I’d like to introduce you to a few of my friends and give you some links to what you can get from them (Free or otherwise. They’ve got great stuff and they are my friends after all.). They are all good, smart, thoughtful people, offering business the best of the best (IMHO). Check them out.

Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies, has written another wonderful book that will help you with the ‘sales’ end of your job: SNAP Selling. Visit her new site. There are fabulous freebies that she’s offering. Her ideas are solid, her writing is clear, and she understands the buyer’s buying decision issues (I’ve even written a bit for the book – discussing Buying Facilitation™, naturally) and offers help to get a buyer’s attention in this insane world where everything is fighting for our buyers’ attention. Go to Amazon.com and buy the book, and then go to her site and sign up for the free resources. Jill is one of the smart ones in the field, and I respect her greatly.

Leadership Excellence, Sales and Service Excellence, and Personal Excellence Magazines have been around decades, offering articles from new thinkers that are consistently solid and interesting. They have two new products that you can use:  ABC Leadership Development Tests and Templates and Personal Excellence Plan. I’d also like you to consider subscribing (yes, and giving them real money to do so).  This magazine has been a bellweather for integrity in business: Leadership Excellence will continue to shape future business successes. Our mission (to help you find a wiser, better way to live your life and lead your organization) is one of positive growth and improvement. And as our 25-year track record shows, we’ve found the means to lasting advancement. Continue browsing LeaderExcel.com to learn more about what Leadership Excellence can do for you.

How about Trust-Building – on line! Imagine! Meri Aaron Walker will teach you how to get friends, meet clients, and have virtual relationships on the net. Here is what she says about her work: I sell a distance relationship management solution. In a nutshell, I help people encounter and overcome the barriers in remote work.For almost two decades, I have been part of an emerging social body of women who have found ourselves responding to the deepest vocational needs of human beings in the midst of the financial, ecological, and social tsunami we’ve been living through as the Internet emerges.

Go to her site and get her new little book. It’s filled with goodies that will help you be really, really professional and smart on Skype and in video-based meetings. Stop spending all of that money for flights when for $17.97 you can have that meeting on line – and be just as successful.

Stone Payton has a radio show in which he interviews leaders and rainmakers, as well as a video business in which he goes around the country, interviewing and videoing authors, making their book reviews and videos available to all. He has an interesting take on the world mixed with his iconic verve and humor. Check it out. And, I’ll be on his show June 21st. I’ll remind you later.

Martin Rutte, co-author of Seeking the Sacred: leading a spiritual life in a secular world, and I have been friends and co-conspirators for 20 years as we’ve both worked assiduously to bring spiritual values into the world of business. He’s in charge of getting out a wonderful newsletter on work and values. The newsletter is part of the Centre for Spirituality and the Workplace, Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada. Take a look and/or sign up to receive the newsletter. The articles are both thoughtful and thought-provoking. If you’re a regular reader of my newsletters, these are just the sort of articles that will excite you.

The Wisdom Journal is a good place to go for anything you need inspiration for. Whether it is to find out how to have a fair fight with your husband or to motivate your employees, the Wisdom Journal finds articles that offer caring advice. The articles are smart, informative and well written. Check them out.

Alen Majer is one of the good guys. Kind, gentle, integrous, and smart. He’s got a new little book called Trigger Events. He regularly runs free webinars, and talks about finding buyers who are ready to buy. For those of you who don’t yet use Buying Facilitation™ and don’t know how to help buyers navigate through their internal buying decision issues, and are seeking those already ready to buy, Alen’s the guy.

I’ll give you further updates on friends as they write new books. It’s an honor for me to know and serve these people.

sd

Friends with Benefits is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

Tonight, I was absolutely blessed to hear Dave Eggers (author of many novels, short stories, screenplays such as the movie Away we Go, magazines, and newspapers) doing a reading on his newest book Zeitoun, and his two writer buddies Annie Lagang and Bill Cotter. And were they great.

Dave is a quirky, adorable, fun guy who continually wrings his hands as the one liners and non-sequiters jump outta his mouth. His brain seems to buzz on a million cylinders as he spews fun, brilliance, interesting thoughts, and manic juxtapositions. And all the while, he creates love and heat all around him. In just a 90 minutes, I heard Annie and Bill give readings of their amazing, delicious books, as well as learning about a group Dave started called ’826′ that is a storefront of volunteers who help youngsters in schools with their reading and writing (and the local equivalent right here in Austin called The Austin BAT Cave); as well as hearing about how antieaters walk on their wrists, mullets, Libertyville and Guerny (is that how it’s spelled?) Illinois, Maurice Sendak, fuzzy notebooks, Heavy Metal and Smashing Pumpkins, the staffing of Dave’s magazine McSweeny’s and how they court new authors to give them a voice,  Dave’s new love of illustrating mamals with funny sayings, and why Dave doesn’t use the internet – he gets addicted to YouTube and forgets to write, and actually loves paying for his news to make sure newspapers stay in print and journalists get paid to be the 4th Estate. It was dizzying and exhilarating.

As a result of Dave’s intimate interplay with the large, young audience (I would have paid to see him as a stand-up comic) we discovered author ZZ Packer in the audience, a woman who’s lover doesn’t want her to write, another woman who wanted Dave to keep writing his newspaper ‘Panorama.’ Dave even offers relationship advice (“Hey. Let’s call your lover. I’ll talk to her. Be first in line and we’ll do it.”) and career wisdom to anyone who asks. Dave told one young aspiring author not worry about writing yet, and instead go live a life to want to write about. After 90 minutes I was breathless.

I walked away believing the world is a better place because Dave Eggers loves books, will do whatever he can to inspire young folks to find their voice, and help make it possible for them to be published. Dave brings light and magic to books and movies and magazines. He’s an inspiration to anyone who has ever had a dream and helps create a world where people are paid to bring the spoken word, ideas, and possibilities, to light.

sd

Want to find out how to go about publishing your book? Check out Publishing Choices.

Dave Eggers Loves Books is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com

I then took myself out for a Starbucks, and sat for a while as I perused last week’s New Yorker and listened to Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me on NPR. Then I drove to my ‘country’ house (just 15 miles from my downtown Austin loft) and sat in the sun, in my hammock next to the pond, reading and listening to some Keb Mo and Elvis, while the sun warmed me.

Around 4 I drove over to Barnes and Noble to indulge one of my passions: perusing bookstores for interesting titles. I bought a few: Joyce Carol Oates‘ short story collection from 1966 (who knew?), Oliver Saks’ “This is your brain on music” (anything by Saks is brain candy),  Thomas Frank’s ‘The Wrecking Crew‘ (I heard him discuss his fascinating views on government last week on Bill Moyers), and an interesting-seeming book called “Your Inner Fish: A journey into the 3.5 billion-year history of the human body” by Neil Shubin. Just the title is almost enough.

Early in the evening I went back home to sit in what remained of the sun and picked up my book ‘The Help‘ (brilliant, brilliant dialogue and depiction of humanity) while listening to my recorded The Prairie Home Companion: Garrison Keillor makes me smile from my soul, for 2 hours straight, every week. I then made myself a salad, and got into my bed with my novel and read for a couple of hours.

I had a lovely day – one that soothed my harried head and heart after yet another exhausting work week of too-many hours and too-many frustrations. But, as always when I have one of those gentle, solitary days, there is a part of my brain that reminds myself that I’m a single woman and I should probably go ‘out.’  “How will you find a partner if you’re in bed reading at 8 PM?” they say.

Here in Austin, there are so so many things to do – so much great music, theater, concerts, parties – and I know so many people I could do stuff with. But truly – I love my alone time. Is it my Non-Verbal Learning Disorder? Is it my 70 hour work weeks, dealing with people issues for hours each day? Is it my old age?  The stage of my life? The assumed amount of ‘work’ that relationships take? Or is it simply that I’m exhausted, and my alone time fills me up.

I’m not convinced it’s possible to have both alone time, work time, and a relationship. I know it’s possible to have long term relationships in which quiet and alone time are factored in. But I don’t know how to start new relationships without the drama of hormones and excitement and newness and feelings and and and.

And so I continue to work and play, in my own unique ways that are often quite solitary. It’s easier. And after all, I am happy. I suppose if/when it’s time to do something different I will. But sometimes I wonder.

sd

As A Single Woman is a post from: SharonDrewMorgen.com