Holiday Craziness Begins - Keep Perspective
Well it's been far too long since my last blog entry. My apologies. It's been a busy November, but that's no excuse. I started the month with a great trip to one of the premier student leadership conferences in the world, the Ontario Student Leadership Conference. This year was the conference's 30th anniversary and brought in some pretty big names.I had the chance to hear and meet Craig Keilburger of Free the Children (www.freethechildren.com). Then we heard from Dr. Samantha Nutt Executive Director of WarChild (www.warchild.ca) an organization that works to provide humanitarian assistance to children of war affected areas around the world. Both are great organizations that are

Stop the Hype and Live Life
For most of us in N. America right now H1N1 is the topic of the day. To vaccinate or not, when will the vaccine be ready, will there be enough, what are the risks... etc etc. SO I thought it was a good time to talk not about the flu, but about maintaining our composure and peace amid stress.Effective people, good leaders, and anyone you admire probably, are good at finding a sense ofpeace amidst chaos.I've been really frustrated the last few weeks with the media coverage of the H1N1 pandemic and could be silent no more. So, with my apologies for giving you more to read about this topic, here are my thoughts...First let's talk about the word "pandemic". It

The first day of the rest of my life...
It's time for me to get excited about my life again. It used to be that I was so excited to get up in the morning, work on my business, spend time with my family, and just ENJOY life. But over the last year or so, I've let myself fall into a bit of a rut. There were still lots of good times and fun, but it just hasn't been clicking quite like it used to. Well I've had enough! I officially declare today "the first day of the rest of my life".This is not the first of these firsts. I've had a few. I was probably 13 when the first one came. I had been told by doctors that I couldn't play sports anymore (a central part of my life to that point). I was crushed and my world fell apart.

Lessons Learned... Be Early
Yesterday I was put in my place. A client I'd been working with told me that she felt like she wasn't a priority in my life because I had been late to our last two meetings. The worst part about this wasn't losing the client, it was the fact that she was right. Despite KNOWING that it is important to be early, despite TELLING OTHERS that it's important to be early, I was late. Twice. Pretty bad.So learn a lesson from me today, practice what you preach, and be early. It shows respect to the person you're meeting, and allows you to be totally prepared. Book Mark at www.MarkBlackSpeaks.com/booking

Where are you headed?
I've been watching the v-log of a friend and colleague of mine Stu Saunders (www.ylcc.com) the last few days. Stu is both a friend and a mentor as he has been doing what I do for more than twenty years, and he's great at it. He loves what he does and more importantly, he loves the people he works with and for.In addition to being a friend and colleague, Stu provides me with a vision of where I want, in part, my career to be. I can look at where he is, what he's done, what he's accomplished, and see in part what I where I want to be, what I want to do and what I want to accomplish. Having that vision clearly defined in my mind is a major step toward realizing it.Do Y