photo by jonrawlinson 

Inspiration is a funny thing.  You can’t touch it, you can’t always explain it or where it came from but it’s important to occasionally get it renewed.

As a small business owner, if you’re not inspired by something you are likely headed for a long and painful decline.  Unlike the corporate world or working for someone else, there’s really no where to hide.  The good news is that you only answer to yourself.  The bad news is that when you aren’t buying into it, no one else is either.

It’s difficult to do your best work, sometimes difficult to just get out of bed when you’re not inspired.

It’s difficult to display leadership, sell your product or service or deliver impressive results when you’re not inspired.

Where does your inspiration come from?

“In the long run, men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, they had better aim at something high.”                            Henry David Thoreau

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photo by PPDIGITAL 

Have you ever had a situation where you learned something and you thought you knew it – maybe you even passed it along to other people, and then you saw the same idea with a slight variation and it suddenly made a lot more sense?  Where it’s like suddenly getting hit with the Hammer of Clarity (catchy eh?  I just made that up…)

Yeah – me neither…! 

Actually that happened to me yesterday when I was reading the excellent eZine / Blog from Robert Middleton of Action Plan Marketing. 

Think back to the last networking event you went to – maybe it was a chamber meeting, or just some sort of after hours social event.

Did you happen to run into someone that just started rattling on about their business?  (The odds are pretty good that you did).  Did you start coming up with creative escape plans that involved Batman’s utility belt or a ninja smoke bomb? Read More…

photo by Nicholas_T 

I had the chance to see the movie “21″ last night and one of the central themes of the movie really stood out to me.  The main character is a super-smart kid from humble roots in Boston and is in desperate need of a full ride scholarship to Harvard Medical school (Harvard Med apparently costs about $300K for tuition and living expenses…).

The full ride scholarship is highly contested and in the end goes to the candidate that can dazzle the judges with their life experience story.  The problem our protagonist has is that he doesn’t really have any life experiences that are particularly dazzling, despite near perfect test scores and 3 years at MIT with a 4.0 GPA.

You’ll have to check out the movie to find out what happens, but it’s definitely worth watching, it’s entertaining and based on a true story.

What’s this got to do with business?

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Photo by Jpctalbot

Linked In has been around for a while now, but it appears to have hit a a tipping point recently with well over 20 Million people on the free online networking tool.

According to the statistics, over 47 thousand people were added to my network…just in the last day!  My network consists of my direct links and 2 levels below that (3 degrees of separation).

What does that mean?  It means that a tool that’s been useful so far is only going to become more useful and that pace is picking up.  It means that now is the time to jump on the bandwagon and start taking advantage of the opportunities.

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Picture by Darwin Bell

Have you ever been watching TV when you were really hungry?

The pizza ad with the impossibly good looking slices of gooey cheese and crispy crust, super piled high with great looking toppings.

The steak on the grill just that’s just about done, juices dripping down into the flames and the char marks in perfect stripes across the top.

The decadent chocolate dessert with ice cream and chocolate sauce drizzled on it.

I’ll admit, I have been swayed to try out certain restaurants and foods just because of the commercials (curse you Taco Bell…next time I’m saying no!!!).  Invariably they don’t live up to my expectations, but they do succeed in getting me to give them a try, which is really the point. Read More…