Whew! It has been a long time since I have been to my blog, and I want to say…I have missed it so.

My busy-ness and my business have been well…busy! I have been a little cramped on the creativity side over the last several months, but watching The Apprentice last night made me realize that I still had some fire in me.

I know people have issues with Donald Trump…I totally get that, but I have to say…He hit the mark last night. I had predicted yesterday morning that Stacie J. (Stacie with an “ie”) would get fired. In my opinion, her time is VERY short unless she does an about face. She is a loose cannon, and she is by far not the favorite of her team mates, but as soon as I saw what Bradford did, I shrieked…”Oh My. Donald is going to eat your lunch.” And, he did…Bradford…”You’re fired!”

My husband, Mike and I had a little “discussion” (more like a debate) about the situation (The Apprentice is bigger than a Duke basketball game in the Fields home…which is saying A LOT.) Mike felt that Donald was being a jerk, and I truly felt that Bradford let his cocky attitude and his puffed up view of his abilities get in the way of being smart (I do think he is brilliant…by the way…I said last week that this guy has what it takes to succeed if he can get his ego out of the way.) As soon as I heard that he was willing to relinquish his exemption, I knew Ivana would bring him back in the board room, and it was going to get ugly.

I say all of this, because there are so many times in life that we all just need to “shut up!” We say too much, we push the edge, and we shoot ourselves in the foot. If we could all just stick to the facts without the dramatic commentary, I believe that businesses and corporations would run so much more smoothly. Bradford is brilliant, but he is so full of himself…he has a way to go before her really makes it as a leader.

My eye is on Andy. He may not make it to the end, but this guy is brilliant. His youth and lack of experience may be his weak link, but the kid is amazing. Just watch the show and see how his mind works and what he says…He hits the nail on the head every time. A Harvard Grad and winner of the National Debate Championship in Commentary Speaking, Andy co-founded a concert package company that focused on coprorate and individual clients at age 13.Now that’s brilliant!

For more information on The Apprentice, visit The Apprentice 2 at NBC.com.

As many of you know, I had the pleasure to be able to attend the 3rd Annual Conference for CoachVille the first week of June. The conference was awesome, but one of the best parts of the conference for me was being able to finally meet my dear friend and colleague, Michael Port, face to face for the first time.

When I first met the irreverent and BIG thinking Michael Port , I was blown away! He is a truly amazing and authentic professional that stands boldly as a champion for solo professionals. He even designed my website! He is one of these bright young professionals who I want everyone I know to meet. He is a shining example of someone who knows what it takes, both personally and professional, to succeed in life.

And once I started learning more about his work and digging deeper, I only became more impressed. He’s truthful, vibrant and real… there’s something wonderfully contagious about his style that just got me thinking bigger about who I am and what I do! He truly calls others to greatness and to “fall deeply in love with yourself.” As someone who understands the importance of knowing your greatness, I connect with Michael’s stand around self confidence and really going for it in life.

You know my standards are high when it comes to making business and professional recommendations. As your business partner, it’s my moral imperative to give you the very best tools to help you achieve the wild and crazy success you deserve. It is one of my goals to provide you with support in building a thriving business, so I do want to share with you a resource, created by Michael, which will share with you the secrets Michael used to build a six figure income in less than 10 months:

Book Yourself Solid - The 7 Keys To Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even If You Hate Marketing And Selling is the perfect program for anyone who is building a business but doesn’t have enough clients. It is by far one of the cleanest, most concise, step by step programs on the internet today. And, there’s nothing boring about Michael or this fabulous CD. I promise you’ll be hanging on his every word. The program is so entertaining, fun and inspiring that you’ll want to listen to it over and over again until you create the profits and abundance you deserve!

So…as Michael says… “don’t forget to have a mad passionate love affair with yourself. Love, embrace and believe in yourself.”

I will never forget my first taste of a teleclass. It was in 1999 with Jim Vuocolo, over at Coach University and I was freaking out. There were 35 people from all over the world on this telephone line, many of the voices sounded the same, and I was shaking in my boots…afraid I would say the wrong thing, look dumb, and I certainly would not look brilliant.

So…I would sit on the calls and carefully formulate my answers. I would even look in the dictionary for words so that I could sound really smart! At this time, I was working out of a studio in downtown Southern Pines, NC. I was on my 3rd call with Jim, and guess what happened…the 2:00 train to Washington, D.C. came roaring through the middle of town…I was mortified as Jim said “Do I hear a train?” I just knew that everyone could see the 25 shades of red, blue, and purple on my face.

So…needless to say, it was an honor and privelege beyond belief when Dave Buck called to ask me to take over the leading of the Teleclass Leader Training Program. I knew that the teleclass medium would be the medium that would pull me forward in my life, and it happened sooner than I ever imagined. Many people ask how I did it? With a great deal of sweat rolling down my neck and a bottle of Maalox! I am not kidding…I could not get over my jitters, and I am not someone who is easily shaken. I finally realized the solution to my dilemma was simple…Write down my biggest fears and then teach two teleclasses every week for one year so that I could experience all of my fears and overcome them. So…I did! Yep…I had all of the bumps one could have…broken bridge lines, background noise, difficult students, students snapping at each other across the room, questions I could not answer, bridge lines double booked. I had them all, and guess what? I handled them with excellence, and I am alive to talk about it today!

Teleclass Leading is magical. I will be opening a new community for Teleclass Leading this week through Coachville Communities. I will be partnering with Dave Buck and Julia Stewart on this venture. I look so forward to being with the members of the club, as Dave, Julia, and I guide them to becoming masterful with this process. This learning club is going to provide folks from around the blobe with the oppportunity to stretch and grow unlike ever before! It is going to be awesome!

What does it take for you to stand for a transformed world?

For me, it takes being committed to reinventing and to doing whatever it takes to transform a room, a group of people, or a situation. When I look around the room, and I see people dripping off the walls with sullen faces and a scowl on their brows, I know that it is time for some fun and some jazz! It takes my being willing to be connected and to stand for people forwho they really are and standing for where they are and not being connected to what I think the outcome should be. It requires being outrageous and loving, bold and peaceful, and relentless and working for WIN/WIN.

So…I have some questions:

Who are you willing to become to make huge things happen in this world?

When are you willing to be coachable?

Are you willing to let go of your history to be the person it takes to really make big things happen?

Are you willing to let go of being right, looking good, and being in control in order to WIN?

What conversation (I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough) will you let go of in order to move to a level which will cause transformation in the world?

Think about it! Let me hear from you on what you plan to do to transform this world!

I had a great nap yesterday…during a PowerPoint Presentation.

What is it about PowerPoint that is better than any sleep aid on the market, and why do companies so fiercely insist that their presentations are more POWERFUL with 48 slides of graphs, percentages, and photographs of their corporate office?

Did Lincoln have a Power Point Presentation to support the Gettysburg Address? Did Martin Luther King flash slide after slide on the day he spoke these words:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I don’t think so!

In today’s world of clutter and noise, I believe that we are not selling slides, ideas, products, and technological dribble. I believe we are selling PEOPLE! When your prospects show for a live event or a teleclass or a presentation, they are not showing to see your slides! They are showing to be with you…to see if they like you and if you jazz them enough to want to do business with your company. You ask for the lights to be killed, you flash your boring PowerPoint on the big screen straight ahead, and in a flash, you lose eye contact and connection with your audience. ARGH! Your customers cannot choose to work with you in the dark, and they cannot get to know you behind the details of the slides you are using to cover up what is best about your company YOU! So…SNAP OUT OF IT! The next time you have a message to share, leave your slides at home and bring the best visual aid you own to the front of the room…That would be YOU!

As many of you know, I love dogs! I have two dogs, Max and Rosie, and they live the life of a king and queen. They eat, sleep, go on runs, and the highlight of their day is waiting for the UPS man (who comes daily to remind me that I have a shopaholic problem with Amazon.com.) Monday is an especially busy day for them, because we have garbage pick-up, recycling collection, UPS, Mail, and Deb’s Cleaning Service. By the end of Monday, Max and Rosie are spent…exhausted from the stress of the day, so Tuesday is spent in hangover recovery…napping and drinking water.

Max and Rosie are two of the loves of my home, and they are not Westminster material. They are a wonderful Heinz 57 mix, and they are healthy and add so much fun to the lives of my family. So, today…a little humor from the folks over at the Latenight Show with David Letterman.

Top Ten Perks Of Winning The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show

10. Winning makes you forget how much you smell like dog

9. He’s been invited to the White House to drink out of the toilet

8. The past 24 hours I’ve eaten so much free dog food it’s silly

7. Mayor Bloomberg has given him special permission to smoke indoors

6. That old slipper Josh chewed on? I just sold it on eBay for $500

5. It’s down to us and that Taco Bell dog for the next “Beethoven” movie

4. We both get $2 off our next flea bath

3. Fun to call the Red Sox and ask, “So have you ever won anything?”

2. If we’re lucky, a chance to appear on “The Tonight Show”

1. A whole lot of tail

Max, Rosie, and Katie

When was the last time you really dreamed and allowed your creativity to soar to levels that actually made you feel goosebumps?

Go back to the time and visualize what you were doing, how you were feeling, the way your body moved, how you breathed, and what you were thinking. Recapture this time. What images pass through your imagination. What did you say to yourself? How did you feel about yourself and your ideas?

Many people do not see themselves as creative, because they don’t have a big audience. They think that a big creative act is composing a symphony or painting the ceiling of the Systine Chapel. All humans have areas of their lives which boldly express creativity, and they have an uncanny ability to display flair and imagination in areas not considered as creative. This could be the writing of an amazing business plan, engaging in a provocative conversation, delivering a presentation or sales pitch, planting a cutting garden which inspires, or throwing a fabulous dinner party that people talk about for years. Maintaining a narrow view of creativity leads people to conclude that creativity is a rare trait belonging to poets, artists, and geniuses, and I am going to throw a stick of dynamite into this belief right now! WE ARE ALL CREATIVE, AND THE BOTTOM LINE IS THAT WE HAVE SHUT DOWN OUR CREATIVITY DUE TO FEAR OF REJECTION AND CRITICISM! IT IS TIME TO TURN ON YOUR CREATIVITY FOR FUN AND PROFIT!

I love visiting New York…it is my favorite city, and I go to get juiced and jazzed. About 3 years ago, I went to New York, and I had the most amazing trip, because it was a very mixed bag of activities. I was with my sister and my son, and we just went with our guts…we saw Lion King, visited the New York City Police Department, saw the Yankees and Red Sox play (that was amazing to watch two groups of Americans ready to choke each other over a baseball game) and the last day of our trip, we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I had never been, and I have to say…I was totally blown away. I felt every emotion possible…and I was in complete awe. It was after this visit that I knew that I would be enrolling in Coach University, because there was something huge for me to do in the world. It inspired me to take action and to make something incredible happen in the world and in my life. Our environment can inspire us to amazing levels of greatness and call us to take action that we never thought was possible.

What are you doing to stimulate your creativity? Don’t know? Spend a little bit of time today on the website for The Metropolitan Museum of Art or even better…go there! Your creative spirit is the core of your being…use it, and share it with the world starting now.

As you may know from reading my recent posts, I have been following The Apprentice, a reality television show which will award the “survivor” with Donald Trump’s $250,000.00 job.

Amy Henry, Between Market’s (a business to business software company in Austin, TX,) rising star, is shining brightly. Each week, she continues to be chosen first by the members of the group each time Trump reshuffles the group (Trump feels this has not been a smart move, because the group is telling Trump boldly that Henry is fantastic…so of course, he cannot help but notice her strength.)

Today, ten leadership experts from Joe Moglia (CEO, Ameritrade) to Necole Merrit (Executive, Bell South) to Stephen Covey offer their educated guesses in USA TODAY as to why Henry is emerging as the contestant to beat. We have heard and read these leadership traits over and over again…When are we going to listen? If Henry wins this game, it will be a loud and clear message to the world about what it really takes to be noticed and to be chosen in this competitive and often dog-eat-dog world. Here is what the ten experts say makes Henry the leader of choice:

She is showing the courage to really be herself