“Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion.” – Muhammad Ali. At the age of 23 I made my first goal poster. It began with a bulletin board, a pair of scissors, and a glue stick. I then found pictures from magazines and printed other pictures I found on the Internet and I glued then […]
I’ve learned many lessons through my years of leading a company, but without question, the most surprising thing I learned was this: The thing you can do that will make you the strongest, is the thing that is most counter-intuitive to do: Be openly vulnerable. I am sure many of you are scratching your head […]
It has been said that the key to success is being ready to act when opportunity comes knocking at your door. Well hopefully you are ready, because opportunity is about to start knocking with a billion dollar vengeance! This particular opportunity starts with one word – Genealogy. Now before you tune out, you should know […]
Today, former republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney came to speak to 15,000 students down at Brigham Young University (BYU). I wasn’t able to make it down for the talk but both of my kids did and they came home this evening to go to a Utah Jazz basketball game with my husband and I and […]
According to an international poll recently conducted by Monster.com, an overwhelming majority of people believe that they could do a better job than their manager. When asked the question, “In your current or most recent job, do you think you could do a better job than your manager?” over 4,800 responded, and 84% of them […]
Life is short but apparently it can become a lot shorter if you spend your days dealing with a bad boss. In a recent study performed by Keas.com they found that 77% of employees experienced physical symptoms of stress from bad bosses and workers who had inconsiderate or uncommunicative managers were 60% more likely to suffer […]
Fear of failure is said to be the greatest barrier to one’s success, which makes total sense given that our fear of failure is what stops us from making attempts in the first place. Yet, can anyone blame us for fearing failure? Just think about it, from the first moment we are born we begin […]
Job security is something everyone longs for, and typically we moving up in the organization as a sign that our jobs are indeed secure. Increased wealth and opportunity are also things we long for, and a promotion at work can help to achieve that. But receiving a promotion doesn’t always come easy, so here are […]
You wake every morning miserable because you can’t stand the thought of going to the office to do a job you hate. You moan and groan so much about the job you hate that not only are you miserable, but everyone around you is as well. You get through each day of misery only to […]
One of the greatest things about becoming successful in business is the ability to take time to mentor young people who are just starting out. This week has been filled with one entrepreneurship extravaganza after another. It began with the IPOP Foundation (www.ipop.org) event at Alta High School with high school students pitching their entrepreneurial […]
“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.” – Og Mandino Each day we […]
“Research recently conducted by [Dr. Gail] Matthews shows that people who wrote down their goals, shared this information with a friend, and sent weekly updates to that friend were on average 33% more successful in accomplishing their stated goals than those who merely formulated goals.” Goal setting is one of the things I am the […]
Making money while making the world a better place – what could possibly be better than that? That is exactly the goal of impact investors. James Lee Sorenson, successful entrepreneur and philanthropist, calls it the “double bottom line,” and achieving that double bottom line is something he is incredibly passionate about. Impact investing is “doing […]
“Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.” C. W. Ceran I consider myself to be a somewhat intelligent person, but when someone explains a new concept to me in terms that are overly complex and unfamiliar, I struggle to easily grasp it. To learn a new concept, I need things described […]
To grow and improve is a desire that most all of us share. Yet, in order to grow and improve we must first be willing to acknowledge our areas of weakness; we must accept who we are in order to become something better. So how can we best recognize our weaknesses? We can stop defending […]
Have you ever been in a situation where you feel like you don’t know anyone in the room, or you are the new person, or you feel like the odd person out in a situation? I know I have. As a child our family moved a lot – and I mean a lot! Growing up […]
As we are nearing the start of a brand new year here in less than a month I just wanted to remind everyone that this is the perfect time to start thinking about what you want to put on your 2014 Goal Poster! For those who don’t know what I am referring to here is […]
The most impactful lesson we learned as a software development company was this: In the world of software systems, less can be a whole heck of a lot more, and more can often lead to a heck of a lot less. This point can best be illustrated by a personal example: While serving as the […]
“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.” -Victor Hugo Do you remember back to when you were a kid? When you blew out the birthday candles to make a wish with the belief that it would actually come true? Or when you pinned a towel to your shoulders and played […]
As a business leader, one of the many lessons I learned was that employees often viewed the world around them in ways that were completely different from what was actually going on. I observed time and time again employees who interpreted something one way when the reality was actually totally different. I learned that when […]
I was interviewed on Real Recognition Radio by Roy Saunderson and S. Max Brown and the episode aired earlier today. During the interviewed we discussed questions such as: Are there differences in the way men and women lead? What makes a great leader? How important is communication in a company? How to build a culture? How to […]
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking When an individual believes they know all the answers, they shut themselves down from the possibility that there is more they might learn on a subject. They limit themselves from experiencing personal growth and gaining intelligence. They are […]
We all have a finite number of hours in a day – 24 to be exact. What we choose to do with those hours is of the utmost importance. We can waste our time, or we can use our time to improve ourselves and our lives. I have always felt passionate about the importance of […]
Attracting the best and the brightest people to join your company is the goal of any good leadership team, but finding those people requires serious creativity in your recruiting efforts. Typically the strongest talent out there is going to be gainfully employed somewhere else. So the challenge becomes finding the people who are not out […]
The most powerful personality traits to develop in one’s quest for success are incurable optimism and integrity. Optimism is defined as “the belief that good things will happen to you and that negative events are temporary setbacks to be overcome.” (-Mayo Clinic). Integrity, as I would define it, is “doing the right thing, at the […]
When someone isn’t performing well at their job; or when they aren’t the right fit for a particular position; or when their personality isn’t a match for the company culture, one of the biggest disservices you can do to them is to not tell them the truth. As a CEO, I found that one of […]
Every day we hear of amazing new business ideas that some enterprising entrepreneur stumbled on and we find ourselves saying, “I wish I would have thought of that!” That comment is typically followed by a few moments of deep thought as we look in the deep recesses of our minds to see if that next […]
People ultimately choose to do business with people they like, and everyone likes someone who appreciates them. I once read a quote by the ever so brilliant writer known as Anonymous. It states, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” […]
Recently, I had the occasion to observe a group of employees who were working in a toxic work environment. I witnessed the decline of self-esteem in each one of them as they endured month after month of poor leadership and dysfunction in their workplace. I was truly amazed at the change to the countenance of […]
One of the biggest mistakes I made early on as an entrepreneur was hiring cheap lawyers or not using an expensive lawyer nearly enough, thinking I was saving money for my business. But over the years, the school of hard knocks taught me just how expensive cheap legal help can be. I don’t recall ever […]
