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When I was in grade school, we had fundraisers which required each kid to sell a minimum allotment of stuff in order to fund field trips, school programs, and clubs.  Usually we had to sell candy bars. I was terrible at this. I’d trudge from house-to-house after school, knocking on doors and asking people to buy….

I’ve been hired as a rep 8 times, a manager 5 times and received at least twice that many offers that I’ve turned down. Contrary to conventional wisdom, only once did I have an inside “connection” who helped me get an interview. I never brought a “rolodex of C-level contacts”.  Sometimes, I was even entering an…

Over the last few years, I’ve put on a few extra pounds that I’d like to lose. Despite my best efforts at exercising like a lunatic, I’ve learned that I cannot “outrun a Twinkie”. So I spent the last several months reading about different diet & exercise plans. I’ve read about Paleo, Primal, Keto and…

A long time ago in a land far away, I was suckered into being the Little League Coach for my son’s team. Although I was new to coaching and was an awful baseball player myself, I did one thing right – I assigned our best players to the best positions.

Last week my son Zack’s car broke down on the way to  work.  This was the first of a small avalanche of problems: He rescheduled all of his shoots for the next day and dropped his car off at the mechanic. He drove 30 miles to my house to borrow my car. The next morning, he woke…

I’m a big fan of keeping things simple by following a proven routine for getting things done that happen regularly.   I eat the same thing for breakfast and for lunch nearly every day. I follow a consistent exercise routine. I have a handful of favorite T-shirts and shorts that I wear all the time. I like…

When I was about 8 years old, we used to play “Blind Man’s Bluff” in my house. This is “It” tag, with the person who is “It” wearing a blindfold. This was an extremely fun game to play indoors. Especially for me, who was nicknamed Steven “Turtle” Ainslie by my older sister because I ran too…

Back in 2015, our two cats died of natural causes within a few months of each other. We had rescued them 13  years earlier from the swamps in South Florida. They’d been with us through 7 relocations, 8 jobs, 3 dogs, 6 surgeries (theirs and ours) and a bunch of adventures.

As sales managers, we are frequently the first point of escalation for a customer satisfaction issue, a complaint about sales, and many other “customer problems.”  Without a good system for managing these, we can get caught up in the frenzy and say things we really don’t mean. 

Back in high school, my gym teacher would have us run outside every Wednesday – no matter what the weather was like.  One morning in late December, we were out running and it was snowing like crazy. We must have had 4 inches fall in less than an hour. For some reason,  my gym teacher…