There is a Zen saying that is posted on my wall.it To her lover a beautiful woman is a delight, To a monk a distraction. To a mosquito a good meal.". When you a running a business it is so easy to let your passion overtake your ability to remember to keep honest to that passion and to keep seeing the world from different angles. listen to many podcasts that I don't totally agree with, I read blog posts from people who have a different view point.why? because I live and breath my brand but social media is part of my development to see my market from different viewpoints. Related articles. MORE >>

Yesterday I felt happy. Then I learned my mother has cancer. broke. know what it is to be broken. If there’s one thing I can truly call myself an expert in it’s the human mind. m an expert by experience and I think it’s no coincidence I do what I do for a living. feel a lot. Certainly now. Cancer. Mother. You know. There’s millions of people suffering and having cancer. There are no lessons to learn. When driving back home yesterday I wrote a blog post in my head. It’s more or less this one. When we have a hard time we often don’t want to share it publicly. The downs. You don’t want compassion. MORE >>

Something fascinating happened during Black Friday. It wasn't the mad hoards of people trampling one another for the latest electronic whiz-bang, and it wasn't the dreaded story of a major retailer's site going down, making them unable to capitalize on months of build-up, ad spends and hype (not to mention damage to the brand). We have entered a new era in marketing, and it's one where marketing and IT come together (and stop residing in their respective, vertical, ghettos within the organization). The bigger, more pressing, issue is leveraging technology to optimize pricing. Excited? Scared? MORE >>

The Commitment Engine: Making Work Worth It , by John Jantsch. Anybody who has ever read one of John’s blog posts or heard him speak knows he’s a straight shooting, plain speaking business leader who has a knack for making just good business sense available to everyone. In the Commitment Engine he shows us what commitment really means in a business and a personal sense. Commitment isn’t just sticking to your path no matter what, it’s finding and retaining the passion that makes your business sing. It’s making work fun. Psychic ownership. Think about it like this. MORE >>

Stephen Pepper is insurance administrator by day, youth worker and blogger by night. He and his wife run Youth Workin’ It , a not-for-profit site that provides consultancy and services for youth workers and organizations worldwide. This includes blogging 6 days a week about youth work. As part of our Blog the Festive Season series, we asked Stephen how he and his wife are preparing the blog for the festive season. What does preparing the Youth Workin’ It blog for the festive season mean? This will be your second festive season on the blog. What did you learn last year? MORE >>