Category: Professional Growth
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Lessons Learned
I was chatting with John Kottcamp the other day about leading and coaching people. I was reminded of a mentor of mine named Mike Winn. Like they say, “the difference between people is the books they’ve read and the people they’ve met”. Over the course of my life, many people have given me good advice,…
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Why before What
“Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” -Franklin D. Roosevelt I’ve been talking with my daughter about a charity that she wants to start. She’ll be calling it boxes of hope, which is essentially boxes full of items that would benefit children in need. Toys, treats, and books. She is…
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Never Lose Alone
I was enjoying listening to the classic rock band, The Doors, last night. There is a great song named “I’ve been down so long” … The famous lyric from the song is; “Well, I’ve been down so very damn long that it looks like up to me”. It’s a great example of literary wordplay. As…
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Being a good consultant, like being a doctor
“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” -Leo Tolstoy My grandpa never met a stranger, he loved people and loved talking to them. My grandma used to say, “waking up, when his feet hit the floor his mouth started moving”. As a small boy when I spent time with them, we’d have coffee cake in…
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Modeling Good Consulting
Dear Team, I am nothing but thrilled about the progress we’ve made in our business over the last couple of months. That is not to say that we still don’t have a long way to go but we have a direction now and the opportunity to do great work. We grew up doing SDL Tridion implementations,…
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The Marketplace of Ideas
It takes all kinds of people. One of the things I enjoy most about Tahzoo is the diversity in thinking and talent within the company. We are truly a team of SMART and HAPPY people. Over the last few weeks, as we’ve onboarded new clients and projects, I’ve seen the best of our company has to…
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The Johnny Tsunami of Tahzoo
“Treat objections as requests for further information.” – Brian Tracy I had to get the windows in my home cleaned yesterday. There was a nice young gentleman who came over, he was polite and quiet. He proceeded to clean all of the windows inside and out over the course of a few hours. My house…
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What I Learned From My Best Customer
I want to tell you a story about one of my best customers, Gene. As a young account rep at Microsoft, I was tasked with managing the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). For some context: At that time USDA had 29 sub-agencies, over 100,000 employees and an IT budget of well over $1.5B. The organization,…
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Conflict Resolution
I’ve been thinking about conflict for the past couple of weeks. I thought it would be a good idea to share my perspective and some thoughts around the inevitable conflict that arises when humans work together and how to manage it from my perspective. I wrote out the company values in an effort to provide…