Tag Archives: life lessons

What 50 Years Have Taught Me

Tomorrow I’m turning 50 years old and knowing that has caused me to be introspective about a few of the things those 50 years have taught me: *They’ve taught me that happiness comes when we put God first, family second, and everything else third. *They’ve taught me that excelling in the things of righteousness is […]

Use Them To Bless The Life Of Another

Over the past seven days I’ve given keynote speeches twice at Brigham Young University, once at Utah Valley University, I’ve spoken at a Women in Business Conference, I spoke at Southern Utah University, did a mentoring session, and I judged a High School business competition. As I was making the four hour drive back home […]

It Might Sound Like A Curse But It’s Been A Blessing

August 13th of this year marked the ten year anniversary of me writing a daily blog and hitting that ten year mark was the goal I had set for myself.  For ten long years I have literally written a blog five days a week, every single week, without missing a single day (other than National […]

TEN YEARS BABY!!! I MADE IT TEN YEARS!!!!

It was August 13, 2010 when I posted my very first blog.  I was CEO of my company MediConnect Global at the time.  My company had grown from 70ish employees to well over a thousand and I had been struggling to find a way to stay in touch with all of the employees in the […]

Everyone has a history that can be used to inspire others

Everyone has a story…a history…a series of failures and mistakes that have shaped them into the person they are today.  I, for one, believe we shouldn’t be ashamed of our story. Our story is what helped us become the person we are. That story is what taught us great life lessons that we might not […]

To Have Known Then All We Know Now

Tonight I hosted the female students that are in my Amy Rees Anderson Academic Entrepreneurs program at The Center for Growth and Opportunity at Utah State University in my home for a dinner and some girl chat. I also invited two of my female friends from the business community to join me and the students […]

Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

I’ve spent my day sick and unable to get anything done, which is a real bummer considering I just got back from being gone ten days and then immediately went up to Logan to speak at the University so today was supposed to be my first day of catch up, but that’s clearly going to […]

Greatness Takes Work

“The heights by great men reached and kept Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night.” -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Achieving greatness, whether in business, or a talent, or our personal lives, takes work….loads and loads of hard, dedicated, crazy amounts of work. And there will […]

To A Footstool A Chair Is Everything

Every Sunday our family has a tradition that as we sit around the kitchen table for dinner together we always go around the table and each take a turn sharing something that touched us in church that day. Then we discuss the thoughts shared.  This tradition is something we value tremendously because it’s a time […]

If You Hold A Cat By The Tail You Learn Things You Cannot Learn Any Other Way

“If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.” – Mark Twain Today was closing day for my son and his wife on their first home. It’s a starter home that will require some fixing up before they will be able to move in, but once we […]

WHAT AWESOME LOOKS LIKE: How To Excel In Business & Life

I have to say that starting the year off with a great big completed check on one of my big goals from my goal poster feels pretty fantastic! I finished writing my very first book ever and I’m going to be receiving my advanced copy of the book fresh off the presses from the publisher […]

How To Excel In Business And In Life

This morning I was interviewed for by Mary Crafts-Homer for her podcast, Crafting A Meaningful Life. Mary was the founder and CEO of Culinary Crafts, an incredibly successful catering business (she’s done events for many of the rich and famous like Oprah Winfrey, George W. Bush, Sir Elton John, etc), that she grew and recently […]

Ethics, Turbulence, Leadership and Integrity

Last week I flew to Driggs Idaho where we held our BYU Wheatley Ethics Advisory Council retreat. I’d never been to Driggs or Jackson Hole so I was really excited to get to see both places for the first time. But we had a bit of a harrowing experience on the trip when the Pilatus […]

Eight Years, 52 Weeks A Year, Five Days A Week, And More Than 2,000 Blog Posts Later

EIGHT YEARS! EIGHT years ago on August 13, 2010 I posted my very first blog post. At that time I committed to my employees that I would write a blog post to them every work day, five days a week, without fail from that point forward, writing every day except official holidays. When I made […]

Do You Know The Life They’ve Lived? Have You Thought To Ask?

Today I had an interesting experience while driving out to Deer Valley, Utah to go to a Limited Partner meeting for a venture capital fund I’m an investor in with my 25 year old son:   As we were making the one hour drive out to our meeting he began asking me questions about the companies […]

You’ll never get the same moment twice

“Life becomes more meaningful when you realize the simple fact that you’ll never get the same moment twice.” When my daughter-in-law came to drop off my adorable grandbaby this morning so I could babysit him for her while she went to work and I saw her lugging in the car seat and diaper back and […]

We can learn it the easy way or we can learn it the hard way and only we can decide which it will be

“Don’t touch that, it’s hot” my mom said as she pulled out a fresh tray of cookies from the oven – yet immediately I started thinking “I wonder how hot it really is? It’s probably not that hot. I think I’ll just see for myself just how hot it is.” You would think that nursing […]

Strength comes from overcoming obstacles

There are a lot of times in life we question why we have to go through really hard times. Years ago someone shared this story with me. I have probably shared this before with all of you but it just seemed like it was worth sharing it again today: Parable of the Butterfly A man […]

The Energy That Comes From Doing What You Love

“The only great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs Tonight I was asked to give a keynote speech to a group of entrepreneurs at Startup Ignition, a startup Bootcamp program for entrepreneurs. Truth be told as I was driving down to give my speech I was feeling exhausted from having had […]

The Lessons We Teach Our Children

I often have people tell me how impressed they are with the character of my son and daughter, and that compliment is often followed with the question – how did you do it? How did you raise those kids to be such great people? Well as much as I would love to take credit for […]

What you fill your mind with

“You are the books you read, the films you watch, the music you listen to, the people you meet, the dreams you have, the conversations you engage in. You are what you take from these. You are the sound of the ocean, the breath of fresh air, the brightest light and the darkest corner. You […]

What one successful entrepreneur said was the most important advice he could give me as I began my entrepreneurial journey

Yesterday afternoon someone I love dearly passed away.  He was Marion D. Woods to others, but he was Uncle Buzz to me and Buzz Woods to his good friends. He had been fighting cancer but unfortunately his body wasn’t able to fight it any longer and he passed away surrounded by his wife and children. […]

A Happy Thanksgiving Wish From Me to You

The best way I know how to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving is for me to express my thanks to all of you. I am so grateful to all of you make time in your lives for me and the words I share in my blog. And I am grateful for the comments and the […]

The Secret to Change

“The secret to change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” – Socrates A lot of things are changing in our world right now, and whenever there are times of major change, it often results in feelings of uncertainty, fear, and sometimes even dread. But […]

No Place To Go

No Place to Go  – (by Edgar A. Guest) The happiest nights I ever know Are those when I’ve No place to go, When the missus says When the day is through: “Tonight we don’t have A thing to do.” Oh, the joy of it, And the peace untold Of sitting ’round In my slippers […]

There Are No Mistakes – Only Discoveries

Those of you who read yesterday’s blog post learned that my 20 year old daughter Ashley’s birthday present to me this week was to write a few blog posts that I could use in order to give me a few nights off on my birthday week to enjoy myself. This post she wrote below is […]

Opportunities come when we actively seek to do good

First, I want to take the quick opportunity to say “Thank You!” to all those who sent birthday wishes my way. I can’t think of a better birthday gift then words of kindness from others and I received that today in spades 🙂 I also want to share with you an amazing birthday gift I received today […]

Everyone Needs Some “No Phone Time Together” (Our European Adventure)

Over the last two weeks my husband and I and our son Dalton and his wife Alexis and our daughter Ashley all went together on a European Family Adventure! We planned this trip to be our first family trip of just our own family because we wanted our daughter Ashley to get to know her […]

If Your Dog Were Your Teacher

I happen to have two of the most adorable dogs in the universe. They are super tiny and so so cute and our family loves those two dogs tremendously. Not only are they adorable, but if you observe dogs in general them they will teach you so many great life lessons. I found this list […]

One Chapter Ends And Another Begins

Last week I shared five blogs that each gave clips from different emails we had received from our daughter during her 18 month mission. I hope you all enjoyed hearing the life lessons she shared in those emails. Today was the final event of her 18 month journey – she gave a homecoming talk at […]