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No One Way – 5 tips to pursue success

If you know college basketball, you know Coach K. Coach Krzyzewski is the legendary head coach at Duke University who, over the span of 40 seasons, has taken his team to the final four 12 times. (That’s a big deal!) Grant Hill, one of his star players from 1990 to…

Philip MartinApril 2, 2021

Business Family Featured Food for thought Personal Growth Quotes

Five Ways Happy People Pursue Happiness

March 20th is International Day of happiness and it brought to mind a story; A few years ago a young man asked me, “what’s the difference between fun and happiness?” I told him the answer involves a dictionary, the Dalai Lama, the declaration of independence, and, of course, the Beatles. …

Philip MartinMarch 18, 2021

Business Featured Food for thought Personal Growth Risk

What are You Most Afraid of?

We used to visit the kids’ grandparents in the mountains of Montana every so often as they were growing up. The snowcapped peaks are majestic, and the sky there really is bigger. What’s also bigger there? Bears. We would go hiking or walking in the area surrounding the cabin, and…

Philip MartinMarch 4, 2021

Business Family Food for thought Personal Growth

It May Not Count – but it Always Matters

Baseball has spring training, football has training camps, and golfers do… whatever golfers do (putt putt maybe?). Then in most sports there’s a preseason. Why not just get on with the games that matter? These practices and matches are vitally important even though they don’t count toward player statistics or…

Philip MartinFebruary 18, 2021

Business Family Food for thought Personal Growth

Is Saying Something Nice Good Advice?

Is it good advice? If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. My parents said it, and I always tried to take it to heart. But I’ll ask again; is it good advice? My answer is “Yes… with a caveat.” While this is a true maxim, there…

Philip MartinFebruary 8, 2021

Business Featured Personal Growth

Listen So People Want to Talk

In January, we shook the dust off our feet from 2020, we remembered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and we saw the United States welcome a new president. Now, as we look forward into our future, we’re trying to live up to our name; the United States of America. Dr. King dreamt of it,…

Philip MartinJanuary 22, 2021

Business Family Featured Food for thought Personal Growth

2020 is over! What Story Will You Tell?

The long-anticipated—prayed for—vaccine has finally arrived, and people are beginning to get immunized. With that, we can take our first collective, huge sigh of relief, believing that there is a light at the end of this very long tunnel we call 2020. But no matter how quickly we rebound and…

Philip MartinJanuary 7, 2021

Family Featured Personal Growth

What’s in Your Heart?

Scrooge is a cold and harsh man, and his heart only warms seeing his distant memories, and bleak future. The Grinch is… well… a Grinch until he discovers the spirit of Christmas, and his heart grows three sizes! Science has taught us that the heart is an organ that runs…

Philip MartinDecember 5, 2020

Business Personal Growth Risk

The SAFE Way to Innovate Like Google

With most of his day gone, and the cortisol pulsing through his body from a stressful day, Paul began to day dream. His mind slipped back to a few years prior when he had fiddled with an idea in his spare time. Paul’s boss saw his eyes glass over and…

Philip MartinNovember 19, 2020

Business Personal Growth

6 Ways to Keep It Together

When we started this pandemic interregnum we hoarded food, invested in canned goods, and stockpiled toilet paper. We queued Netflix and found a couple good books, ready for a long “winter’s night.” Little did we know it was going to turn into an arctic night. We set up home offices,…

Philip MartinNovember 5, 2020

Business Featured Food for thought Personal Growth

Some Days are Diamonds, Some Days are Dust – But All Are Golden

On the best days, rehearsals for a play are enlightening, stimulating, challenging, moving, and loads of fun. On the worst days, they are the same. The one big difference is that the latter didn’t go according to your plan. You didn’t make as much progress as you had hoped, or…

Philip MartinOctober 22, 2020

Business Personal Growth

6 Tips for Improving Your Focus

The year was 1976. One young actor was about to bring things to a crashing halt. The Pioneer Memorial Theater was filled to the brim for a production of the show Kismet. As Warzir sang his song “Was I Wazir?” the young actor behind him let his mind wander. He had…

Philip MartinOctober 12, 2020

Business Family Personal Growth

Limited Skill Isn’t a Liability

“Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music.” - Jerome Kern September 22 marks the death of one of the most influential composers in the history of American Music: Irving Berlin. In the first half of the 1900s, Berlin was able to capture America’s burgeoning energy…

Philip MartinSeptember 24, 2020

Business Family Featured Personal Growth

Opportunity in Restriction

Hollywood gave into pressure and agreed to censor what they would show in motion pictures. In the 1930s the Catholic Church saw itself as a moral compass and presented Hollywood with the Production Code, a document with drastic restrictions for movie production. They said ‘it’s my way or the highway’…

Philip MartinSeptember 10, 2020

Family Personal Growth

Being Grateful and Making it a Habit

Captains log: quarantine date 156. In facing monotony and the mundane, I am grateful. No I haven’t rewatched the entire original Star Trek series… but by now I could have! I have, though, ventured out of my house with my colorful personalized PPE, and driven past my favorite restaurant, drooling…

Philip MartinAugust 28, 2020