AchieveMax® Blog

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.   

• Lincoln Logs were invented by John Lloyd Wright, the son of Frank Lloyd Wright.  He got the idea from a building technique his father had used in designing Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
• Bulletproof vests, fire escapes, windshield wipers, and laser printers were all invented by women!
• Walt Disney was afraid of mice, according to The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life by Steven Watts.
• How Apple Computers Got Its Name: The favorite fruit of founder Steve Jobs was alledgedly apple. Jobs was three months late in filing a name for the business.  He threatened to call his company Apple Computers if his colleagues didn’t suggest a better name by 5 p.m.
• How Oracle Got Its Name: Larry Ellison was working on a consulting project for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The code name for the project was Oracle. The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated, but Ellison and his co-founders, Bob Miner and Ed Oates, decided to finish what they started. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later, they kept the name for the company.
• How Yahoo! Got Its Name: Author Jonathan Swift invented the word “yahoo” and used the word in his book Gulliver’s Travels. The word “yahoo” represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
• How Google Got Its Name: The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search engine would be able to search. It was originally named Googol, a word for the number represented by one followed by 100 zeros. After the founders, Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page, presented their project to Andy Bechtolsheim, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems, they received a check made out to “Google Inc.”

DECEMBER HOLIDAY BONUS

• It is estimated that 400,000 people become sick each year from eating tainted holiday leftovers.
• If you received all the presents mentioned in the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” you’d have 364 gifts.
• More than 1,800 U.S. malls will employ a Santa this year. The average weight of a mall Santa in the U.S. is 218 pounds.
• 18,214,200 kids will visit Santa at all the U.S. malls this season. 10,119 children will visit Santa at each U.S. mall this season.
• 4,600 pictures are taken with Santa at each U.S. mall this holiday season.
• A good mall Santa can make as much as $30,000 in the six to eight week season. The average full-time Santa earns closer to $10,000 for the season.
• Poinsettias come in more than 100 varieties and 1,400 different colors.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: facts, learn, life-long learning

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I’ve visited the historic Arlington Cemetery many times over the years but have never been there during the holiday season. I’ve never left the grounds without a tear in my eye, a lump in my throat, and a tightness in my chest. It’s hard to explain. It’s overwhelming. You have to be standing there taking it all in with your own eyes to truly understand.  I can’t imagine the emotion in seeing the site as it’s pictured here.

I found it very interesting to learn that these wreaths—some 5,000—are donated by the Worcester Wreath Co. of Harrington, Maine. The owner, Merrill Worcester, not only provides the wreaths but covers the trucking expense as well. He’s done this since 1992. A wonderful guy. Also, most years, groups of Maine school kids combine an educational trip to D.C. with this event to help out. Making this even more remarkable is the fact that Harrington is in one of the poorest parts of the state.     During this holiday season, be sure to say a prayer of thankfulness for these veterans who paid the ultimate price to protect a way of life we so often take for granted, for their families and loved ones, and for those who are today stationed all over the world defending the greatest country on earth. We can all do something to show our appreciation and respect … much like Merrill Worcester and the wonderful children of Maine. Let’s all light just one little candle this season.

Why don’t we read more stories of human warmth like this? They’re out there. Make an effort to find them and share them with as many people as you can. God Bless America. 

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

When I was very young, I began my education with the ongoing journey through the (misnamed) “Three R’s” (Readin’, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmatic). In fact, for years I could never figure out why those key words were always misspelled. Nobody ever bothered to explain it to me, and I guess I was too shy to ask. At that time I knew nothing of alliteration (a stylistic device, or literary technique, in which successive words—more strictly, stressed syllables—begin with the same consonant sound or letter. Alliteration is a frequent tool in poetry, but it is also common in prose, particularly to highlight short phrases. Whew!) It also never dawned on me that R, W, and A (Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic) simply didn’t have much of a ring to it!
 
Anyway, I’m currently on an aggressive campaign to persuade the masses to adopt a new formula for success. This simple credo (A latin word which means: “a set of fundamental beliefs or a guiding principle.”) is very basic and easily adapted to both your business and personal lives. The results are phenomenal! The formula is elementary.

Three R’s + Three L’s = SUCCESS

We can’t lose sight of the basics (readin’, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic). A fundamental education is essential to a successful career in today challenging environment. However, a critical addition to this formula occurs with the addition of the “Three L’s”—Look, Listen, and Learn! My greatest fear is that these elements are so basic that they won’t be taken seriously. There is so much more to be learned by fully utilizing these simple elements.
 
LOOK at newspapers, magazines, blogs, television, video, the internet, local business, global business, your competitors, current trends, and your industry to name just a few resources.
 
LISTEN to your current leadership, your employees, your peers, your customers, your team members, your associations, your mentors, experts in your field, consultants, authors, family, neighbors, and the list goes on and on.
 
LEARN is the most critical element of the three. Anyone can look and listen but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they will learn from doing so. How many organizations, companies, and individuals have you known that seem to continue to make the same mistakes again and again? They don’t learn from their own experience nor that of others who have successfully attained goals or failed miserably in the attempt. There are numerous learning experiences provided to us on a daily basis, and few of us take full advantage of this tremendous asset. We often speak of the proverbial “Knowing-Doing Gap” in our seminars and keynotes as well as the crucial need to close that gap. It matters little what we know if we do nothing with that knowledge.
 
One of the things we’d like to accomplish with this blog is to assist you in your pursuit of the “Three  L’s.” We are constantly seeking examples, both positive and negative, to be used in our seminars, keynotes, and consulting relationships. We do so by researching all of the resources mentioned above. We’d like to share a number of those examples here in the hopes that you’ll be able to gain a variety of tips, tools, and strategies that will contribute to your search for personal success.
 
Caution:  Don’t make the sometimes fatal mistake of disregarding information because it doesn’t come from your particular industry, area of the country, or from a business or person you may not respect or approve of. So much of our learning can come from the observation of those who have failed OR those who may entertain a different viewpoint than our own. I’d rather learn what not to do from the trials and tribulations of others than having to experience it myself.
 
There are lessons to be learned every day from every walk of life and so few of us make the time or effort to benefit from such a generous gift. We hope to make it a little easier for you here. By the way, if you feel you have a learning experience that you’d like to share with others, we’d be more than happy to review your contribution in the hope and anticipation that we can pass it on to others while attributing the content to you. Simply send your content to us.

One last observation for the record. Our “Three L’s” are all spelled properly … a lesson learned from a young boy who wondered for years why the Three R’s weren’t!

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: business

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.  

• A “jiffy” is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.
• There are more television sets in the United States than there are people in Japan.
• Nearly one-fourth of the world’s population lives on less than $200 a year. More than ninety million people survive on less than $75 a year.
• Pound for pound, hamburgers cost more than most new cars.
• Carnivorous animals will not eat another animal that has been hit by lightning.
• New York City has the most skyscrapers of any city in the world with 140. Chicago is a distant second at 68. The term “skyscraper” technically describes all habitable buildings with a height of more than 500 ft. (50 stories).
• On a bingo card of ninety numbers, there are approximately 44 million ways to make B-I-N-G-O.

DECEMBER HOLIDAY BONUS

• An estimated 25 to 30 million live Christmas trees are sold every holiday season in the U.S.
• Christmas trees usually take 6 to 8 years to fully mature.
• Franklin Pierce was the first U.S. President to have a decorated tree in the White House.
• The first commercial Christmas tree lot in the U.S. was set up in New York City in 1851.
• Grover Cleveland was the first President to use electric lights on the White House Christmas tree.
• In the first week after being cut, a Christmas tree will consume as much as a quart of water every day.
• Greenland has to import all of its Christmas trees.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a firm specializing in custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. To contact Harry, please fill out our blog feedback form.

Technorati Tags: facts, learn, life-long learning

Who is J.D. Power and Associates and why should we value anything they have to say?
 
Established in 1968, J.D. Power and Associates is a global marketing information firm that conducts independent and unbiased surveys of customer satisfaction, product quality and buyer behavior. Today, the firm’s services include industry-wide syndicated studies, proprietary (commissioned) tracking studies, media studies, forecasting, and training services, as well as business operations analyses, and consultancies on customer satisfaction trends.
 
What makes J.D. Power consumer ratings different?
 
Since 1968, J.D. Power and Associates has been conducting quality and customer satisfaction research based on survey responses from millions of consumers worldwide. They represent the voice of the customer by translating survey responses from consumers and businesses into studies and reports that companies worldwide use to improve their business.

In fact, J.D. Power and Associates has developed and maintains one of the largest, most comprehensive historical customer satisfaction databases in existence, which includes feedback on the shopping, buying, and ownership experiences for a variety of products and services from a variety of industries. Although they are best known for their work with the automotive industry, they also work extensively with boats, electronics, finance, insurance, healthcare, homes, telecommunications, and travel.
 
Bottom Line:
 
J.D. Power and Associates is an excellent resource for any research you want to do in the future in any of the areas listed above. They have tremendous credentials, decades of experience, a wide network of very credible resources, and an excellent reputation for providing a vast amount of unbiased data. They base their research solely on responses from millions of consumers and business customers worldwide.
 
Visit their website at www.jdpower.com.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: business

In the spirit of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement), here are this week’s new facts—one for each day of your coming week. Pass them on to others to keep the spirit alive or invite your friends and family to visit our blog where they can also view previous entries.  

• China has more English speakers than the United States.
• If you’re average, your feet hit the floor 7,000 times a day.
• The word “checkmate” is a Persian word meaning “the king is dead.”
• There are more telephones than people in Washington D.C.
• A hummingbird weighs less than a penny!
• Bulls are colorblind and therefore will usually charge at a matador’s waving cape no matter what color it is—be it red or neon yellow!
• The Hoover Dam was built to last 2,000 years. The concrete in it will not even be fully cured for another 500 years.

DECEMBER HOLIDAY BONUS

• Every year, 1.76 billion candy canes are made.
• December 26th is National Candy Cane Day in the U.S.
• The largest candy cane ever made was 36 feet, 7 inches long.
• A medium-size candy cane has about 50 calories.
• More than 60 million poinsettias are sold every Christmas.
• Annual retail sales of poinsettias now exceed $220 million.
• 80% of poinsettias are purchased by women, and 80% of purchasers are over 40 years old.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: facts, learn, life-long learning

For those of you who have little or no time to read the most recent business books arriving daily on the shelves of your favorite book store and/or those who don’t want to spend the typical $20 to $40 currently being asked for those best sellers, here’s an alternative.

There are several services available today that have done the ground work for you. They now offer an outline of the key points and ideas of full-length business books, which appear in quick, easy, and very affordable easy-to-read summaries.

Here’s a quick example of the concept in a nutshell:

Buy the book:

• Average business book today contains between 200 and 300 pages.
• Average cost is $20 to $30 (or more).
• Average reading time is 20 to 25 hours.

Use a book summary service:

• Pages have been reduced to 8 to 10 (approximately 5000 words).
• Reading time has been reduced to an average of ONE hour.
• The price has been reduced to $2 to $3 per book (However, you are usually required to subscribe to the service for at least a year, which turns out to be $24 to $36 totally—the average price of a single book!)
• You usually have your choice of a variety of formats: printed summary, an online summary, audio (cassette or CD) summary and formats for Palm and Pocket PC handheld devices, and MP3 players.
• These distillations cover the book’s main points and highlights and give you a working knowledge of its contents. A summary isn’t merely a digest or excerpts strung together. It’s a seamless document that reads (and holds your interest) like a magazine article. And you retain more of the content when you read a summary than when you read a book. A major university study proved that a few years back.

Imagine investing ONE hour per week reading these summaries. At the end of the year, you will have reviewed 52 best sellers in your effort to grow and progress in your chosen field. How many books did YOU read last year?

I’ve listed a few of these companies below that offer this service. You can find many others by simply searching for the words “Executive Book Summaries.” Look over what each offers and choose the offering that best meets your needs. Save time, save money, and learn ten times what you did last year! Do it now!

• www.executive-book-summaries.com
• www.summary.com
• www.summaries.com

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: books, business books, leadership books

Several years ago, I delivered a keynote presentation to the leadership council of a major midwest university. I was certainly encouraged to think that this particular group of young people would soon move into leadership roles across the country. Their knowledge, experience, and enthusiasm is certainly needed in today’s workplace. 

After the program, I had the opportunity to chat with several of the students. They were very interested in C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement). Long story short, we challenged one another to put forth an effort to learn one single new fact every day from that day on.

I figured after a year or two, I’d know everything there is to know. (LOL). I must admit that I’ve been encouraged, enthused, amazed, and entertained in my pursuit. I’ve mentioned this challenge to many audiences since that day and have received numerous requests to share my Fact-A-Day. In fact, I currently send seven new facts every week to those on that list. Due to the growing number of requests, we’ve decided to add those seven new facts to our blog each week to share them with you. We call this list, “A Fact-A-Day from Harry K.”  Here are your first seven … 

• Every 45 seconds, a house catches on fire in the U.S.
• The average person falls asleep in seven minutes.
• Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
• It took 214 crates to transport the Statue of Liberty from France to New York in 1885.
• There are 293 ways to make change for a dollar.
• Lightning strikes about 6,000 times per minute somewhere on this planet.
• Heinz ketchup leaving the bottle travels at 25 miles per year! (Yes, per year!)

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Technorati Tags: facts, learn, life-long learning

Welcome to the AchieveMax® Blog … the blog created to provide you with the latest buzz from the business world in addition to a constant offering of C.A.N.I. (Continuous And Never-ending Improvement) tips, tools, and strategies.

Official Definition of Blog:
Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the web site.

We’ve decided to utilize the virtues of the above described blog to keep you abreast of some of the most recent, interesting, and not always publicized news from the business world.

We’ll attempt to find answers to your inquiries, share any news you feel worthy of passing on, and keep you supplied with humorous, challenging, and entertaining tidbits that will hopefully keep you coming back to us on a regular basis.

I’m Harry K. Jones, Vice President of Creative Development for the AchieveMax® company. Our team of professional speakers and consultants delivers performance improvement solutions to organizations to help them achieve their maximum potential. Our uniqueness lies in how we do it. We help organizations recognize, involve, develop, and focus their human assets with breakthrough strategies and secrets of innovative leaders.

In short, we provide consulting, facilitation, seminars, and keynote presentations. If you’d like to know more about our organization, simply visit our web site at http://www.AchieveMax.com/. You’ll also find background statements on each of our team members … future networking resources you can count on. I think you’ll find our diverse backgrounds not only interesting but potentially very useful as resources.

Harry K. Jones is a professional speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed keynote presentations, seminars, and consulting services. Harry has appeared all over North America addressing topics such as change, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork and time management for a number of industries, including education, financial, government, healthcare, hospitality, and manufacturing. For more information, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.