"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Tom Peters New Book -- released Tuesday and entitled The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence -- I'll get it read over the weekend and report the best pages next week.
Bill Gates not #1 -- at least for now, Mexican Carlos Slim is Forbes "World's Richest" worth $53.5 billion. But Forbes noted that without Gates extensive philanthropy, Gates would be worth $80 billion. And a mere dollar rise in Microsoft stock will catapult him ahead of Slim as well. Mark Zuckerburg, founder of Facebook, was again the youngest (25) on the list worth $4 billion. Notable was the significant jump in billionaires in Turkey from 13 to 28 (Istanbul is a hotbed of activity) and the overall jump in Asia. And half the world's self-made women billionaires are from China! Here's a great summary article so you're informed for the weekend cocktail party circuit.
Outstanding Management Talent -- the battle-hardened young leaders that came out of WWII helped lead the greatest economic expansion in U.S. history. One significant positive coming out of the latest wars is the equally battle-hardened and savvy young leaders coming back to the states. And these young leaders have had to fight a quite different war, learning to negotiate and work with diverse cultures among other skills honed in the trenches. It behooves all of us to recruit this talent, which is not going to be scared of a challenging global economy given what they've faced in the theatre of war. One company focused on hiring JMOs (junior military officers) is Wal-Mart, which is hungry for leaders. Take five minutes and read this important Fortune article.
Finding JMOs for Your Firm -- Orion International is one of the leading firms that recruit exclusively military personnel to staff your company. Co-founded by a dear friend and Rockefeller Habits "student" Randy Nelson, he sold the firm to a private equity company in 2007. Today he's now running a fast growth IT staffing firm called NSTAR Global Services.
Hire a Hero -- One of the other outstanding leaders in the field of military hiring is another dear friend and "student" Dan Caulfield. He is currently Chairman of the Board of the Hire a Hero® program operated by the Armed Forces Support Foundation. He was also Managing Director for Helmets to Hardhats. He's also an active angel investor after selling an earlier military recruiting firm to Ross Perot. BTW, Dan and Randy, as JMOs themselves, ran some of the most disciplined companies I?ve ever had the opportunity to know.
Bring Back the Robber Barons -- this article title caught my attention in the Wall Street Journal, but it was the subtitle that spoke volumes "There's a big difference between entrepreneurs who make a fortune in the market, and those who do so by gaming the government" -- what Daniel Henninger calls the Political Entrepreneur. Included in this government-gaming clan are the vast number of financial firms which have simply redistributed wealth vs. create wealth. They are sucking the world dry!
Dreaming the Possible Dream -- it is two Indian-American entrepreneurs -- Vinod Khosla and K.R. Sridhar -- that Thomas Friedman highlights in his inspiring March 6 NY Times column. Vinod, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is funding Calera, launched by a Stanford professor who's studied coral to learn how to create truly clean energy from coal and gas. Sridhar is founder of Bloom Energy, creator of Bloom Boxes, mini-power plants the size of a small shipping container. Google, Wal-Mart, and other companies are using these to generate cheap power. Take five minutes and become inspired -- and read this article to your children.
What I Learned From Richard Branson -- Rick Sapio, who has spent a total of five weeks with Richard Branson on his island, was probing me yesterday on what I learned from hearing Richard speak at the YPO Global Summit in Barcelona a couple weeks ago. Two things:
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Virgin is 250 companies run by 250 independent leaders. This structure has allowed Branson to work from home all these years so he could be around his two children -- a point he emphasized twice. It's quantity of time more than quality that matters, if I read the research correctly -- and his comments ended my search for offices in Barcelona -- I'll keep working from home!
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He said it's time to be bold while others are fearful -- and assets right now are half-price. I've been hoarding cash and it pushed me over the edge to make an income-producing asset purchase I had been delaying.