Michael Angelo Caruso

Everything is a presentation

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5 cool ideas for your New Year’s resolution

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Anytime is a good time for resolutions. The most successful resolutions offer anticipation of reward or the avoidance of pain. Freud wrote that pleasure and pain are terrific motivators. Here are 5 Cool Ideas for New Year’s resolutions.

1. Be purposeful in everything you do.
You can become much more efficient by striving for purpose in your daily activities. Do you just eat lunch or do you enrich relationships while you eat? What purpose do those two sitcoms serve you every night? What is the purpose of eating that bag of chips? More importantly, what types of consequences await you now that you’ve indulged? Be purposeful in everything you do. Walk with purpose and people will be more likely to respect your time.

2. Resolve not to be mediocre.
Use the freshness of the new year as an excuse for avoiding mediocrity. This can be a challenging task because industry markets products and services to the lowest common denominator. Junk food is marketed to the lowest common denominator. Fast food, for example, is produced cheaply and sold cheaply. Sitcom television is geared toward the masses. The people who produce sitcoms even provide a laugh track so that you’ll know when most people laugh. Give yourself an upgrade. Resolve to distance yourself from the lowest common denominator.

Testimonials are a Great Way to Promote Yourself, Your Biz

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Testimonials are the way to go. Why?  Because when you tell people how great you are it’s advertising. But when a third-party tells people how great you are, it’s the truth. Tweet This Endorsements and third-party testimonials are vital to business growth. In the old days, a person asked a satisfied customer to send a letter of recommendation.  […]

How to hire an amazing keynote speaker

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So you need to hire a keynote speaker? Your conference, trade show or corporate events are big deals.  So much time, energy, and money will be spent entertaining and educating your audience. And now, your reputation is staked on the success of the keynote speaker you select, wow. Hiring the right keynote speaker is challenging […]

A Smile Makes You More Articulate

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Have you ever noticed that when a photographer says, “Smile!” that people in the photograph look a little fake?

Smiling, although natural, can be complicated. That’s probably why we don’t do it more often, even when we’re being photographed.

But there are other reasons people don’t smile. The list is extensive and includes, insecurity, lack of self-awareness, discomfort, low self-esteem, fatigue, and unhappiness.

Once in a while, I’ll accidentally catch a glimpse of my resting face when I use the reverse lens on my cell phone to do a selfie. Us self-promoters do a lot of selfies.

Lt. Columbo Taught Sellers the “Doorknob Close”

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Peter Falk, who played one of television’s greatest characters, passed away last week, but not before giving salespeople one of the greatest closing techniques of all time.

Falk played Lt. Columbo, a bumbling police detective so unusual, he didn’t need a first name. Columbo was a true original, a slow-moving, hunched over man wearing a rumpled raincoat and carrying a stogie.

Columbo never seemed to know which way was up—until he solved the crime, usually by tricking the perpetrator into talking too much.

5 Cool Ideas for Dealing with Critics

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People who make presentations are like human targets.

It’s so incredibly easy to sit in the audience and criticize another person’s speech or presentation. Critics and other types of Monday morning quarterbacks sometimes offer useful information, but don’t ever let them get you down or keep you from doing your thing.

As Teddy Roosevelt said: It’s not the critic who counts. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena.

5 Cool Ideas for Dealing With Critics

When I was young, I toured the country in a rock band. Although our band was popular, we endured the wrath of critics. It seems that everyone has an opinion on music so I experienced critics in that worked in the media, critics in our audiences and even critics in my neighborhood. As a professional speaker and published author, critics are still in my life. Here are 5 Cool Ideas for dealing with critics. [Excerpt from my e-book, 5 Cool Ideas for Succeeding at Work.]

1. Patterned criticism can be more valuable than isolated criticism.