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On July 19, House Beautiful’s Kitchen of the Year 2010 honor was given to a kitchen designed by Jeff Lewis of Bravo show Flipping Out. Lewis, who is in the business of real estate sales, created a modern kitchen tailored to his own needs.  His story reveals helpful rules for kitchen design:

1) Make it personal. (Use your own sense of style.)

2) Make it functional. (The practical use of space should dictate the choice of cabinets, islands, fixtures, and accessories.)

3) Make it inviting. (The kitchen tends to become the family or living room of the home, particularly on entertaining occasions. Everybody loves to congregate around food and refreshments.)

In its first 3 days of sales, Apple’s iPhone 4 was purchased 1.7 millions times over in the US, UK, France, Germany, and Japan. The demand for the iPhone 4 exceeded the supply, however, and CEO Steve Jobs extended an apology to those customers who will have to do some waiting.

What is remarkable about Apple’s new product launch is the people behind the phone. The winning formula of any successful company is the quality and commitment of its workforce. According to business management consultant Tom Peters, there are no “bit players.”

“Totally Committed People Surging Toward Unimaginable Personal Enterprise Growth Opportunities Win” (#96 of The Little BIG Things)! In the business world, successful product launches are made possible by a team of outstanding men and women, not robots.

A generation ago, women needed male co-signers to purchase homes. Today, females comprise about 21% of borrowers (a jump from 17% in 1998). And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women surpassed men on payroll in 2009 for the first time in history. These are just a few of the remarkable trends noted in The Wall Street Journal. (”The Ladies’ Turn: Hungry to jump-start sales, more home builders are aggressively targeting women buyers. Will they bite?”)

How has the real estate market responded? Some builders are changing their strategies by offering massages, yoga, and cooking demos to bring female buyers through the door. The downside of the seemingly good news about women being empowered to buy is that obtaining mortgages today is more difficult for one-income applicants. And, women may end up paying more for mortgages than men, according to The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.

With this shift, one thing remains steady — builders need to consider the values of both men and women when designing homes that pull at the heartstrings.

identity

With the rise of social media use, businesses have to consider strategies for protecting their intellectual property and sensitive data. Sophos, a security firm, discovered that 60% of the 500 businesses polled believe Facebook to present the largest threat to company security. That does not go to say that Facebook has had more security woes than Twitter, MySpace, or LinkedIn. But the perception stands that Facebook is the octopus that reaches into more homes and businesses than any other social media platform currently on the internet.

Businesses will not likely block employee access to social media sites, primarily because these sites are increasingly used for marketing and sales tactics. Since social media lends itself to the casual exchange of information, now is the time for companies to create a chapter in the procedures manual — “Best practices for social media on the job.”

Leader

Zig Ziglar once said, “The number one tool in your sales arsenal is your integrity.” In the media, we hear stories of how great business people or public figures fall, on account of an ethical or moral misstep.

Dr. Henry Cloud (Integrity: The Courage To Meet the Demands of Reality) argues that successful individuals embody three things — 1)  A core set of Competencies, 2) Ability to build Alliances, and 3) Character.

Who a person is will ultimately determine if their brain, talents, competencies, energy, effort, deal-making abilities, and opportunities will succeed.

Integrity is not the thing that saves you; it’s the thing that makes you rise toward success.

snowman with headphones

Whether we prefer classical or jazz, hip-hop or alternative, country or pop, we move to the beat of our chosen music, and today more than ever before, music is not only accessible but transportable. On October 21, 2008, Apple reported to have sold over 220 million iPods. Since October 2004, the iPod product line has enjoyed the lion’s share of U.S. digital music player sales (over 90% of the market for hard drive-based players^).

With the invention of the iPod and other music devices, our favorite tunes are available on-demand. According to wiki-statistics, the top 5 recording artists (worldwide) include The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, ABBA, and Queen (in that order). A recent WSJ article announced that Bing Crosby’s rendition of Irving Berlin’s “White Christmas” is the top selling song of all time. Guinness World Records pronounced that sales of this 67-yr old song reached over 50 million copies, with album and other sales taking the total above 100 million (WSJ, “The Best-Selling Record of All,” Roy J. Harris Jr.).

Viewers of Nightline know the question sometimes posed to musicians, “What’s on your playlist”? The answer is often personal and thoughtful, offering viewers a pocket guide into someone’s musical soul.