.

Citation Information: Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• The odd thing about the High and Mighty Assassin is that everyone knows you’ve been clobbered by it, but you.
• Success can ruin your life.  Success can take us to some wonderful places, but it can also take us to some places we don’t want to go.  Success never happens in a vacuum.  We still have to deal with the people around us – family, friends, co-workers, employees.  We’d best remember that in many, many ways, they helped us get where we are.  And if we’re going to continue successfully, we’ll need their help just as much – maybe more.
• Appropriate humility is knowing who we are and where we fit and striving to make a difference there.
• You may have no say over the organizational chart in the business you work for, but you do have the ability to serve others each day.  Every person wants to be known and loved.  What would happen if you stopped to talk to three people each day and asked them about their lives?  Have you thought about how you could help them win?  This is how you cripple the High and Mighty Assassin.  People move from following you positionally to following you relationally.  This is servant leadership at its best.
• Ask someone you trust how people view you.  Dig around until you really find out.  The tricky thing about this assassin is that you may be the last to know when he’s struck you, and you’ll find that everyone else already knows.

Citation Information: Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• When is enough really enough?  How much do you need to be happy?  It’s a pretty good question, and one we rarely answer.  A true leader of character must manage this tension between money and worth.  We must hold things loosely and learn to be more generous with our possessions.
• Let’s be clear here.  There’s nothing wrong with having nice things.  However, there is something wrong with drawing personal value or self worth from your stuff.  If you think for one split second that your possessions will define you as a significant leader, think again.
• There is no question that if you want to be a leader who discovers meaning in life, you must tame this beast.  As healthy leaders we must strategically think about ho we can be more generous and sacrificial.  We can use our financial assets for positive things.
• So ask yourself: How satisfied are you with your income, house size, or possessions?  How many times during the day do you think about what you want versus what you could give?  How much personal value of self worth do you find in what you own?  What percentage of your income are you giving away to help others?
• So what are some practical things we can do to make sure we are training properly and having correct attitudes about our money, our stuff, and what matters most?  We can start by giving to those in need.  The average American gives two percent to organizations helping those living in poverty.
• Each one of us has a million options staring us in the face on how we can be more generous and less materialistic.  We must pause and sense the next steps.  Open  your hands and your hearts and you will find what it is like to be fully alive.
• I laugh when people talk about the problem of pain and the problem of evil.  If there’s a God why is there so much evil?  I’ve got a problem with that.  I think if God is good, why should he not allow a lot more of it.  It’s the only way we seem to learn.  I look at myself.  I look at the three most painful things that have happened to me in my life and those are the three I wouldn’t undo.  I believe in Hell because I have been there.  And that’s where you learn everything.

Citation Information: Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• It is impossible to talk about character assassins without talking about sexuality and commitments.
• One of the things we’ve discovered as we reflect on conversations with thousands of people about sex is that sexual missteps are rarely about sex. They’re really about our desire for a deep, meaningful, and powerful connection with someone.
• Sexuality is our awareness of how profoundly we’re severed, cut off, and disconnected from each other.  In those situations, males often feel relationally emasculated.  Women feel emotionally barren.  Sexuality is an expression of all of the ways we go about trying to reconnect.
• The major contributing factor to extramarital relationships is physical and emotional connection (78%), which far outdistanced marital dissatisfaction (41%).  Dodging the Boom Chicka Wah Wah Assassin isn’t really about dodging sex, then.  it’s about nurturing the right relationships.
• My wife and I have decided that our marriage is a Porsche, not a Volvo.  It’s has all the high-end performance you could ever want, but it needs high maintenance, too.  We have to take really good care of it.  We can’t neglect it.  We’ve got to spend time together on a regular, frequent basis without the kids.  What about your relationships?  Which ones are Volvos?  Which ones are Porsches?  Are you treating them according to their needs?
• We need to be purposeful with our relationships.  Don’t simply wish that your key relationships will be okay. They take effort, sacrifice, passion, and focus just like our work does.  And make no mistake, there will be a direct correlation between how high you fly in leadership and how strong and deep your relationships are.  You need to draw thick, thoughtful boundaries to protect your relationships and your reputations.
• You see, most people in leadership will get the opportunity to hop into the sack with someone inappropriately.  You will have the opportunity to cross a line sexually.  It’s not if, it’s when.  So you’d better be prepared to make a good decision.

Citation Information: Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Your strengths aren’t what you are good at, and your weaknesses aren’t what you are bad at.  A weakness is any activity that leaves you feeling weaker after you do it.  It doesn’t matter how good you are at it or how much money you make doing it, if doing it drains you of energy, you’d be crazy to build your career around it.  Of course, a strengths is the opposite.  A strength—your strengths—are any activities that make you feel strong.
• If before you do something, you find yourself actually looking forward to doing it, it may be a strength.  If while you’re doing something, you feel focused, in the zone, with time whipping by really quickly, it may be a strength.  If after you’re done, you feel fulfilled, it may be a strength.
• To push your life toward your strengths, you have to be able to describe exactly what they are. Here’s a simple way to remember what to look for when trying to spot your strengths.  S = Success.  If you have some success at the activity, it may be a strength.  I = Instinct.  If, before you do it, you find yourself instinctively looking forward to doing it, it may be a strength.  G = Growth.  If, while you’re doing it, you find yourself easily able to concentrate, it may be a strength.  N = Needs.  If, after you’ve done it, it feels like it fulfills a need of yours, it may be a strength.

Citation Information:  Buckingham, M. (2008). The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

• Your organization doesn’t care primarily about you and your strengths.  If you’re lucky, your individual manager will.  Your organization, however, has other things on it’s mind.  What your organization cares most about is performance.
• It’s important to remember that your strengths are not the point.  Your organization was not built to help you identify your strengths and show them off to the rest of the world.  Sure, your strengths can be useful to the organization’s end.  But never forget that you are a means to its end.  And its desired end is performance.
• Don’t expect your organization ever to know you like you do.  It will never really know your strengths, or your weaknesses.  And so it is just as likely to put you into a job that truly fits you as it is to push you into a job that isn’t right for you at all but simply needs to get done.  Your organization isn’t wrongheaded to think this way, but this is, in the end, wy so many people wind up in a job where they are mediocre, unhappy, or both.  It’s going to fall on you to know yourself well enough to stay on your strengths path.
• Always remember, you are the greatest teacher about you and your strengths.  Your interests are a very good clue to your strengths.  Your interests aren’t random.  Sure, they change and develop as you get older, but they aren’t random.  They are part of a pattern inside you.  They are the first sign of some force inside you trying to get out, something important in you that needs to be understood and expressed.
• Never put your real personality on hold and then try to bring it back to life at some point in the future.  Even if you manage to perform well in the non-you role, it still takes it’s toll.  Look closely at your interests and take them seriously.  Start pushing your life toward them now.

Citation Information:  Buckingham, M. (2008). The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

• I’ve learned that busy is not bad, but we have to be busy about the best things.  We also need to prioritize identifying things that fill us up when we feel emotionally, physically, or spiritually tired.
• Perhaps most important in all of this is that we have to become okay with disappointing other people.  We can’t be all things to all people.  Be we have prioritized our family and our friendships and have become more concerned about not disappointing them.
• Make a list of the top five people in your life.  Find out how those individuals feel.  People are what matter most in our lives, so prioritize time for them.
• Leaders need to push it to the limit, but not beyond the limit.  If we are going to be engaged in furious work, then we also need to be engaged in furious rest.  Effective leaders know leadership is about the long haul. It’s not just about a short season of greatness where you burn hot and then burn out.
• Leadership is about knowing what you can rely on other people for and what people can rely on you for.  Leaders are not well rounded, and their greatest achievement is knowing where they are strongest by knowing where they can carry the most people on their back.
• I think so much of what it takes to gain other people’s trust is the realization of when it doesn’t go right, you make it right.  There is restitution.  Confessing you made a mistake is an adolescent level of authenticity.  That’s nice.  We like that.  But the adult level of authenticity is you are going to make ti right.  We don’t see that enough.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Ever felt like you’re sliding into a meltdown?  Just to get a break from the madness that is your life, do you find yourself caught up in some destructive patterns of escapism and fantasy?  if so, you just might have booked yourself an appointment with the Assassin of the Headless Sprinting Chicken.
• The scary thing about this assassin is if it has his way with you, you may never be the same again.  You can run around in the whirl of productivity and business and fry yourself to the point of no return, soft of like a bad acid trip that never ends.
• We believe the concept of “balance in life” is the stuff of shrinks and horribly idealistic consultants.  It’s just a fact that successful and significant people simply aren’t the picture of sanitized stability and balance.  They are passionate people who have the distinct willingness to do whatever it takes to accomplish a goal.  And much good comes from this.
• The truth is, balance is bunk.  The goal is not to be balanced perfectly all the time, but to look at one’s entire life portfolio.  There will be chapters filled with very intense work.  Other chapters will be more consumed with family time, and still other chapters with relaxation.
• Frankly, we’re tired of being beat up by seminars and do-gooders that talk about balance, but in the end imply we should be less passionate about our work.  Balance is a relic, a fleeting phenomenon of a close, industrial economy that doesn’t apply in a global, knowledge-based world.
• The danger of burnout comes when our priorities are not clear and aligned. We can completely lose ourselves in a task to the point that our emotional gauges hit empty.  This is when we make poor leadership decisions and often do things that aren’t wise.
• Grow up!  If you are going to be a leader, you have to learn to lead yourself. So, lead yourself.
• When my reserves are low, I don’t blame my circumstances, my job, my employer, or anyone else.  I blame myself.  I am responsible to lead myself, to ensure that I’m resting, learning,  growing, and bringing my very best self to the job every day.  I’m the only one who knows what my emotional, physical, and spiritual gauges are telling me and I’ve got to listen to them.  I am responsible for my own self-care, grown, and development.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Great leaders need to be hot under the collar about things like injustice, poverty, and racism.  Things that matter.  Leaders should be emotionally moved to right the wrongs in the world and to stand up for those being taken advantage of.
• Our desire for you and ourselves is that we are becoming fully alive, and helping others to do likewise.  We could all benefit from laughing more, crying more, and choosing to feel more joyful, more grateful, more fulfilled.  It is a choice.
• When you don’t forgive someone, you let them park in your life forever.  Those people are like parasites that can suck the life right out of you and allow bitterness to rot you out.  If you let these people and their actions haunt your thoughts, emotions, and spirit, you allow them to continually damage now only you but those around you, too.
• Do you want to be free or do you want to be chained this person for the rest of your life?  When you forgive you are made stronger, tougher, and life has new meaning.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Anger is a signal, and one wroth listening to.
• The Assassin of Amped Emotions lurks in mundane moments of everyday life.  We all have countless opportunities to completely transcend our normal selves and operate out of really unhealthy emotional places. Though it would have been easy to blame crammed schedules or the stresses at work, I had to be honest with the fact that it was my fault.  So I had to ask myself: Why am I getting so angry?  Am I in control of my emotions?  Why have I been exploding more and more lately?
• Let’s face it.  The Assassin of Amped Emotions takes pleasure in taking you down.  Here are his tactics:
  1. He wants you going nuts on petty and insignificant things.
  2. He wants you to embarrass yourself in front of your friends, co-workers, family, and associates.
  3. He wants you to act out and go postal
• But let’s make one thing clear before we go further: it isn’t our intention to turn you into this soft, spineless puss who never has any passion or emotion.  In fact, we want you energized and pumped up, and excited to take life by the horns.
• That being said, we need to funnel our emotions toward things that really matter.  Some of us need to grow up and stop acting like junior high wieners and stop thinking everything is about us.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• A new model of belonging, respect, and grace is needed to move from the current culture of concealment to a culture of honesty.  We must hold high the values of forgiveness and second chances.
• You see, honesty is a gift.  Whether in meetings, our own lives, or in welcoming feedback, truth brings freedom and it’s life giving.  You are only as sick as your secrets.  Leaders can make a difference by leading out of our own personal weakness, and in so doing change this toxic culture of perfectionism and image management.
• So if you find yourself digging into this hole of concealment, our first challenge is to stop digging.  Find yourself a good friend, full of grace and love for you, and give them 100% access to your private world.  Think of who this person could be, write their name down, and pen a vow to yourself right next to their name.  Vow that you are out of the concealment game and are going to be accountable in every way.  Set up a coffee meeting at Starbucks and you’ll be off and running.
• You can suffer in secrecy for a long time.  Or, you can start being the leader you were, and are, meant to be.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• The Chinese “Zi Qi Qi Ren” literally translates, “self deception while deceiving others.”  And yes, this act is alive and well in leaders today.  Our pride and unwillingness to acknowledge that we are human beings with frailties, leads us to conceal.  When you are pretending, there is nothing good about that.
• Somewhere along this road we have concluded that in order to be liked by others, we need to hide our true self.  It is time to stop hiding.  If you want to experience self-respect and true liberation in life, take responsibility for the whole package.
• What areas of my life am I most prone to be deceptive about?  Why do I feel pressured to lie to certain people?  Why do I think I need to lie?  What’ll happen when I’m found out?  What would it feel like to stop lying and be free to be honest and open?
• Every leader must answer this question:  “What is the one thing I am afraid of?”  Then go talk about it immediately.  Bring it into the light.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Explore the limits.  What if you’re the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the easiest, the most efficient, the loudest, the most hated, the copycat, the outsider, the hardest, the oldest, the newest, the … most! if there’s a limit, you should (must) test it.
• Is your product more boring than salt?  Unlikely.  So come up with a list of ten ways to change the product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience.  Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability.  Go from there.
• Build and use a permission asset.  Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things.  Without the filters of advertising, wholesalers, and retailers, you can create products that are far more remarkable.
• Copy.  Not from your industry, but from any other industry.  Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who’s remarkable (it wont’ take long), and do what they did.
• Go one more.  Or two more.  Identify a competitor who’s generally regarded as at the edges, and outdo them.  Whatever they’re know for, do that thing even more.  Even better, and ever safer, do the opposite of what they are doing.
• Find things that are “just not done” in your industry, and do them.  JetBlue almost instituted a dress code for passengers.  They’re still playing with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best-dressed person on the plane.  A plastic surgeon could offer gift certificates.  A book publisher could put a book on sale.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• Outrageous is not always remarkable.  It’s certainly not required.  Sometimes outrageous is just annoying.  The outrageousness needs to have a purpose, and it needs to be build into the product.  You’re probably guilty of being too shy, not too outrageous.  Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying.  It’s good practice.  Don’t do it too much because it doesn’t usually work.  But it’s a good way to learn what it feels like to be at the edge.
• Cheap is a lazy way out of the battle for the Purple Cow.  Cheap is the last refuge of a product developed or a marketer who is out of great ideas.  The exception to this rule is the quantum leap in pricing.  When a marketers can radically redefine the way a product is produced or delivered, and leapfrog the pricing of others, that can create a remarkable game-changing event.  The Purple Cow is not the exclusive domain of high-priced products and wealthy consumers.
• You don’t need passion to create a Purple Cow.  Nor do you need an awful lot of creativity.  What you need is the insight to realize that you have no other choice buy to grow your business or launch your product with Purple Cow thinking.  Nothing else is going to work.  You don’t a book about creativity or brainstorming or team building.  You’ve already got a hundred (or a thousand) ideas your group doesn’t have the guts to launch.  You don’t need more time or even more money.  You just need the realization that a brand new business paradigm is now in charge, and once you accept the reality of the Cow, finding one suddenly gets much easier.
• Remember, it’s not about being weird.  It’s about being irresistible to a tiny group of easily reached sneezers with a passionate obsession.  Irresistible isn’t the same as ridiculous.  Irresistible (for the right niche) is just remarkable.
• So the question you need to ask your is this: If only 6 percent of the most valuable brands used the now-obsolete strategy of constantly reminding us about their sort-of-ordinary product, why do you believe this strategy will work for you?  The big question is this:  Do you want to grow?  If you do, you need to embrace the Cow.  You can maintain your brand the old way, buy the only route to healthy growth is a remarkable product.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• It’s the sneezers we care about, and we can leverage the fact that if we respect them, they’ll listen to our new Cow once the old has run it’s course.
• 1) Get permission from people you impressed the first time.  Not permission to spam them or sell them leftovers or squeeze extra margins from them.  Permission to alert them the next time you might have another Cow.
• 2) Work with the sneezers in that audience to make it easier for them to help your idea cross the chasm.  Give them the tools (and the story) they’ll need to sell your idea to a wider audience.
• 3) Once you’ve crossed the line from remarkable to profitable business, let a difference team milk it.  Productize your services, servicize your products, let a thousand variations bloom.  But don’t believe your own press releases.  This is the inevitable downward slide to commodity.  Milk it for all it’s worth, and fast.
• 4) Reinvest.  Do it again.  With a vengeance. Launch another Purple Cow (to the same audience).  Fail and fail and fail again.  Assume that what was remarkable last time won’t be remarkable this time.
• Marketing is the act of inventing the product.  The act of designing it.  The craft of producing it.  The art of pricing it.  The technique of selling it.  How can a Purple Cow company NOT be run by a marketer?  If you are a marketer who doesn’t know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you’re no longer a marketer.  You’re deadwood.  Make a list of all the remarkable products in your industry.  Who made them?  How did they happen?  Model the behavior (not mimic the product) and you’re more than halfway to making your own.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• A slogan that accureately conveys the essence of your Purple Cow is a script.  A script for the sneezer to use when she talks with her friends.  The slogan reminds the user, “Here’s why it’s worth recommending us; here’s why your friends and colleagues will be glad you told them about us.”  And best of all, a script guarantees that the word of mouth is passed on properly – that the prospect is coming to your for the right reason.  Do you have a slogan or positioning statement or remarkable boast that’s actually true?  is it consistent?  Is it worth passing on?
• If you’re in an intangibles business, your business card is a big part of what you sell.  What if everyone in your company had to carry a second business card?  Something remarkable.  So go do it!
• It’s a lot easier to sell something that people are already in the mood to buy.  Consumers with needs are the ones most likely to respond to your solutions.  You need to figure out who’s buying, and then solve their problem.  The alternative is to start with a problem that you can solve for your customer (who realizes he has a problem!).  Then once you’ve come up with a solution that is so remarkable that the early adopters among this population will gleefully respond, you’ve got to promote it in a medium where those most likely to sneeze are actually paying attention.
• In almost every market, the boring slot is filled.  The product designed to appeal to the largest possible audience already exists, and displacing it is awfully difficult.  The real growth comes with products that annoy, offend, don’t appeal, are too expensive, too cheap, too heavy, too complicated, too simple – too something.  (of course, they’re too too for some people, but just perfect for others.)

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• Do you have the email addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do?  If not, start getting them.  If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be super-special?
• Could you make a collectible version of your product?
• Almost without exception, changing a product for the sake of changing it is worse than doing nothing.  Doing nothing is not as good as doing something great.  But marketing just to keep busy is worse than nothing at all.
• Your company can’t survive by fulfilling basic needs.  You must somehow connect with passionate early adopters and get those adopters to spread the word through the curve.  Smart businesses target markets where there’s already something that is more than a hobby but a little less than an obsession.
• First the market niche first, and then make remarkable products… not the other way around.  Go for the edges.  Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing and financial results you seek.  It’s not the tactics or the plan that joins the Purple Cow products together.  It’s the process organizations use to discover the fringes that make their products remarkable.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• Direct marketers realize that measurement is the key to success.  Figure out what works, and do it more!  Measurement means admitting what’s broken so you can fix it.  Companies that measure will quickly optimize their offerings and make them more virus-worthy.
• Once you have managed to create something truly remarkable, the challenge is to do two things simultaneously:  1) Milk the Cow for everything it’s worth.  Figure out how to extend it and profit from it for as long as possible.  2)  Create an environment where you are likely to invent a new Purple Cow in time to replace the first one when its benefits inevitably trail off.
• The opposite of remarkable is “very good.”  Very good is an everyday occurrence and hardly worth mentioning.  Are you making very good stuff?  If so, how fast can you stop?
• More often than not, it’s an extraneous exotic ingredient or fancy packaging that people notice, not the effectiveness of the potion.
• Most companies are so afraid of offending or appearing ridiculous that they steer far away from any path that might lead them to this result.  They make boring products because they don’t want to be interesting.  The result is something boring and safe.  How could you modify your product or service so that you’d show up on the next episode of Saturday Night Live or in a spoof of your industry’s trade journal?

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• When faced with a market where no one is listening, the smartest plan is usually to leave.
• Differentiate your customers  Find the group that’s most profitable.  Find the group that’s most likely to sneeze.  Figure out how to develop/advertise/reward either group.  Ignore the rest.  Your ads (and your products!) shouldn’t cater to the masses.  Your ads (and products) should cater to the customers you’d choose if you could hand pick them.
• As consumers get better at ignoring mass media, mass media stops working.  They may be a lot of consumers out there, but they’re busy consumers, and it’s just easier to go with the name they recognize.
• Make a list of competitors who are not trying to be everything to everyone.  Are they outperforming you?  If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be?  Why not launch a product to complete with your own – a product that does nothing but appeal to this market?
• If you are remarkable, it’s likely that some people will not like you.  Criticism comes to those who stand out.  We mistakenly believe that criticism leads to failure.  We often respond to our aversion to criticism by hiding, avoid the negative feedback, and thus guaranteeing that we won’t succeed.  Remember, you do not equal the project.  Criticism of the project is not criticism of you.  And since just about everyone is petrified of the Purple Cow, you can be remarkable with even less effort than you think.
• What tactics does your firm use that involve following the leader?  What if you abandoned them and did something very different instead?  If you acknowledge that you’ll never catch up by being the same, make a list of ways you can catch up by being different.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• No one is going to eagerly adapt to your product, so you must design a product that is remarkable enough to attract the early adopters – but is flexible enough and attractive enough that those adopters will have an easy time spreading the idea to the rest of the curve.  Always invest in ideas that spread.
• Don’t try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody.
• Target the niches in huge markets.
• Put all of your new product developments through this analysis, and you’ll discover which ones are most likely to catch on: How smooth and easy is it to spread your idea?  How often will people sneeze it to their friends?  How tightly knit is the group you’re targeting – do they talk much?  Do they believe each other?  How reputable are the people most likely to promote your idea?  How persistent is it – is it a fad that has to spread fast before it dies, or will the idea have legs?
• Design your products to be virus-worthy in the first place.
• The Purple Cow is not a cheap shortcut.  It is, however, your best strategy for growth.
• The vast majority of ads reach people who are not in the market for what’s being sold, or who aren’t likely to tell their friends and peers about what they’ve learned.  It is useless to advertise to anyone (except interested sneezers with influence).  You need to do this advertising when these consumers are actually looking for help, and in a place where they’ll find you.  Obviously, the chances you have to advertise to this select audience are rare.  The rest of the time, you need to be investing in the Purple Cow:  Products, services, and techniques so useful, interesting, outrageous, and noteworthy that the market will want to listen to what you have to say… In fact, you must develop products, services, and techniques that the market will actually seek out.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• Most people can’t buy your product (lack of money, time, or want).  If you want to grow your market share or launch something new, you have a significant challenge ahead.  Bottom line?  All the obvious targets are gone, so people aren’t likely to have easily solved problems.  Consumers are hard to reach because they ignore you.  Satisfied customers are less likely to tell their friends.  The old rules don’t work so well any more.
• The old rule was: Create safe, ordinary products and combine them with great marketing.
• The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out.
• The Purple Cow works, but, alas, it doesn’t last as long as good old TV domination did.
• One way to figure out a great theory is to look at what’s working in the real world and figure out what the various successes have in common.  The most successful companies of today are the outliers.  The reason it’s so hard to follow the leader is this:  The leader is the leader because they did something remarkable.  And that remarkable is now taken – it’s no longer remarkable when you do it.
• Just because something is a typical ad, doesn’t mean it can’t be remarkable.
• Awareness is not the point.  Kmart has plenty of awareness.  So what?
• What’s missing isn’t the ideas.  It’s your will to execute them.  In fact, it’s safer to be risky – to fortify your desire to do truly amazing things.
• Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.
• Never invest in a dying product.  Take the profits and reinvest them in building a new Purple Cow.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• This book is about the why, the what, and the how of remarkable.
• Something remarkable is worth talking about, worth noticing.  It’s exceptional, new, interesting.  It’s a Purple Cow.
• Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service.  Not just slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering itself isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible.
• I believe we’ve now reached the point where we can no longer market directly to the masses.
• This is a book about why you need to put a Purple Cow into everything you build, why TV and mass media are no longer your secret weapons, and why the profession of marketing has been changed forever.
• Before Advertising — there was word of mouth.
• During Advertising — If you advertised directly to the masses, sales would go up.
• After Advertising — The power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to diffuse through segments of the population at rocket speed.
• As marketers, we know the old stuff isn’t working.  Consumers are too busy to pay attention to advertising.
• Companies win when they treat the attention of their prospects as an asset, not as a resource to be strip mined and then abandoned.
• First, you want to find people who want to buy within your products genre.  Then you need to find people who actually want to buy a new brand.  Finally, you need to find the people willing to listen to you talk about your new offering.  You just went from an audience of everyone to an audience of a fraction the size.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York, New York: Penguin.

• If you want to become a superstar, those who make far more than the average person.  Then you must find a goal that has a dip far greater than the average business venture.  This isn’t for everyone.
• Not only do you need to find a dip you can conquer; but you need to recognize and quit all of the col-de-sacs you are currently running through.
• Here are seven reasons you might fail to become the best in the world.  1) You run out of time and quit.  2) You run out of money and quit.  3) You get scared and quit.  4) You aren’t serious about it and quit.  5) You lose interest or enthusiasm and settle for mediocre then quit.  6) You focus on the short term, instead of the long.  7) You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the world at because you/your team doesn’t have the talent.
• The goal of any competitor is to create the valley of death… a dip so long and so deep, that the competition can’t catch up.
• You cannot average your way to success.  Average is for losers.  Isn’t your time, resources, career, and reputation worth being the best in the world?  The temptation to be average is just another kind of quitting.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2007). The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You when to Quit. New York, New York: Portfolio.

• The dip creates scarcity, which creates value.  Never go after a market where you don’t have the time, resources, or perseverance to make it through the dip AND become the best in the world.  The people who set out looking for and ready for the dip are the most successful in the world.  The brave thing to do is to tough it out and end up on the other side.  The mature thing to do is not even start out on a business venture if you know you’ll probably not make it through the dip.  And the stupid thing to do is to start, give it your best shot, waste a lot of time and money, and then quit in the middle of the dip.
• The fact that the dip is difficult to get through, works to your advantage.  The reason you are here is to solve the hard problems.  Without the problems, you would be easily replaceable.  The dip is reason you are here, and it’s your best friend.  Embrace the dip, and treat it like the opportunity it really is.
• Don’t be one of those people who refuse to quit.  The ones who settle for mediocre just so they don’t have to admit they can’t be the best in the world at one particular thing.  So they just continue spending time and money to keep their pride intact.  What a waste.  If you can’t make it through the dip, then don’t start.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2007). The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You when to Quit. New York, New York: Portfolio.

• Being the best in the world is seriously underrated.  Being number one has enormous benefits over number two and is incomparable to number three.
• Once you understand the common sinkhole that trips up so many people, the dip, you’ll be one step closer to getting through it.
• Winners quit all the time.  They just quit the right stuff at the right time.  You must recognize when you should quit early in order to refocus on something new.  Quit the wrong stuff and stick with the right stuff.  And have the guts to do one or the other.
• Quitting is often a great strategy.  You can’t expect to be able to do everything, especially if you intend on being the best in the world at something.  If you’re not going to put in the effort to become the best in the world, what’s the point in getting into the marketplace at all?
• Most people tell you that you need to persevere, keep pushing through, and never quit.  If this is true, then why do organizations who aren’t trying as hard as you prosper?  The truth is, you need to quit a lot more than you are doing now.  Strategic quitting is the secret of successful organizations.  Reactive quitting is the bane of those who fail to get what they want.
• There are two curves that explain the majority of situations that you will ever face.  The first curve is the dip (seen on the cover of this book).  Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the dip.  At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun.  Then you hit the dip.  The dip is the long slog between starting and mastering.  It’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.  It’s the space between where you are and where you want to be. NOTE: Successful people don’t just ride out the dip.  They lean into the dip, pushing harder, and changing the rules as they go.
• The second curve is the col-de-sac.  It’s a situation where you work, and work, and work, and nothing really changes.  It doesn’t get much better and it doesn’t get much worse.  These are those deadend jobs… the ones keeping you from doing something better.  If you ever find yourself in one of these, you must get out.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2007). The Dip: A Little Book that Teaches You when to Quit. New York, New York: Portfolio.

Which parts of a person can you change?
We can change our skills and knowledge, but we can’t change our talents and strengths.  You can change your enduring patterns of thought, feeling, or behavior (self awareness, values, beliefs, etc).  A person can be taught to perform a skill, and a person can be informed about something.  However, those core talents and strengths you have such as competitiveness, empathy, a craving for significance or achievement… those things can never change.  So trust them, own them, honor them.  Then combine them with your skills and knowledge, and then you’ll make a real impact in the world.

Where does passion fit in to strengths?
Passion is the building block of your strengths, but is relatively meaningless by itself.  If you’re going to take your passions and actually put them to use, you’ve got to combine them with something specific.  Strengths are passions plus precision.  It’s your responsibility to bring your passions down to earth and tie them to specific actions/activities if you want to live a strengths-based life.

How do I deal with people who weaken me?
First, stop being around them.  Second, team up with someone who softens their rough edges.  Third, offer up one of your strengths and see if you can drag him into a place where he doesn’t bug you as much.  Fourth, try shifting your perspective.  Look at them through the lens of their strengths.

How do you talk about your strengths without boasting?
You should be talking to your manager about your strengths.  Frame it as, “Here’s a couple of things I can do to help us reach our objective.”  Tie your strength to the activity and then to the goal you have as a team.

How do you talk about your weakness without whining?
First, don’t say, “This is a weakness of mine.”  Say, “This is where my productivity is going to be lowest.”  Second, have a couple of things you think you can do about it.

If you want to know what job you should have, here are three powerful questions you should ask yourself.
Why? — Does the purpose of the job seems to invigorate or excite you at all?
Who with? — Do the people you are going to be working with share your work ethic, values?  Have you met any of them?
What? — What are you actually going to be doing?  What are the actual activities that will fill your week?

Citation Information:  Buckingham, M. (2008). The Truth About You: Your Secret to Success. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.

• Create.. an irresistible energy… to fly beyond all self-imposed limitations.
• Your security is determined by your ability to define what it is you do that has value.  The clearer you can be on what it is you do well and what provides value for someone else, the more security you have.
• Your work must integrate your skills, your personality tendencies, and your interests.
• The more you know and understand about yourself and match that up with business direction, the more you exponentially increase your chances for success.
• Most of us have 3 or 4 ideas a year that would make us millionaires if we just did something with those ideas.
• Beware of this change from a time-and-effort economy to a results-based economy.
• When you get to heaven, God is likely going to ask you why you weren’t more of you.

Citation Information:  Miller, D. (2007). 48 Days to the Work You Love. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group.

• To the Hebrew man, his Thursday morning activities were just as much an expression of worship as being in the synagogue on the Sabbath.  Nothing in scripture depicts the christian life as divided into sacred and secular parts.  Rather, it shows a unified life, one of wholeness, in which everything we do is service to God, including our daily work, whatever that may be.
• If you know where you are going, you can respond to priorities rather than circumstances.
• Everyone has dreams, but very few ever turn those into goals.  The difference between a dream and a goal is that a goal is a dream with a timeframe of action attached.
• Doesn’t God use physical unrest as a method of telling us something is out of alignment.
• Sanctified ignorance is the belief that if we love God and have committed our lives to him, everything will work out.  Sanctified ignorance is immature theology.
• The secret to creating a career that is both nurturing to the soul and the pocketbook is, as theologian Frederick Burchner said, to find where “your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.”  There you will find a job, a career, a business, and a life worth living.
• Look at how God has uniquely gifted you in your skills and abilities, personality traits, and values, dreams, and passions.  It is in these that we find the authentic path designed for us for a purpose driven life.
• Eighty percent of decisions should be made immediately.

Citation Information:  Miller, D. (2007). 48 Days to the Work You Love. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group.

• The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play.
• Success is not a future event – it is the “progressive realization of worthwhile goals.”  Thus, either you are successful today or you are not.
• Power of confidence in career choice comes from looking inward for the alignment of personal characteristics not from looking outward to where “opportunities lie”.
• Your only security is knowing what you do well.  Knowing your areas of competence will give you freedom.
• Guard against letting setbacks embitter you.  Look for seeds of opportunity in that situation.
• If you are in a negative environment, take a fresh look at yourself, define where you want to be, and develop a clear plan of action for getting there.
• As soon as we are able to create a clear plan for the future, those feelings dissipate and are replaced by hope, optimism, and enthusiasm.  In all my years of coaching, I have never seen a person who has a clear plan and goals who is also depressed.  They just don’t go together.
• Vocation then is not so much pursuing a goal as it is listening for a voice.  Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen for that voice telling me who I am.  Vocation does not come from willfulness but from listening.

Citation Information:  Miller, D. (2007). 48 Days to the Work You Love. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group.

• Character creep happens subtly and slowly. It is a methodical process where small compromises and rationalizations lead to areas we never thought we would go.
• Why should we care? Because our families are at stake. Our careers are at stake. Our impact in the world is at stake.
• We must acknowledge where we are cutting corners and identify where we are vulnerable.
• If you’re not willing to be bold with fellow friends to the point of risking the friendship, then your friendship has superficial value.
• You can start over, no matter what happens.
• Re-evaluate the smallest areas of your life and business practice. This is where the Creep strikes first. He is out there waiting for you to bend the truth, mismanage small decisions, and take a haphazard approach to the details. It’s time to find some sand and draw a line.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Deadly Viper Character Assassins is a simple book on character for the rest of us. No psychobabble, no research-driven clinical discussion. We’re just two guys who have begun a strategic conversation with each other on the topic of integrity. We now invite you, our fellow grasshopper, to join us.
• Bottom line: We’re all a mess, and we all have character issues.
• Let’s start here: Life is about mistakes, grace, more mistakes, and then greater grace. Character isn’t a destination, but a journey towards becoming a more whole, complete, and healthy leader.
• If you don’t give grace and mercy to the defeated, you are not a great leader.
• Character is both a personal and a community concept. If you are a person of great character, all those around you benefit. If you lack character, everyone pays.
• We need to train together, fight together, and watch each other’s backs. If you lack the guys to risk your personal reputation for someone else, then your character is vacant and empty.

Citation Information:  Foster, M. Wilhite, J. (2007). Deadly Viper Character Assassins. Ventura, California: Ether.

• Changing the status quo will give you the opportunity to be remarkable.  In other words, doing something different than what everyone expects.
• All the supplies are — the gears, the levers, the proof, the ideas — but the only thing standing between you and your life as you wish it were, is fear.
• The essence of leadership is being aware of your fear and seeing it in the people you wish to lead.  It won’t go away, but awareness is the key to making progress.
• Ideas that spread, win.
• We choose not to be remarkable because we’re worried about criticism.
• Always create something that some critics will criticize. The brown cow never gets noticed, but a purple cow will.
• Exist to help the tribe find something, to thrive. Get out in front, make a point, challenge convention, and speak up.
• The first thing a leader should focus on is tightening the tribe.  Quicker communication, more passionate.
• Real leaders step INTO discomfort.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• Great teams do not hold back with one another.  They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry.  They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal (an act of retaliation).
• Even the most trusting of teams mix it up, a lot.  Every effective team I have ever observed had a substantial level of debate.
• Teamwork beings by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.
• Being political is when people choose their words and actions based on how they want others to react, rather than based on what they really think.
• If you cannot separate debate from your personal feelings, you will never be a person anyone wants to join as a team member.  You must not let business opinions and decisions affect your personal relationship with your team members.

• People today yearn for change, they relish being part of a movement, and they talk about things that are remarkable, not boring.
• When starting a business, you can’t be anymore successful than your competition if you are doing all the same basic things.  You must do something dramatic to set yourself apart.
• The four ways of tribe communication are leader to tribe, tribe to leader, member to member, and member to outsider.
• Leaders increase tribe effectiveness by transforming a shared interest into a passionate goal and desire for change, providing tools to allow members to tighten their communication, and leveraging the tribe to grow and gain new members.
• Great ideas spread, so promote ideas that will result in connections.
• Give your tribe something to do… to contribute.
• Motivate, connect, leverage.
• Send out a newsletter telling about your tribes accomplishments.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

• A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.
• Tribes must have a shared interest and a way to communicate.
• One or more person can lead a tribe.
• People want to take AND give to a tribe in order to belong.
• All the tools we need are available. All that’s missing is you, your vision, and your passion.  And all of it is worthless if you don’t decide to lead us.
• We need you.  You’re a leader, and we need you.
• Consumers have decided to spend time and money on things that matter, things they can believe in.
• We are stuck acting like managers or employees, instead of like the leaders we could become.
• The peopel who like their jobs the most are also the ones who are doing the best work, making the grestest impact, and the changing the most.
• There is a tribe of believers just waiting for you to connect them. to one another and lead them where they want to go.
• Marketing used to be about advertising, but advertising is expensive.  Today, marketing is about engaging with the tribe and delivering products and services with stories that spread.

Citation Information:  Godin, S. (2008). Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. New York, New York: Penguin Group.

I started a new book today called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni.  The format of the book is quite different than most, as the entire first half of the book is a fable about a woman named Kathryn who has taken over as CEO of a company in the Silicon Valley.  The fable begins two years after this start-up company had been recognized as one of the most talented and funded group of individuals ever to come out of the technology culture.  However, there has been a meltdown in the leadership, and Kathryn has stepped in to try and cleanup the mess. I’ve learned a lot from Kathyrn over the first part of the fable.

Leaders aren’t afraid of the unpopular course. Sometimes being a leader means having enough sense and patience not to jump right into the middle of an obvious problem… even when everyone else thinks that’s exactly what you should be doing.  This doesn’t mean you’re avoiding the situation, but getting better acquainted with those involved and the spirit of the problem.

Leaders do not shoot their wounded. They realize that teamwork is the ultimate competitive advantage, because it’s so rare and powerful.  If a team member gets insulted, pushed down, or even fired every time they fail—whether inside or outside the company—imagine how that makes everyone else feel.

Leaders confidently draw from past experience. It’s really comforting to knowing that even the best leaders can doubt themselves and their abilities.  However, they never allow self-doubt to continually weigh them down, because they are able to draw on their past wins and break through the strongest of barriers.

• To change the way others see you, first you have to learn to see yourself as others see you.
• Learn to see yourself as in business rather than being an employee.  Are you in business or do you just have a job?  Teach your team members to be independent business professional (self-employeed).
• People do business with you because of your business skills.
• You will be far more competent at working with other people, as well as leading others, when they sense that you are evaluating yourself at least as harshly as you evaluate them.
• Part of character strength is being able to routinely postpone gratification— sometimes indefinitely.
• Long before you can hope to lead others, you must learn to lead yourself.  You can earn the respect of those you hope to lead by demonstrating easily recognizable character strength.
• Obviously, the more common a commodity, the lower the market price.  You need to offer a product which isn’t commonplace in the market, as your value in business derives from possessing rare commodities. Strength of character is like gold.
• By remaining exactly the same today as you were yesterday, you are guaranteeing that tomorrow will be no better than today.

Citation Information:  Lapin, D. (2002). Thou Shall Prosper: Ten Commandments for Making Money. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.