A passive approach to professional growth will leave you by the wayside.

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.

Excellence is not an aspiration. Excellence is what you do in the next five minutes.

Confidence means non-paralysis, a willingness to act, and act decisively, to start new things and cut failing ventures off.

Leaders do stuff that matters.

Start by identifying the qualities or characteristics that make you distinctive from your competitors - or your colleagues. What have you done lately - this week - to make yourself stand out? What would your colleagues or your customers say is your greatest and clearest strength? Your most noteworthy (as in, worthy of note) personal trait?