BLArticle®
The personal touch of a blog; the informative touch of an article.
Lessons In How Not To Say You’re Sorry
All of us make mistakes. Some are bigger than others, and some are more in the public eye than others. We seem to take a perverse pleasure in building our public figures up, only to take a greater pleasure in watching them fall, due to their mistakes. A good example...
The Need To Be Liked
Something curious happened a few weeks ago that most of my social network either didn’t notice, or didn’t care about. Unbeknownst to me, my social media consultant sent out a request to “Like” me. I was not asked, and if I had been, I would not have given...
It’s All A Matter Of Focus
Remember when reality shows were fresh and new? I can recall watching the very first episode of “Survivor,” and I was hooked. I have not missed an episode since the show first aired thirteen years ago. In fact, I’ve applied to be on the show several times. I’ve...
It’s Not Who You Know… It’s Who You Trust
When it comes to true friendship, there is almost no truer or closer friend than my cousin Steve. We’re virtually the same age, and we have been more like brothers since, well, since either of us can remember. We played together when we were very little, we had...
How NOT to Gain Trust
Imagine if your job was designed to help influence policy, and in doing so, you would need to understand how to change minds and how to influence decisions. Now, imagine that you were doing this job and 83% of the people were not happy with the job you were...
A Reason To Try
You’d think that, after thirty years of delivering seminars all over the world, it would get old and less exciting for me. Oh, some deliveries are easier than others, but last week was special. Last week’s seminar provided me with plenty of motivation to...
A Deal Is A Deal…
At an early age, my Dad taught me to despise the word “renegotiate.” If Lee Jolles had his way, he would have had it dropped from the dictionary. Let’s take a look at the definition, and you’ll see why two Jolles men dislike this word: Negotiate (something) again in...
Breaking The Ice
When I began working at Xerox almost 25 years ago, I had the pleasure of learning how to deliver training from the great Emmett Reagan. He was responsible for teaching every Xerox instructor how to conduct his or her training program. Emmett was a longtime “Xeroid”...
You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover
A BLArticle® Miniseries Part 4 “You Can Judge A Book By Its Cover” We grew up hearing, over and over again, the following statement: “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” In the new, multi-visual, internet driven, see-it-buy-it world we live in, I believe this could...
Release The Hounds!
A BLArticle® Miniseries Part 3 - Release The Hounds! Several months ago, when a release date of June 3rd was finally announced for my latest book, one of my tasks was to interview potential publicists. Visions of the “Today Show” and other glamorous appearances...
It Starts With…
A BLArticle® Miniseries Part 2 “It Starts With…” I can see the question coming a mile away. Almost every time I finish a keynote or a workshop, I end up talking with a handful of courageous souls who come on up to meet me. Some just want to say thank you, and others...
How to Change Minds
(For best results, watch in full screen mode and change to 720p Quality, and if your connection bogs down, take back down to regular quality.) A BLArticle® Miniseries Part 1 - “The Pre-launch” When I’ve written a book in the past, I used to tell my friends that my...
For The Sake Of The Team
It amazes me how often we throw around the word “team.” Some people think that just because you’ve formed a group, you’ve formed a team. In sports, our teammates are often others who were selected from a pool of players, but the moment we show up, and are handed a...
Enhancing What You Read
There seems to be so much doom and gloom in the book world. Bookstores are closing, and Nielsen BookScan, (the organization that tracks book sales,) tells us that book sales around the world are in general decline. This decline is being seen not just in the United...
Choices
Choices. Comedian Buddy Hackett once said this: “As a child, my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.” Choice sounds so easy, but the truth is, making the right choices is anything but easy. Ask my friend Ron James. He made the choice to...
A Tale Of Two Invitations
In the morning, we all have our own private office routines. Checking for phone messages, grabbing a cup of coffee, turning on our computers, and checking our email. Then there are the social media routines. For me, that means checking my Facebook and Twitter...
It’s All In The Timing
It happened again. I see it all the time. I watched as a professional speaker fell prey to the same mistake amateurs make all the time. I’m referring to losing your timing in a presentation. We’ve all seen the telltale signs. We sit through fifty minutes of a...
The Art of the Giveaway
Go to any seminar or workshop, and you can usually count on two things: Firstly, there may be too much information presented to you. Secondly, there will probably be some sort of a giveaway. We’ll save the “too much information” issue for another BLArticle®. Right...
The Great Equalizers
For years, I’ve specialized in two different topics: I teach people how to influence the actions of others one-on-one, and I teach people how to influence the actions of others through presentations to groups of people. I have modules that teach how to initiate a...
The 800 Pound Networking Gorilla
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to the old days, when you could sit by the phone and wait for those clients to call and offer you contracts? Think back to the days when putting a resume out on the street meant multiple job offers. Remember when college graduates came...
“Rob is an expert not only in the art of influence,
but also in human nature.”
~Ken Blanchard,
coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and Trust Works!