Mary Kay Ash
1918-2001
Founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics

Toys Were Us

It’s one thing for a business or industry to suffer a significant downturn. It’s quite another for an industry icon to disappear entirely. To wit: the Toys ‘R’ Us shutdown, liquidation and its soon to be total disappearance from the retail scene.

What can we learn from the demise of Toys ‘R’ Us? Vistage Speaker Marc Emmer offers a few take-aways from this debacle that you may face when your industry is up for disruption. Check out his one page post at the Vistage Research Center:  5 Lessons Learned.  How Suppliers Tried to Save Toys ‘R’ Us.

Leadership In Eight Easy Lessons

Tomes have been written about leadership, but maybe pictures may help provide some additional understanding and insight regarding the most important trait of every CEO: Leadership

Check out these compelling graphics regarding the essentials of leadership. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these eight counterintuitive graphics will give you much to consider and a checklist for evaluating yourself.

Michael Milken’s Meeting

(Say that fast three times)

If you like TED Talks, check out financier Michael Milken’s Annual conference website. Top notch thought leaders in a wide variety of fields, not just business, are featured in compelling video recordings of this year’s Milken Conference. There are dozens to choose from and you can search by topic and by prior year conferences. Click here for more. There is something here for everyone.

Voicemail Mayhem

We all have outgoing voicemail messages but have you ever wondered if these messages are inviting people to not call you again. Nancy Friedman’s has some advice about his matter.

Known internationally as “The Telephone Doctor,” Ms. Friedman has trained thousands of sales people and customer service reps how not to shoot themselves in the foot with a telephone.

This 2 min and 40 sec video by the Telephone Doctor is both instructive and entertaining. Chances are good you won’t want to take Nancy’s bet!  
 
And if you’re looking for an outgoing email response before heading to the beach, this creative response may help you return to a manageable email inbox.

Econ Recon

Stock Market Speed Bumps: The famous economist Paul Samuelson once quipped that “the stock market had predicted nine of the last five recessions.”  The economists at ITR Economics have for some time been calling for a pullback later this year or early next based on fundamentals other than the stock market.

However, in a recent blog posting ITR CEO Brian Beaulieu does urge his clients to take heed of some equity “speed bumps” that may pull the long bull market back in the barn over the winter. Four of these obstacles won’t surprise you but the fifth one might. Check out his list of “Five Inhibitors Between You and Capital Appreciation in Equities.”