Guest speaker at the Book Connection this Friday

The Southlake Chamber of Commerce Book Connection is delighted to have a guest speaker this month! Author (and networking friend, and all around good guy) John Carroll of Tres Coaching Services™ will be speaking on “How to Make a Global Difference.”

Author John Carroll

John is the author of the book Globalization: America’s Leadership Challenge Ahead, published this past January. A familiar face to business networkers in the north Texas area, John has enjoyed success in business for thirty years, serving as Director, Vice President and COO for Fortune 1000 companies, leading high-performing organizations that generated more than $1 billion in revenue. He’s also founder of the Back to Basics 2.0^SM business series, a program to help entrepreneurs and small business owners, “Achieve the results to move beyond their vision.”

Globalization takes a hard look at the interconnected nature of the global economy in this age of Internet, e-commerce and the instant, worldwide delivery of information through social media. Changes in this evolving business arena challenges business leaders and offers them the opportunity to take a role in shaping the future. Lisa Petrilli, CEO and author of The Introvert's Guide to Success in Business and Leadership, says of John’s book, “By encouraging leaders to take responsibility for responding to the difficult questions of our time, and to empower themselves to create positive momentum toward global prosperity and peace, John shows us a clear and inspiring path forward.”

The Book Connection is offered as a service to the community by the Southlake Chamber, and is open to everyone. We meet at the Southlake Public Library, 1400 Main Street, Suite 130, in Southlake Town Square. It’ll look like the library is closed, but come on in. They’ll have free Starbucks coffee ready.

You can contact me if you have any questions about the Book Connection, either through the comments here or by calling the phone number shown at the right. You can get more information about John and Tres Coaching Services™ here, and about his new book on Amazon.

Hope to see you Friday morning!

The Heart and Soul of Animal Rescue

Southlake Chamber Book Connection regular Roy Krymis has a movie coming out this month.

Wow, doesn't that sound impressive? It should—this has been Roy's dream for years, and he worked very, very hard to make it happen. He's always had a passion for animals, particularly rescue animals, and their relationships with the people who help and protect them. He was also very interested in the process of movie making, so combining the two interests seemed pretty natural.

Natural, but not easy. It was a long, slow process, starting with Roy learning some of the ins and outs of making a documentary, necessitating many, many trips back and forth between DFW and Los Angeles. He spent a few years getting all the details lined up, and all the obstacles cleared away. He and his film crew finally started actual shooting a few months ago. Then came editing. Then arranging distribution and DVD publication.

And now The Heart and Soul of Animal Rescue is in a movie theater.

The Book Connection group has shared in this adventure with him (in a we-only-talk-once-a-month kind of way), so we're all looking forward to seeing the finished product. Please join us!

You can buy tickets in advance, get more information and see a clip from the movie at Spinners End Media.

Congratulations, Roy, and I can't wait to see it!

Great article by Forbes

Forbes.com has some really helpful tips about networking.

It's sometimes tough to walk into a room full of people you don't know, especially if you're at all shy. Personally, I often have to gird my mental loins before I dive in, and still there are times I'm just too awkward—or shy or uncomfortable or lazy or something—to do much besides hang out with the people I already know. That's not the most productive use of networking time! The Forbes article has some great advice on how to do it better.

BTW, I talked about the article on OP's Facebook page. Check it out!

Fun with language

All right, it's a little silly, and not strictly SFW (no nekkid photos or anything, and the language is only offensive if your co-workers read Finnish, but, come on. It's cracked.com, and your boss is gonna know.) Assuming you're on a break and your cube-mate isn't from Helsinki, check it out: a handy and useful list of 9 Foreign Words the English Language Desperately Needs.

Anyway…

So, as I was saying a year and a half ago….

Yes, it's been a while. I've been very, very bad about keeping up here, and I've decided I'm going to put a little more emphasis on this blog, and developing this little corner of my blogging world (I've paid quite a bit more attention to my other, non-business blog).

I'm changing blogging software, and using that as an opportunity to revamp and update everything. I'm not exactly positive what direction we'll be taking here, but it will, for sure, be informative. Hopefully entertaining as well.

Please stand by.

It's coming….

I'm working on an ad for Carolyn Morris and the 2010 North Texas Walk for PKD. I've created the sponsor poster for them the last few years, and this year Carolyn asked if I would also work on the flyer (to be displayed at local businesses and such), and the print ads. The national PKD Foundation office sent the flyer file; I just had to add the local sponsors' logos to it.

It's beautifully done, but it was created in InDesign. I use QuarkXpress. I decided I would give InDesign a try.

I now have a few things to say about it. And even more to say about Adobe.

This is just fair warning — there's a rant coming. If you're an InDesign fan, or if you think monopolies are good for business, you don't want to read it.

Working on Saturday?!?

A few years ago I decided I was no longer going to schedule work in the evenings and on weekends. (I still have to do it occasionally, but it's no longer a regular thing.) This weekend, though, I'm finishing up a group of 25 articles for a Monday morning deadline. The very last step is uploading them; the next-to-the-last step is writing "teasers," the metadescription copy that appears with the Google search results. They're very much like teasers on TV, the short bits that are designed to get you to watch the next episode or stay tuned for the following show. I used to have a hard time writing them. But then I got interested in Deadliest Catch, and decided to catch up (so to speak) by streaming the first five seasons on Netflix and watching one episode after another. Now all I have to do is imagine Mike Rowe saying, "Next time, on Deadliest Catch…" and I swear it just comes to me.

If only I could find a way to do that with titles. I'm not great at titles, I freely admit it. Fortunately, the topic I'm working on this month is pretty serious and calls for titles that aren't too flip or glib. Otherwise, I get kind of stymied. H. Allen Smith, one of my favorite writers, wrote once about a magazine writer named Quentin Reynolds. He cranked out articles by the dozen, and hated coming up with titles. It was hard for him, and even when he did come up with one he thought was good, the magazine's editors would inevitably change it. So eventually he started calling every article, "Christmas in Many Lands with Quentin Reynolds."

Works for me.

Oh! And before I forget, if you're a Baby Boomer, or know any, in the DFW area, don't miss Jean Keener's talk this coming Tuesday, 8/17, at the Keller Library. She'll be giving advice on Social Security and how to maximize our benefits. From the flyer:

• Five factors to consider when deciding when to apply for benefits
• Why you should always check your earnings record for accuracy
• How to coordinate benefits with your spouse
• How to minimize taxes on Social Security benefits
• How to coordinate Social Security with your other sources of retirement income

Apparently SS benefits aren't just cut-and-dried, and it's probably a really good idea to know how and why. Jean is smart and very well informed, and these talks are a great opportunity to ask questions — for free — and get advice from a financial expert.

See you there. Now, back to work!