(Be sure to watch the two videos below.) Last week I wrote about the Acres of Diamonds talk given over 6,000 times by Russell Conwell. The point of it was that we sometimes spend time and money journeying far from home to find something that was right under our noses...

What are you overlooking in your backyard? I think you maybe trust me some and value my opinion a little or you would not be reading my blog posts. If that is true, then pay attention, because this first post of 2018 could be a life changer or major life enhancer for...

Watch with your family. Share with your friends. Merry Christmas! -Tom Hailey

  “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people to be interested in you.” Dale Carnegie wrote that in Part Two, Chapter 1 of How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936. In a...

  “If there is one secret to success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view, and see things from his angle as well as your own.” This is what Dale Carnegie wrote in Chapter 3 of How to Win Friends and Influence People written in 1936. He...

  Be “hearty in your approbation and lavish in your praise.” That is Dale Carnegie’s advice in chapter 2 of his book How to Win Friends and Influence People written in 1936. Don’t you love how people worded things decades ago? I don’t remember the word...

  I am in cafés and coffee shops a lot. I think I am noticing a change of behavior by many other people there. For a few years it seemed that many, or most, people were staring at their phones or tablets and not talking with the people next to them. Now I am...

  I was sitting by the window in a restaurant on Main Street in Louisville. There was an open space between two cars in front of the restaurant. A woman stopped next to it in an Escalade. She was going to parallel park. I was so happy. Watching people park is...

  Have you sent an email to someone you know, and they didn’t respond? As the saying goes, you hit Send, and crickets. You checked the email address to be sure it’s correct. You looked in the Sent Folder to be sure it took flight.  Days passed, and still no...

  Conciseness is not my superpower. Sometimes I use four sentences instead of one. I also have a talent for saying the same thing twice, just with slightly different words.  I’ll just repeat the same thing. There, I did it again. Maybe you occasionally fluff up...

  Let’s reminisce about Boom Boxes! Did you have one? Do you remember how a person would carry it on his shoulder, blasting sound into his own ears and into all those ears around him within a city block? Or some would set them up and broadcast music loud enough...

  Here’s the problem. You’re in a restaurant or the waiting room at your doctor’s office, or concentrating on your workout at the gym, or waiting to board a plane. And then it happens. Someone near you begins talking on their phone as if they're sitting alone at...

I was talking with the president of a company about his sales team. He said that he doesn’t send empty suits out to talk with his customers. First, he only hires engineers to be his sales representatives. And then they devote a year to the business before they are...

Listen Here Good Times Recently I attended a double nickel birthday party. It was a boomer blast. The birthday girl’s husband went all out to make 55 a festive and memorable event. We enjoyed a chimenea fire, storytelling, live music by some of the guests, delicious...

Have you wanted to kick yourself  because you forgot to pack something? When I began my career in the 70’s, my boss taught me the value of a list. His example was simple. He told about packing for a trip and forgetting his “good” shoes.  He discovered it the next...

In the eighties, I had seven people working for me selling construction equipment to dealers. I would travel with each one in their territory. I learned more from them than they did from me. I have one particular memory of that time. Paul represented us in Western New...

Being evaluated is part of a Toastmasters International club meeting. Each speaker is assigned an evaluator who completes a form in a manual and delivers a 3 ½ minute talk about the speaker’s effort. The evaluators are offering an opinion, based upon their knowledge...

“Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”  - Dale Carnegie Have you had the good feeling of running into someone, and they address you by your name, even though you’ve not seen them in quite awhile or you only met...

Please…stop talking. Have you been in an audience listening to a speaker who doesn’t know he is finished? You are done listening, but the speaker is not done talking. Another timing situation is that the speaker and his or her content are still engaging. You might...