WORK ON YOUR STORY! He/she who has the best story wins! In life! In business! The White House!

There's nobody in the world that wouldn't change places with the Americans. The economy is phenomenally large, the entrepreneurial class is very alive and very well, the universities, despite budget problems, still turn out something like 90 percent of the refereed academic and technical articles in the world. There's a lot on everybody's agenda.

Remember: You are the only human being in the world who can help this particular customer at this particular moment in time.

The thing that keeps a business ahead of the competition is excellence in execution.

OLD: Be No.1 or No.2 in Your Market. NEW: Find a Niche, Create Something New.

You are who you go to lunch with! Break bread with cool and you will become more cool. Conversely: break bread with dull and well, you can figure it out.

Steve Jobs is perhaps the most competitive human being I have ever met in my life, and yet I would argue one of the most artistic human beings I have ever met in my life. You can trash the movies all you want, but they do have an artistic component. And yet brutal competition knows no peers when it comes to Hollywood.