In doing spring cleaning on my web site, cleaning up broken links, and fixing media players, I found a couple of prior articles discuss a CEO’s job description. One is in the form of a podcast, while the other is a full article. Read them & let me know your thoughts.

Podcast: http://www.steverrobbins.com/blog/2007/02/what-does-a-ceo-do
Article: http://www.SteverRobbins.com/articles/ceojob

Please comment! Do you agree? Disagree? Have I missed a critical piece of a CEO’s job, or included something that doesn’t belong?

Do great things!

Stever

I recently reviewed my business and realized that the fancy e-commerce platform I’m using costs more than I’ve made on the products I sell using that platform. So, as a good businessman, I will be switching to a new, less expensive platform.

However…

It will take time and money to move my existing products over to the new platform. Plus, I’m changing the direction of my business and the old products won’t be a good fit. (I’ll write more about this soon.) So I’ve decided to stop selling my existing suite of products.

Effective March 31, 2012, the current products in my online store will no longer be available for purchase.

The Time Control programs will be going away forever; moving their automated parts to a new platfom is too much work. My other products may not be gone for good, but I currently have no intention of bringing them back.

If you want to check out what’s available, visit my online product page for products including:
⁃ Time Control – personal productivity accountability programs
⁃ You Are Not Your Inbox – mastering email overload
⁃ It Takes a Lot More than Attitude to Lead a Stellar Organization leadership essays
⁃ Social Survival Skills for Geniuses how to master the non-logical part of business

Remember: these products will only be available until March 31st, 2012, after which time they will no longer be offered. This is your last chance! Click here to buy!

Thank you for your support so far, and I hope we have a long future together. But it will be in a somewhat different direction

Stever

One of the attendees was dissatisfied, however. She wrote saying she would rather have spent the time together going deeper into people’s answers and doing the “real” work in the phone calls.

She suggested I ask everyone to fill out the worksheet packet in advance. Then we’ll spend the day debriefing answers & going deeper. The design makes sense to me at a high level, but I don’t quite know how to pull it off in practice.

In particular, there are a couple of big questions in my mind:

1. Will people fill out 24 pages of worksheets thoughtfully, in advance?
2. Is it possible to go deeper with 20 people live on a teleconference?
   … how?

What do you think?

If you can’t view the embedded video above (the FOX video player seems to have problems with some browsers), here’s a link:

Indeed, the thought came often, “I could never do something like that.” But oddly, I didn’t let it stop me. It wasn’t courage. It wasn’t determination. It wasn’t drive. It was the simple realizing that it didn’t matter. If I truly couldn’t do it, I’d fail, and I’d have the perfect excuse: no reasonable person would have expected me to succeed. And if I could, then I’d have learned something.

What are you not doing because you believe “I could never do something like that?” How can you take the first step anyway, knowing it’s foolish, and a waste of time and effort? If you fail, big deal, you find out you were right. But what would it be worth to you to succeed?

There’s only one way to find out…

Scared all by itself is rarely a sign that you should run into a situation with open arms. We fear things when they are unknown and we believe there’s a chance we will get hurt physically, emotionally, or socially if we move forward. We might be wrong, but we might also be right. Listening to your fear is a Good Thing.

Excitement by itself just means we want to do something. We think it will nurture us or be fun or do something good for us. It is easy to fall into a habit of doing the same things over and over, just for the excitement. As the ladies who lunch might put it, “Sky-diving _again_? Really, Bernice, you’re getting so predictable.”

The combination of fear and excitement is a golden opportunity. The excitement tells you there’s something compelling. The fear tells you you’re moving outside your comfort zone. You’re growing and stretching yourself.

When you find this combination, take note! Use the fear to find possible pitfalls and start taking action to minimize them. If you’re afraid you can’t sing, that’s a sign that a few voice lessons may be in order.

And this is where the excitement comes in. It’s easy to say “too much trouble” or “I’m tone deaf. It’s genetic.” Tap into your excitement to take the voice lessons anyway. And keep with it until you start going for the thing that inspires you with such fear-citement.

The day before my reading, I came down with a nasty stomach flu that would have been a perfect excuse to give in to my fear and back down. After all, my friends in the audience would surely understand.

But even as I was contemplating it, I knew it wouldn’t happen. Because my excitement was saying “once you’ve done this, you’ll have performed in a show that you friggin’ co-wrote! How fabulous is that?!?!”

The show went on. And I sang. And for the most part, I sang well (apparently the couple of grimace-worthy moments went largely unnoticed except for *my* grimaces!). And it didn’t hurt! In fact, it felt good.

And now that I’ve taken that step, I can take another. Next reading, I want to step up and give a grimace-free performance. I want to nail all the harmonies, bring the character to life, and … Well, take over the world with my zombie army. Because otherwise, how will I get all the Oreo ice cream cake?

What’s your one-man show? What’s the thing you’ve been excited about, but perhaps not quite excited enough I overcome your fear? Consider this a nudge. Take the first step. Listen to the fear, address its concerns as best you can, and take the first step. Excitement plus fear–it’s your key to getting the most out of life.

I’m going to be kicking off 2012 by returning more closely to my coaching roots. You’ll hear more as the time approaches.

See you in 2012,

Stever

Then there’s the warranty and service plans. I just wrote about this in a recent Get-it-Done Guy episode. I’ll also have both the superb service experience of T-Mobile and the superb service experience of Apple. (Both of which I’ve used extensively with great results.) YAY!

The real rationalization? I feel happy every time I use my iPod touch, and I feel frustrated every time I use my Blackberry. I will feel happy when I use my iPhone. And what’s that worth?

There’s a REAL business lesson here: People don’t just buy your product. They also buy the experience of using your product.

Chapter 1 of my book is about “Living on Purpose.” It basically boils down to: “know why you’re doing something.” Let me be very clear: I’m not producing 1100 words of transcripts, a podcast, two free newsletters (my own and the Get-it-Done Guy), and providing ten years’ worth of blog posts and 12 years’ worth of articles every week because I feel a deep moral obligation to help the human race be more productive. This is my business, and as much as I like providing value for people, if the only rewards are spiritual, then I’m outta here so fast it’ll make your head spin. At some point, I actually need people to spend money with me, or I’ll go broke.

I have busted my butt creating more free, high-quality content in the last 12 years than most people produce in a lifetime. I’ve produced hundreds of podcasts, hundreds of newsletters, two books, and dozens of articles. All free, except the books, which economically haven’t even covered the cost of printing, yet. I’ve also produced a few for-profit products which have gotten great reviews on the free file-sharing sites of stolen content, but haven’t proven to attract the millions of dollars of income that I’d hoped.

If you like what I produce, please consider buying one of my for-profit information products, or attending a Do-It Day™. But for those who write, telling me how pissed you are that I spend too much time writing humor and (gasp) send 3 promotional tweets a week, please consider it from my point of view: I can’t afford to do this for free indefinitely. Either find a way to help me make money or I’ll have to stop. Complaining that my free material doesn’t meet your exacting specifications, however, is not the way to get my attention.

(If you pay for one of my products and it’s not what you want, however, I’ll listen quite closely.)