OK, I’ve decided to drop the predictable sequence for these blog reviews. Rather than proceeding down the Blogroll, I’ll choose candidates to review randomly and keep everyone guessing who I’ll choose next. Adding additional spice to the current review is the fact that I’m taking a look at one of the few anonymous blogs posted by a member of the National Speakers Association.

The Dating Goddess’s Adventures in Dating After 40

Blogging since: May 8, 2006
Posting Frequency: Daily
Post Length: 500 words average
Aesthetic Appeal: Clean, uncluttered WordPress template. Abbreviating posts adds to readability.
Graphics: None
Categories: Attitude, BBW dating, Dating after 40, Dating chemistry, Dating Internet, Dating online, Greeting your date, Meeting your date, Releasing your date, Senior dating.
Blogroll: 13 NSA friends, including mine – thanks DG!
Target Audience: Single women over 40.
Comments allowed: Yes
Trackbacks: Yes
Alexa.com traffic ranking: N/A
Sites that link to this blog: N/A
Yahoo Links: 127

Review:

This is a hugely successful blog! It’s doubly intriguing to review. First, the anonymous “Dating Goddess” bills herself as “a 51-year-old white, professional woman. My husband of nearly 20 years left me 3 years ago and I started dating 18 months ago.” She claims to have been on over 60 dates in that time (phew!). Second, she bills the blog as for women only. So (as a happily married 54-year-old male) I feel like I am eavesdropping at the door of the women’s room when reading the posts of the DG.

I am in fact privy to her actual identity, but honor-bound not to reveal it, except to confirm she’s a bona-fide NSA member in good standing, and hence qualifies for this review.

Despite not finding any stats on alexa.com her blog has been listed by WordPress.com as one of the fastest growing on the internet – moving to 37th position on their list.

The DG is able to keep up a furious level of activity (seven dates with six guys in five days) because she is very much a DG of the 21st Century: on-line internet enabled introductions are the wellspring of her love-life. She uses her blog as a water-cooler where the girls can share stories of their hunt for the elusive Mr. Right. The DG is unabashed:

My idea of dating has been like going to Baskin-Robbins. I had vanilla for 20 years (maybe it was Rocky Road at the end!). While I enjoyed vanilla, I want to try new flavors. I didn’t want to jump from vanilla and make a commitment to butter pecan without having at least had a little taste of pistachio, chocolate, mint chip, etc.

So I made the list of men I would like to try. I like smart men, so wanted to try a lawyer, doctor, CEO, and venture capitalist. I like larger men, so wanted to try an ex-pro football player and ex-pro basketball player. I love men with accents, so wanted to try some from other countries. You get the picture. I had dates with all of the above, and more.

Her readers are a vocal lot. She often gets 7-10 comments on a post.

She is aware of the risks of today’s single lifestyle:

So beware. The dating dance can be habit forming. Watch out if you find yourself constantly searching the dealers (online dating sites), and be careful of doing things you know are not in your best interest (dating a guy you know isn’t a good match) just to get your high.

She faces the hard facts of STD’s (Sexually transmitted diseases) as well as dealing with the lighter side of dating:

In terms of suggestions for how the DG could improve her blog I have none, absolutely zilch. Perhaps a few single women would care the leave comments below (I’ll be sure to pass them on the DG).

I do wonder what kind of Goddess she is? Venus on the half-shell? Isis, kneeling before the coffin? The thousand-eyed, thousand-armed bodhisattva Kwan Yin, consoling all beings, or the Mother Shakti, the primal energy of the universe, ready to chop your head off?

I also wonder what a blog written by a man who’d had sixty dates in a few months would read like? Less an honest appraisal of the pitfalls and advantages of internet dating and more a listing of the techniques to get laid found in The Game?

I wish the DG god speed and hope her blog has a short life-span. Hopefully, she finds Mr. Right and is able to move on to the Bride-to-Be blog, the Honeymooner’s blog and the Newlywed’s blog. Meanwhile , if you are a single woman looking for love in all the wrong places check out the Dating Goddess, she’ll set you on the right track.

He that is proud eats up himself: pride is
his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle;
and whatever praises itself but in the deed, devours
the deed in the praise.

Shakespeare: Troilus and Cressida: II, iii

The main task of a CEO is to communicate the essence of a company. Leaders are in a unique position to see the whole elephant and best convey the mission, vision and strategy of the entire company. As leaders, their personal integrity and style is inseparable from that of the company. In their hey-day Jobs embodied Apple; McNealy, Sun; Welch, GE. As with Presidents, Premiers and Prime Ministers, they embody the state — as Louis XIV said: L’État, c’est moi.

I’ve recently come across a series of articles that have me thinking about the challenge CEO’s face in cultivating a healthy ego and the risks for those who run amok in Narcissistic absorption. The articles I read raise questions both for leaders and those who provide communications counsel to them.

It’s All About Me: Narcissistic CEOs and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance

Francesco Guerrera’s insightful article (subscription required) in Saturday’s FT started the ball rolling: Forget the salary packages, look at the size of their egos evaluates Arijit Chatterjee’s and Donald C. Hambrick ‘s Penn State University paper It’s All About Me: Narcissistic CEOs and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance .

The FT article was blogged by none less than Richard Edelman. He makes four great suggestions to achieve balance between ego gratification and self-effacement (dare to win; don’t focus all company communications on the CEO; keep a constant long-term message; partner for success). However, I think he misses the real critique of Narcissistic CEO’s when he takes Guerrera to task for suggesting CEO’s be more bashful. The core issue, especially in fin de siecle economic times, is how an audience can judge the message a leader communications in terms of a balance between individual hubris and real company vision. What will they perceive when he speaks? Guerrera states the dilemma:

The problem is that one man’s egomaniac is another’s visionary and investors
have no way of precisely gauging a CEO’s vision or weighing up their egos.

But there’s a straightforward yardstick by which to understand them. First we must be clear about the myth of Narcissus. I know of no better definition than that offered by Adi Da Samraj on page 94 of The Knee of Listening:

He is the ancient one visible in the Greek myth, who was the universal adored child of the gods, who rejected the loved-one and every form of love and relationship, and who was finally condemned to the contemplation of his own image–until, as a result of his own act and obstinacy, he suffered the fate of eternal separation and died in infinite solitude.

Edelman picked up the clue that the Narcissist avoids relationship. Judging a CEO by how effectively he builds partnerships (with his management team, employees, suppliers and customers) can reveal the extent to which the leader recognizes the contribution others make to the success of the company.

Next, the extent to which the vision and mission of the organization exists independent of the CEO’s ego is simple to determine. Ask how far down the organization the defining vision of the company has percolated? Does the CEO rise to the challenge of internal communications? The guys with the outsized egos often don’t like mixing with the troops. Do they obstinately refuse suggestions they leave the eternal separation of the C-Suite to speak to the cubical crowd? The best won’t miss an opportunity. Hint: Ask how often the CEO eats in the company cafeteria.

Of course, judging a CEO’s effectiveness in terms of the myth of Narcissus is only one way to look at things. Equally rewarding is the well-known concept of the alpha male.

The Alpha Male

The next FT article I came across (I don’t get all my ideas from the FT, just most of the better ones…) was today’s review of the book Alpha Male by Kate Ludeman and Eddie Erlandson. This husband and wife team are executive coaches who’ve worked with 1,500 CEO’s. They see the need for those at the top to exhibit confidence and charisma. But they warn:

A great deal of wreckage is caused by boys behaving badly. The healthy ones – well-balanced human beings in full command of their alpha strengths – are natural leaders who are trusted by colleagues, respected by competitors, revered by employees and loved by Wall Street. But other alpha males are risks to their organisations – and sometimes to themselves.

Women CEO’s (like those I profiled here) are not the problem. “Alpha women want to lead, but they don’t necessarily need to rule,” the authors say.

Warning signals to look for in your organization include the way the leader runs meetings (a red flag if they are like an episode of The Apprentice). Beware of a leader who creates a climate of fear and suppresses disagreements and stifles open communication.

There’s more tools available from the authors here.

Alternatives to overblown egos

For every Ted Turner and Dennis Kozlowski (who must appreciate infinite solitude more than most these days) there are plenty of examples of decent CEO’s who don’t confuse their identity with the name on the headquarters building. I came across a couple of articles that showcase the best of the breed – strong leaders who make their biggest impression via bottom-line results.

Jurgen Hambrecht CEO of BASF was profiled in the FT on Monday:

Mr. Hambrecht describes his role as that of a “conductor” who makes existing parts and players cohere, not a composer who makes and sells something new. “A chemical company doesn’t need a pop star boss,” he says. Indeed, there is no apparent flamboyance to Mr. Hambrecht, who turned 60 last week. With a gaunt runner’s physique, he is used to straight talking. . . “You can’t really associate anything BASF has done in the past three years solely with my person,” he says.

Of course, it could be argued that Germany has an extreme aversion to leaders with outsized egos since things went pear-shaped for the last major player on April 30, 1945.

One of the classic case studies in contrasting management styles has to be playing out at Hewlett-Packard.

Management consultant Tony Paradiso cast a critical eye on some outsized ego’s in a recent article. He then observes the stark contrast in style and performance between the current HP CEO and his predecessor:

After ridding themselves of the self-absorb (sic) Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard hired Hurd. That was a priceless decision. Unlike his predecessor, Hurd didn’t feature himself in an advertising campaign. In fact, he purposefully kept a low public relations profile. Silly Mark; instead of directing his PR department to hype his arrival, he simply did his job. That involved laying thousands off and restructuring the company. The result: Exceeding financial expectations for five consecutive quarters.

In Conclusion

My hope is that fewer of the captains of industry will fall prey to the cautions of Agamemnon and more will heed Beatrice’s wisdom:

What fire is in mine ears? Can this be true?
Stand I condemn’d for pride and scorn so much?
Contempt, farewell! and maiden pride, adieu!
No glory lives behind the back of such.

Shakespeare: Much Ado About Nothing: III, i

I’m currently enjoying a great series of podcasts delivered over the past year at the Stanford University School of Engineering and sponsored by the VC firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson, BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and the Department of Management Science and Engineering.

You can find this series on the iTunes Music Store under the Education category (second screen, 4th row down) or via this direct link.

There are 25 hour-long presentations on file. All available for free download. The presenters and topics they cover offer a fascinating look at the personalities and checkered history that makes up Silicon Valley. The audience of Stanford students hears from and asks questions of executives who have been there and done that in terms of surviving and thriving in the Silicon Valley ecosystem — a place where failure is a badge of success and people talk of ‘dog years’ of experience.

I’ve started by listening to three amazing women CEO’s:

Carol Bartz, Executive Chairman of the Board and CEO of Autodesk for the past 14 years, reflecting on her experience of running one of the largest PC software companies in the world while finding a balance between her career and personal life. She also stresses the importance of continued learning and addresses the challenges of succeeding in a global market.

Kim Polese, CEO of SpikeSource describing her twenty years of experience in developing software in Silicon Valley including Java development with Sun Microsystems and the open source community.

Janice Fraser, CEO and a founding partner of Adaptive Path, discussing the entrepreneurial leadership qualities that have contributed to the success of her user experience consulting company.

I worked in Carol Bartz’s sales organization at Sun back in the 1990’s and also saw Kim present at Sun when she was the original Java Product Manager before she went off to found Marimba.

All three women executives admit to being ‘girl geeks’ who embraced science and technology in college and often followed a serendipitous career to the top.

All share incredible insights about starting and growing a high-tech company. They speak with clarity, from the heart, about what motivated them and what they’ve observed. Things as simple as asking the customers what they use the product for (which Bartz says precious few of the staff at Autodesk knew before she arrived and started asking). Issues around the ways to partner for success in the world of Web 2.0 and Open Source (which Polese and Fraser are adept at). The importance of networks, intuition, planning, listening, leading, arguing, anticipating.

Rather than try and write a précis of each person’s material I’d just encourage anyone with an interest in executive communications to simply download and listen. Here’s some killer quotes to whet your appetite.

Bartz:

Don’t be afraid of doing a lot of lateral things. A career as a ladder is a very unsteady concept compared to a pyramid — you have no foundation.

Polese:

There’s nothing more fun than being on a mission together with a team of people building something innovative, breaking new ground and really making a difference in the world. What could be more fun? Not many things in life. And that’s one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is such as great place to build a career and just to live and be.

Fraser:

Being an entrepreneur is not a job, it’s a way of life. It’s a mission more than it is a job. I’m not employed by a company I’m employed by an industry. I’m employed by an ecosystem of people who believe in me and who support me and who I support in turn.

Garr Reynolds’ comments on best practices in executive communications are insightful. He compliments 8-Ball Seth Godin on a masterful speech that’s well worth investing 20 minutes of your time to watch. He reinforces the value of close study of Edward Tufte’s work on PowerPoint and recommends the essay by Stanford professor Jean-Luc Doumont on The cognitive style of PowerPoint: slides are not all evil.(APPLIED THEORY).

Garr concludes with some sage advice:

If I were CEO of a large Silicon Valley company, I’d send my people to Tufte and Edwards, (Toastmasters, Bert Decker, etc.) and send my big presentation projects to Duarte Design. Tools matter, but better design education matters more. When the electricity goes off, who will remain the most effective communicators? As Alan Kay says, “Most ideas you can do pretty darn well with a stick in the sand.”

Great advice that I heartily second.

Somewhat predictably, I’ve decided to move on to the second blog listed on my NSA Blogroll. Bill Conerly’s Businomics Blog

Blogging since: January, 2006
Posting Frequency: 2-3 times weekly
Post Length: 200-300 words average
Aesthetic Appeal: Standard template. Data graphs mix a variety of styles. Baby blue surround.
Graphics: Bar and Line graphs that supplement the text. Click for larger image.
Categories: Books, Business Strategy, Economic News, Investments, Public Policy
Blogroll: 14 economics blogs
Target Audience: Business strategists in large and medium sized companies
Comments allowed: Yes
Trackbacks: Yes
Alexa.com traffic ranking: N/A
Sites that link to this blog: N/A
Yahoo Links: 88

Review:

Dr. Bill Conerly is a heavyweight academic and highly qualified economic advisor. He’s new to blogging this year, and he’s off to a racing start.

He runs a consulting practice, helping business leaders make more profitable decisions through a better understanding of the economy. He’s co-author of Thinking Economics, a high school textbook in multimedia format used in 24 states. His new book, Businomics, will be published in 2007 by Adams Media. His articles are required reading in graduate courses at MIT and Wharton.

This is a blog that promises the reader Better Decisions Through A Better Understanding of the Economy. Read his posts for the skinny on topics such as consumer confidence, employment trends, interest rates, housing and producer pricing. These are meat and potatoes topics for all economists. What’s different are the ‘Business Strategy Implications’ that Bill often concludes each posting with. Example:

Housing supply chain should REALLY hunker down now. Sellers of interest sensitive big-ticket items (like car dealers) should BEGIN to hunker down. The rest of the business community should start thinking about contingency plans for a recession or economic slowdown.

Bill’s blog is also a good place to look for references to books, articles and studies in the area of economics.

On the technical front Bill has had some trouble with lost archives. He might want to use a redirect to mask his generic Typepad URL. He should also incorporate Technorati tags to increase his visibility to search engines.

Reading this blog reminds me of the quote attributed to Lyndon Johnson:

Did you ever think that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.

Bill is no Jim Cramer and I did not see any “Buy Gold!!!” or “Sell Wal-Mart!!!” recommendations, which is a good thing. At the same time, it would be nice to see a little more juice in his posts. Rather than adopting a textbook tone, Bill could lighten things up with insights on our quotidian experience from the perspective of an economist.

Example: In addition to the overall advice on the effect of a housing price drop (above) he could follow-up with comments on markets like the San Francisco Bay Area contrasted with the rural Dakotas – what strategic differences might affect those of us who live there? How do the strategic shifts affect the young, middle aged and older homeowner? How about the business strategy for Realtors or those who service them in these two areas? And if I have a variable interest rate and a daughter going to an Ivy League in the Fall is it time to move to a rental unit?

I’d also like to read about Bill’s experiences as an economist who is also a speaker – what reception do his audiences give him? What content and delivery techniques does he employ to keep their attention and disprove President Johnson’s claim?

This is a blog for those who don’t want to get their economic strategy from the Booyah Bullhorn on Mad Money. Check it out.

I feel like the proverbial latecomer to the party, but I’ve just discovered the wonders of YouTube.

This is a social Web site that allows users to upload, view, and share video clips. The tagline is “Broadcast yourself”. It was founded in February 2005 and has experienced phenomenal growth. 65,000 sub-10 minute video clips are uploaded and 100 million clips are watched each and every day. It’s estimated the company’s bandwidth costs are $1 million a month.

So what did I find so amazing about the site?

It was not the excruciating amateur home video, the garage bands, frat parties and stupid pet tricks. But buried in those million clips is content that I relish:

So here, as a total indulgence, is three minutes of Roy Harper, who is an obscure and wonderfully poetic chap with a guitar and an attitude, celebrating One of Those In England:

and here is, literally, a trip down memory lane, an abstract wonder of out-of-focus home video of a Cheshire road I cycled every day from the age of 11 to 18 with the hoar-frost clinging to the hawthorn hedges:

Explore YouTube – you never know what you might discover!

Peter Schweizer’s recent article on the apparent hypocrisy of Al Gore championing climate change in his Inconvenient Truth movie while living in three homes and flying in private jets raises some interesting questions.

As I noted in my review of the film, Gore’s travel schedule imposes a beefy carbon footprint, but given the urgency of his message may be justified.

Schweizer ad hominem critique highlights a number of areas where he claims Gore’s personal behavior is hypocritical:

Schweizer concludes:

Maybe our very existence isn’t threatened.
.
.
The issue here is not simply Gore’s hypocrisy; it’s a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth, and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn’t he made any radical change in his life? Giving up one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

I think these are cheap shots. Asserting that someone’s argument is wrong because of something discreditable about the person rather than addressing the soundness of the argument itself is a classic logical fallacy.

Consider. Gore has an important message he is trying to deliver across the planet. He can’t do this effectively if he was to travel by bicycle to talk to audiences. Flying in a private jet is environmentally damaging, but the captains of industry do it daily. If he is to be effective he can’t have one hand tied behind his back.

Secondly, the homes he owns are not a-typical of those owned by the elite in America. If he was to sell them and move into modest housing someone else would be burning energy to heat and cool them. What’s he to do, demolish them? Better he stays and tries to run them energy-efficiently.

Finally, any of us with a diversified 401(k) have shares in mining and petroleum companies. Of course, we could sacrifice returns and stay with socially responsible funds, but these often underperform the market.

The response that is needed to global warming is not necessarily to adopt a hair-shirt lifestyle. American public opinion is not receptive to those who’ve tried this. The reputation of Ralph Nader, President Carter and “Governor Moonbeam” Brown of California were not helped by their nods to personal sacrifice and low rent accouterments.

It’s not Gore’s personal lifestyle that’s in question. Rather, it’s the potential impact of climate change on a global scale. He’s done an excellent job communicating the urgency of this in his book and movie. Tripping him up for not living up to the suggestions he made to reduce carbon emissions distracts from the scale of change that is really needed.

Sure, we all need to try and reduce our carbon footprint. And those of us lucky enough to live in advanced economies will need to adjust our material consumption downward by a significant amount. The small percentage of the world’s population that live in the United States cannot continue to consume many times our fair share of energy resources.

Personal choices made by Americans play a role in helping the planet. But serious policy changes (for instance in the CAFE standards for average gas consumption) have a much larger effect. These changes will occur due to legislation resulting from democratic debate as the scale of the crisis unfolds.

Even larger changes will result in response to global forces unleashed by the rest of the world against those who foul the planet. A terrorist campaign with roots in the climatically dispossessed is not unthinkable. The way we deal with it is worth consideration.

And the largest role of all will be played by the planet. Once the ice melts and sea levels rise there probably won’t be a home in America that only has one family living it in. Refugees from the coasts will be billeted in the all of the Gore’s fancy residences. The water lapping at the doors of the Hoover Institution will give Peter Schweizer more concern than Gore’s personal lifestyle.

There’s a secret to the speaking business. It’s not just speaking fees that count. It’s how you create multiple streams of income that allow you to earn while you’re “off the airplaneâ€?. These nice little earners come from selling product from the back of the room after your speech or, better yet, from your website which will top up your bank account 7×24 – making money while you sleep! Guess what? You’ll also inoculate your business against the coming Avian Flu pandemic.

Pro-Track members heard from two very successful speakers who have supplemented their speaking fees with substantial earnings from product sales over the years.

Rebecca Morgan: Product Development for Speakers Part I

Rebecca, a member of the NSA National Board of Directors, took the whole morning to cover all the aspects of developing products. We’re all information peddlers. The same information that is spoken into the podium microphone can be repackaged into audio and printed product.

What products, and how to develop them, you ask?

First consider:

Next consider which of these vast array of product types works for your market:

A great example is classic Eight Ball Larry Winget who sells everything from books to bobble head dolls.

Another is Dr. Tony Allessandra who lists books, audio downloads and more. Check out the 4-page Platinum Self-Assessment product he sells for $8. This will give you a flavor of the type of product beginning speakers can easily create and charge for.

But wait, there’s more. Say you don’t have content of your own yet. What to do? Consider:

Some other tricks of the trade:

Consider that most people at your event have a $20 bill or three in their back pocket. Bundle 3 reports or whatever and sell them in $20 increments.

Take payments from customers using Paypal Mobile.

Bundle air with your products: Shrink wrap tapes and books at Kinko’s and include a certificate in the Cadillac version of your products. This is good for an hour of your consulting time (Value $200?) if people call before the expiry date. Experienced speakers know less than 5% will call, yet people flock to the deal.

Consider for each product you sell, what is the next product your customer will be led to when they purchase this one? Always include product lists at the back of each document.

Look for continuity programs. How can you get clients to subscribe to a series on a monthly basis?

When quoting a speech fee include 100 books in your price and offer the conference organizer a discount on buying enough for the rest of the audience. Often this will generate sales of hundreds before you even arrive at the event

Great example of best practices:

Check out the offerings of top speaker Robert Middleton. His Action Plan Marketing website has a teleclass, partner product sales, audio CDs with transcripts, books and manuals and more. It’s great stuff that’s designed to help the self-employed and independent owners small firms become better at marketing their services – something we all need!

Enough theory! How to put this into practice?

Rebecca had us start with a list of three things we know in our subject area that people would pay good money to learn. We later expanded this to a list of 10. Since blogging is an area that I’m investing an increasing amount of time into I thought the following list might form the basis of a laminate quick-start guide. What do you think? Would you pay $5.95 for a copy of this to have at hand by your computer? Let me know in the Comments section below.

Ian’s Handy-Dandy Ten Rules for Successful Blogging:

1. Write your blog regularly – at least once a week.
2. Find a sincere voice to write in.
3. Exercise your grammar and diction and spell check and proofread before publishing each post.
4. Welcome comments in your blog – open the conversation.
5. Be sure to include a photograph and your name in the blog – people like to know who is talking to them.
6. Include an ‘About Me’ link.
7. Use Google News ‘bots’ to capture topic ideas.
8. Link often to other blogs, websites and trackbacks to boost your “Google Juice�
9. Use iStockphoto for beautiful graphic images.
10. Remember to get a life and unhook yourself from the keyboard to experience life!
11. Bonus: Get started!

If you need more help

Consider working with one of the experts in the field. Paulette Ensign is The Booklet Queen and her services range from consulting to help you create a Tips Booklet to promoting your finished product on her popular web site. She’s written booklets that have sold over a million copies.

Michael Lee: Product Development for Speakers Part II

If you thought my “top 10� list above is too trivial, consider. Michael is one of the few professional speakers in the nation who makes more than $100,000 a year from product sales. And he started with a top 10 list for Realtors detailing ways they can justify their commission.

He’s expanded this list over the years to 122 tips that took him six months to collate, with variations for justifying commission to home sellers, home buyers, FISBOs and others. These sold for $9.95 each. He added real estate forms and upped the price to $19.95. A bundle of four sold at a discount $70. When he added a CD and workbook he had a manual for $99.95.

I won’t cover the details he shared on his costs to produce this material, but it’s pennies on the dollar.

It all started with a simple list.

And of course, clients are not gladly shelling out their money for the paper, but the countless hours of expertise Michael has invested to produce the material. Indeed, he offers an unconditional guarantee with all products and rarely has to offer a refund.

Michael delivered an expanded version of the NSA/NC presentation I attended back in May at his Danville home.

He stressed the need to raise the perceived value of the products you sell.

Some tips:

In conclusion: Don’ think of all the reasons you CAN NOT create products you can sell, think of all the reasons you CAN and JUST DO IT!

Resources:

Here’s the very first of my planned series of blog reviews. I thought I’d start with the first blog on the Blogroll.

Bert Decker: Create Your Communications Experience

Blogging since: July 10, 2005
Posting Frequency: 4-6 times monthly
Post Length: Varies, 200 – 3,500 words
Aesthetic Appeal: Corporate consultant feel, hip picture of Bert looking tanned and healthy.
Graphics: Wide selection that really add to the blog. Thumbnail images of speakers. Other graphics.
Categories: Avoid PowerPoint Abuse, Be Creative, Books, Branding, Effective Presentation Skills, Insights in Behavior, Musings, Newsworthy, Powerful Content, Speakers
Blogroll: 12 speaking/communications blogs
Target Audience: Communications professionals and savvy executives
Comments allowed: Yes
Trackbacks: Yes
Alexa.com traffic ranking: 3,145,168
Sites that link to this blog: 46
Yahoo Links: 383

Review:

Bert is a player. He heads Decker Communications which offers executives programs on The Decker Method Communicate to Influence Program and one-on-one coaching for senior executives. He lunches with Guy Kawasaki. He’s a published author with a half-dozen books to his name. Titles such as Speaking With Bold Assurance and You’ve Got to Be Believed to Be Heard. Bert is clearly an established leader in his field.

I found dipping into this blog very rewarding. It’s firmly focused in his area of expertise. He writes thoughtfully about everything from the use of humor in speeches to non-verbal communication and current affairs. Bert wears his expertise lightly and we benefit tremendously from his insights. He’ll cover American Idol in one post and Handel’s “Messiahâ€? in the next.

I found one of his most valuable posts (I forwarded it to everyone in the Communications Department of the Fortune 500 company I work for) is his insightful listing of The Five Biggest Mistakes CEO’s Make in Speaking. This offers up not just a list of problems but also a series of innovative solutions:

Let your hands work for you. In personally coaching tens of thousands, I’ve seen maybe one out of 500 who over use their hands and gestures. The problem is we all tend to have a nervous gesture that we are comfortable with, like the fig leaf, but shows our nervousness. Don’t let your comfort be your guide, help the audience be comfortable with you be showing confidence and certainty in your gestures.

I was fascinated to read his various comments on President Bush. He’s both praised and criticised the commander in chief. He avoided the usual cheapshots about the “dumb Texan” and malapropisms made by the President. Instead we are given gimlet-eyed assessments like:

In tonight’s speech he looked like an actor on a stage. The problem is, he’s not a very good actor. And even if he was, that’s not a very good approach to leadership.

My technical wish list for this blog is a Search function so I could quickly mine more of this content.

As a final note I’d love it if Bert shared more personal stories of everyday life as an executive coach. His clients are the top CEO’s in the land. Without breaching confidentiality, it would be great to hear real-life stories from his travels in the C-Suite. Something along the lines of “I was coaching a top executive in the North-East last week when I who told me his biggest fear is…”. A good story makes for an engaging blog post.

We could all learn from Bert.

I’ve recently created a listing of all the blogs I can find created by members of the National Speakers Association on my second Blogroll (see right hand column, scroll down if necessary).

I thought it might liven things up with my NSA colleagues by offering my unsolicited, opinionated reviews of their blogs.

I obviously won’t be able to read each and every post on an active blog. But I promise to look at each post from the current month as well as at least a good dozen from the archives.

I plan to offer both a factual inventory (posting frequency; length of posts; number of images and links used; popularity) as well as a totally subjective report on what I liked about the blog. Hopefully, other professional speakers will find these brief summaries amusing, even instructive. Heck, they might even find a reason to click through and read the source blog then let me know via Comments if they agree or disagree with my assessment.

After careful thought, I’ve hit on a standardized rating scheme (OK, OK, I stole it from the San Francisco Chronicle movie reviews):

Ratings Key:
Excellent	Good	Adequate	Poor	Don’t Bother

I’ll quantify each blog on a number of criteria:

Blogging since: Date of the first post in the archives.
Posting Frequency: how often do they show up?
Post Length: Average word count.
Aesthetic Appeal: Does the visual design of the blog establish its purpose and intent?
Graphics: Description of any pix, charts or other graphics displayed.
Categories: As listed on the blog.
Blogroll: A count of those listed on the blog.
Target Audience: Who is the blogger talking to?
Comments allowed: Are they interested in a conversation?
Trackbacks: Are they interested in a sophisticated conversation?
Alexa.com traffic ranking: One measure of popularity or activity around this blog.
Sites that link to this blog: A second measure, as shown on Alexa.
Yahoo Links: A third measure – as shown by a yahoo search on ‘link:blog url’.

While running these reviews might not necessarily be the best way to ‘Win Friends and Influence People’ I won’t censor any comments the blog owner cares to leave in reply. I’m very aware that blogs work best as two-way conversation.

My aim isn’t to throw brickbats at other bloggers in the National Speakers Association, there are precious few to begin with. Rather, I hope that these summaries simply tell more people about the NSA blogs that are out there. It might also stimulate debate about what makes a blog and blogging interesting and valuable for speakers, audience members and readers in general.

If you are a National Speakers Association member with a blog and I’ve not listed you in my Blogroll please send me the URL and I’ll be sure to include it.