” Find something you love to do and you'll never have to work a day in your life.”

– Harvey Mackay

I love what I do!  So, I suppose that I am not working – day and night trying to establish my new company, The Company Rocks.

And I am not, because I love learning, I love creating, I love teaching, I love having the opportunity to help people recognize and realize their strengths.

How about you?  What are you thinking about as we celebrate Labor Day here in the United States?

Has your work just become a job?  That has happened to me several times in my life – when I worked as a musician and later when I worked for someone else – and I realized that I had to make a change.  How about you – do you have any personal experiences that you would like to share?

Let me leave you with one additional quote for this Labor Day:

“We work to become, not to acquire.”

– Elbert Hubbard

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

–        B.F. Skinner

Now that a new school year is about to begin, these words are a wonderful reminder for us to keep things in their proper perspective.  Test scores are certainly important, but they never measure engagement, excitement and imagination.

“…a company's most precious asset is its relationship with its customers.  It is not 'who you know' but how well you are known to them.”

– Theodore Levitt, editor and writer The Harvard Business School

If you have ever attended one of my seminars or training sessions, you know how much I enjoy – and employ – quotations.  I envy the ability to encapsulate the essence of 260 pages of research and ramblings into a sentence or two.  It is a goal I struggle to attain.

If we are to effective in communicating our message to our market, we must achieve clarity and brevity in as compelling a message as possible.  This is what the best quotations achieve.  My favorites include Winston Churchill, John Wooden and Peter Drucker.  Who are your favorites?  Please, share them with me and the readers of this blog.

I will share my favorite quotations as a regualr feature of my blog.  They shape my thinking – help me to gain clarity – and inspire me to define and sharpen the message I attempt to convey in my articles and speeches.

The quotation from Theodore Levitt has been deliberatly selected to lead off this series.  Over the six years since I first discovered it, it has become my daily mantra – I reflect upon its message each morning as I sip my morning coffee.

Another daily morning ritual is to read the Obituary column of the New York Times – not from some morbid fascination – but rather to reflect on the passing of and celebrate the accomplishments of men and women who have contributed to making our great society.  Unfortunately, I read about the passing of Theodore Levitt a few months ago.  Along with Peter Drucker's insights on management theory, Levitt's writings on marketing are some of the best of the Twentieth Century.

If I am able to attract readers to my blog – and to my business, The Company Rocks – I must embrace the essence of Theodore Levitt's admonition – be known to your customers (for something of value.)

Please let me know if I am doing so – or not.

Danny Rocks