Host Your Own Internet Radio Show with a Webware 100 Winner

There’s not shortage of love on my part for Internet Radio powerhouse BlogTalkRadio.com. I have my own show that I co-host with a great friend of mine each week. We’ve had some really amazing guests on the show over the last few weeks, and the show gives us a lot of inspiration. We aren’t the only ones that seem to be inspired by our show. With tens of thousands of listeners on BlogTalkRadio.com every day, they have access to hundreds of great shows about several different topics, ranging from the paranormal to conservative politics.

So, it comes as no surprise that BlogTalkRadio.com was chosen as a Webware 100 Winner! What makes this most impressive is that this Internet Radio powerhouse is the only All-Talk site listed under the audio category in the Webware 100. Keeping company with sites such Amazon mp3, iTunes, Zune, and the other music download sites is impressive. Let’s face it, downloading music is what most people on the Internet are looking for. Yet, BlogTalkRadio.com has managed to capture the hearts (and ears) of so many people on the web to be ranked with these music download websites. Big congratulations to BlogTalkRadio.com!

The Women of Words Cause

I know, the pervs were probably expecting some pictures of scantily clad women. For that, you should go here. For the rest of you, Dean and I had four incredibly amazing women on the Dean and Jared Words Cause Radio Show yesterday.

Laura and Lori have teamed up to provide amazing technological advancements in the health care industry.

Marianne quit a cushy job of 16 years to start her own business.

Rebekah is a mother of three boys, a wife of 17 years to a veteran, and the founder of more than half a dozen resources for health information.

How do they all do it? Click here to read a little bit more information about Laura, Lori, Marianne, and Rebekah.

What inspired them to go beyond their comfort zones? Listen to the Dean and Jared Words Cause Radio Show to find out!

20 Dollars of Wisdom

From an email a friend of my mom…

A well-known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20.00 bill.

In the room of 200, he asked, Who would like this $20 bill?”

Hands started going up.

He said, “I am going to give this $20 to one of you but first, let me do this.”

He proceeded to crumple up the $20 dollar bill.  He then asked, “Who still wants it?”

Still the hands were up in the air.

“Well”, he replied, “What if I do this?”

And he dropped it on the ground and started to grind it into the floor with his shoe.

He picked it up, now crumpled and dirty. “Now, who still wants it?”

Still the hands went into the air.

“My friends, we have all learned a very valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money, you still wanted it because it did not decrease in value. It was still worth $20.”

He continued, “Many times in our lives, *we* are dropped, crumpled, and ground into the dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless.”

He pauses, “But no matter what has happened or what will happen,  you will never lose your value. Dirty or clean, crumpled or finely creased, you are still priceless to those who DO LOVE you. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know, but by WHO WE ARE and WHOSE WE ARE.”

You are special – Don’t EVER forget it.

You Really Are That Great

People have been telling me that I’ve been gifted with a great voice since I was a young child. I’m not talking about an American Idol kind of voice. I’m talking about speaking. I haven’t delivered a speech in nearly a decade. Outside of the interview of me by Dr. Joe Vitale about my advertising, I haven’t been doing much along the lines of speaking publicly. That was until this weekend…

A friend of mine, Doctor Nat (yes, a blond rocket scientist) has been working with a guy by the name of Scott Evans (he did the movie “Pass it On“) on putting together a workshop for inventors. The idea was to provide attendees with training and information that would take them from thinking about a product/service/business to actually brining it to market. Or if they already had the product… Make it a wild success. They got that and then some!

The weekend was packed. Non-stop, high energy from 9 in the morning to 11 at night the whole weekend. And there was NEVER a dull moment! To give you an idea about what it was like, here is the list of speakers:
Sarah Caldicott
Scott Evans
Dr. Natalie L. Petouhoff
Jeffrey G. Sheldon
Louis Foreman
Scott Painter
Gene McNaughton
Glenn Blake
Jace Souder
Mike Stuhley
Jared Tracy (me)
Mary Ligon
Darren Jacklin
Dr. Zonnya

That’s a great team of speakers! If you want to walk out of a weekend on fire and with knowledge that can be applied to your business, product, relationships, and life in general, it doesn’t get much better than what you see above!

I must admit that the best part of the entire weekend was when several people came up to me on a break or after the event and told me that what I contributed to them is going to make a significant difference in their business. That’s what it’s all about! And it felt every so great after having not done anything like that for nearly 10 years. I’ve been smiling from ear to ear ever since. I might have even been smiling while I was sleeping on the plane ride back to Los Angeles.

If you spent some time clicking on those names above or ran a Google search on those names, you would see that it is an extraordinary group of people. People who move mountains and make the extraordinary happen every day.

The best news of all… You are just as powerful, moving, inspirational, intelligent, and gifted as any one of the people on that list.

How can that be? Well, it is simple. You were born that way. And that is why all of us really are that great  😀

Is Business Wiki a Viable Option?

Wiki projects have become widely used from sharing shopping experiences to the ultimate online encyclopedia. Something that I’ve been thinking about for a while is whether a business wiki a viable option. A business wiki would be for business professionals to share valuable business process knowledge to help others expand their business while potentially learning from others they would have never expected to learn from? Are executives and employees willing to share information that might potentially increase their competition?

Most of business is run on removing competition. Stifling competition. Killing competition. Keeping everything a secret. Keeping business knowledge scarce. What would it be like if that wasn’t the case? If there was a free flow of informations for companies to learn from past mistakes of other companies?

If your competition goes up, the only option you have is to innovate. Innovate your product. Innovate your marketing. Innovate your customer care. It would force your business to move forward, to always be looking forward.

I’m not suggesting that companies freely share their product ideas. You still closely guard company secrets like the formula for Coca Cola. What I’m talking about are business processes. For example, how to optimize your customer retention. How to improve your shipping department. I believe that the free sharing of this kind of information would spark a tremendous amount of innovation and improvements in businesses that would help revolutionize the way the world does business.

How to finish a race

It certainly wasn’t my strongest race ever. In fact, the 0.4 mile swim nearly killed me. But the Los Angeles Triathlon was a tremendous accomplishment this weekend. Thanks to Accenture, I’m able to watch a video of my pasty ass cross the finish line. That’s the way to finish the race. Be sure to checkout my lil bro who finishes very strong just 10 seconds after me!

I figured I might as well share some of those special moments from the race…

Applying the Bullfrog eXtreme Sport (left)

Someone thought it would be a good idea to put us in white caps… At a certain point, we figured out that we’re wearing condoms on our heads (right)

#2403 getting ready for action (left)

I’m somewhere in that mess of ocean, beach, and whiteheaded swimmers (right).

The swim was definitely the toughest part of the entire race for me. Even though I have a bad IT band that makes running a painful experience, swimming is my weakest area. It’s kinda like the ol’ shirt says, “I’d be a much better triathlete is swimming was as easy as your girlfriend.” I swear, I almost died out there in the water.

I couldn’t find my rhythm the whole while I was out there. The few times that I did… I’d end up getting kicked by someone. I really did enjoy the whole thing though!

The bike was my favorite part (left). I love the bike! Of course, I need to figure out how to reduce my transition times. Maybe it was because I was so confused about how to use my bike (right).

In the end, I got to show off my Sven triathlete suit and my lil brother and I both received finisher medals (left). BTW, the Bullfrog eXtreme Sport that I put on earlier in the day really worked! I’m really as pasty white as it shows in the pictures. I didn’t end up with a sunburn anywhere on me. Not even my nose (which is normally looking rudolph-ish this time of year).

After the long race and time under the sun. I got to kick back with my BFF (right), my brother and his woman. Good times for the people of Los Angeles!!!

First Open Water Swim for the Triathlon

I went to Triathlon Lab in Redondo today to checkout some gear for the triathlon training I’m going through. We rented a wetsuit to checkout an open water swim. I was trying on all kinds of training outfits. Some of them were a little too Sven for me, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, we grabs our wetsuits and drove down to the Redondo Pier. When we got there, we packed it all up and then jogged down to the far side of the jetty. We slipped on our suits and goggles and dipped into the ocean. Its amazing how much warmer the Pacific Ocean is when you are wearing a swimming wetsuit.

I must say that swimming in the ocean is completely different than anything else I’ve done for training. I mean, I must have passed at least 20 gallons of salt water through my nose in the 1/4 mile swim we did. It was a great experience. Afterwards, we went back to Triathlon Lab. I picked up a sweet deal on a ton of training gear. The guy Robert was a great help with everything and hooked me up because of our mutual friend.

I’m really excited about the training that’s going to be taking place over the next couple of months for the LA Triathlon!

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