Free New App on the iTunes App Store

from Mark Thompson and Brian Tracy
Now Build a Great Business!

No matter what industry you’re in or what economic conditions you are facing, you can still build a phenomenally successful business. Executive Coach MarkThompson and International Success Expert Brian Tracy reveal seven powerful principles that will change your business for the better in a brand new FREE app based on their bestselling book Now Build a Great Business.

Now Build a Great Business App sample screens.

This app contains seven chapters that teach people how to:

  • Attract and keep great people — build peak-performing teams.
  • Develop a great business plan — structure your business to maximize every resource.
  • Offer a great product or service — identify exactly what your market needs.
  • Deliver superior customer service — make service your key competitive advantage.
  • Create a great marketing plan — position your business as the preeminent provider.
  • Perfect your sales process — motivate customers to buy again and again.
App features:

  • Seven inspiring, thought-provoking chapters about building a successful business.
  • 50+ action exercises to help users apply the seven principles to their own businesses.
  • Personal journal to record thoughts and experience.
  • Community discussion after each chapter.
  • Narration by Mark Thompson and Brian Tracy for all seven chapters.This free app allows access to a portion of the content. Additional chapters and narration can be unlocked via in-app purchases.

Visit the iTunes App Store to download this app for FREE! 
http://tinyurl.com/NBAGBapp

Inc.com Column: How Top Leaders Handle Setbacks and Criticism

Executive Coach Mark Thompson shares lessons from America’s most successful executives on how to gracefully survive a professional drubbing.

Mark Thompson in Inc.When it became clear this spring that Alan Mulally, Ford’s CEO, wasn’t going to be selected for the top spot at Microsoft, the software company’s stock took a hit. You might think Mulally’s ego would take one too. As it happens, he took it in stride. (Ford showed their love by awarding him another $14 million in stock for the company’s prior year’s performance. And now that he’s announced his retirement this summer, there’s an epic line of companies hungry to recruit him.)Mulally wasn’t always in so much demand or as sanguine in the face of rejection. When Mulally was Boeing’s president, it was widely expected that he would be made CEO after a decade of successes at the company. He led the development of the 777 and shepherded the aircraft maker through a vibrant recovery from the financial wounds inflicted by 9/11 (the terrorists used Boeing 757s and 767s in the attack).

Mulally admits that when Boeing passed him over for the job, he was briefly devastated. But he quickly recovered because, he says, “a bad attitude simply erases everyone else’s memory of the incredible progress achieved.” He did not want to tarnish all “the great progress we had made” by becoming that bitter guy. He chose, instead, to remain a proud and gifted leader – albeit one who had suffered a professional setback. He was promptly recruited by Ford to re-ignite another iconic American manufacturer.

Legendary leaders like Mulally have three coping mechanisms that help them get through times when criticism, failure or disappointment threaten to rob the mojo that made them successful in the first place.  (more…)

Read the rest of Mark’s column on Inc.com:
http://www.inc.com/mark-thompson/how-to-survive-criticism.html

MY AFTER WITH MAYA: The Seven Sacred Promises

“This life, this experience is our one time to be ourselves.
It’s amazing. It’s such an incredible gift.”
– Maya Angelou

Several years ago, Maya Angelou reluctantly invited me to her home for a public broadcasting interview. I say “reluctantly” because at the time, I was the executive producer of Schwab.com and the Schwab CEO series, so Dr. Angelou’s office wondered aloud why a business geek like me wanted to get a front-row seat with Maya to discuss her life and existential poetry. I had been broadcasting interviews with billionaires like Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and it was time to break out of my comfort zone to interview this remarkable literary pioneer and leader.

On the day I arrived in Wake Forest, NC – Maya had cancelled all her meetings because she wasn’t feeling well. Since I had already made the trip, I told her office that I’d be happy to sit outside her home on that blustery fall day and wait – and if she were feeling well enough anytime that day, that I’d be there and she could allow me the interview if she wanted to. Finally, her assistant took pity and let me wait in her living room, where I could smell freshly-baked cookies, coffee and comfort food. She had a 12-foot picture window looking out to the fall trees, where brilliant yellow, orange and red leaves swirled as though in an aquarium.

An hour later, I looked up to see Maya – a majestic six-foot Amazon – enter the room. She shook my hand and settled into her favorite chair to chat. We talked about kids and love and life, and the 20-minute interview slot turned into four hours of laughter, deeply moving conversation, and lessons that I’d never forget. I think we healed each other that day.

The resulting program was called “Seven Sacred Promises”, and if you’d like to listen to the interview or read a copy of the transcript – you can find one of the chapters at http://www.markcthompson.com/register.php

Here’s an excerpt from our conversation: “This experience, this life, is our one time to be ourselves. It’s amazing. It’s such an incredible gift. The present is a present; it is a gift. To not try to live fully is to say to the creator, ‘I really don’t appreciate this incredible cornucopia. I’m not going to enjoy color, music, or order, or disorder. I just refuse.’ It’s amazing that the creator doesn’t just bump you into being a non-entity.”

“By the time my son was 7, I taught him that there was a place inside himself, so sacred, that no one had the right to walk in there. Nobody. No mother, father, no wife, husband, no child. Because that maybe the place that you go to meet God when you die. That place must be pristine. And it is your responsibility to keep it pristine. So if you don’t, if you allow any brut to come in trashing that place, what happens to you? Where do you go for solace inside yourself? Can’t do that. There is something so sacred in each of us.”

Maya told me that there were customers who would come into her Grandmother’s store and complain about everything. “When that person would leave, she would call me. ‘There are people all over the world, white and black, rich and poor, going to sleep when that person went to sleep. They will never wake again. Their beds have become their cooling boards, their blankets have become their winding sheets and they would give ANYTHING for just 5 minutes of what that person was complaining about.’”

What I wouldn’t give for 5 more minutes with the late, great Maya Angelou. I’m so thankful for the gift of the time I shared with her – and her spirit will live on in her words for the ages. Rest in Peace Maya.

Listen to the rest of Mark’s interview with Maya Angelou:
http://www.markcthompson.com/register.php