Category Archives: Development

Jeffrey is Leading the Dance to Perfection!

Have you ever experienced pure service excellence? It’s when you get asked exactly the right questions, being offered the right products, it’s when everything feels so right, and it feels like you are dancing while being led by a true professional! It happens when you walk into the Apple store on 5th Avenue, dine at Per Se in the Time Warner Center… the experience is perfect from beginning to end, a perfect dance!

Getting your pictures taken by Jeffrey Bennett of JLBWEDDING.COM is no different! My fiancée and I decided to get our engagement pictures taken a few months ago and wanted to have Vintage New York as our theme. New York is where we first met, fell in love and it would always have a special place in our heart, so we figured we should invest in making this a lasting memory.

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Click on the picture above for more!

We googled for the right photographer, but most of them were pretty much the same, they all offered to take beautiful pictures in exchange for money… that’s it, and nothing more. Until we found Jeffrey Bennett‘s pictures of a couple in New York that he took a few years ago online, and both of us agreed instantly that we loved how he was able to capture the moment in its pure elegance and simplicity, not just a beautiful picture, but a real emotion. Why do I write about this?  Not because I am getting paid for it or because I want him to take our wedding pictures as well and am already trying to bargain for a good price by doing this… hold on, on a second thought, no I am kidding. I am writing this because my fiancée and I were so amazed by how he was able to lead us through this experience and come up with this breathtaking pictures as a result of it.

My greatest fear was probably how uncomfortable my fiancée would always get by anyone taking pictures of her, and how she could possibly make it through the day by getting her pictures taken all day long in New York City dressed up in vintage cloths. But Jeffrey arrived and any worries or concerns were gone within minutes. Not only did he know exactly what we wanted, but he also was able to lead us there with confidence.

Being able to lead people is necessary in any business if you want to be successful. Being able to show empathy and putting yourself in your customers shoes, while infusing comfort and confidence is what differentiates good from great artists. I strongly believe that Jeffrey‘s personal skills are what led to this beautiful product. His technical and artistic skills may enable him to be a good photographer, but his people skills that can be seen in his pictures shown in the comfort and confidence of his customers make him in my opinion an artist second to none!

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Steve Jobs’ Most Memorable Speech

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment of failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

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Above is a taste of Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford Commencement Address and one of the Top 10 Commencement Speeches of all times. It’s also most motivating and encouraging when having to face the uncomfortable situations in life and when having to make the tough decisions that really matter and make a difference. Watch the full speech by clicking on video below.

Continue reading Steve Jobs’ Most Memorable Speech →

My Take on SoulCycle

I just returned from my first SoulCycle experience at Soul West Village and have to admit that I feel great, absolutely exhausted, but great! While striving to achieve a healthy work-life balance, I was always looking to workout more often (who doesn’t, right?), and more importantly on a consistent basis. I would never come up with the energy to workout by myself.

So a couple of months ago I discovered the Niketown Running Club and would run in Central Park twice a week. I was fascinated by the encouraging feeling of running in a group, and by being pushed to do more by the fellow runners. I recently moved from Midtown to West Village, further away from Niketown, and with it the original excitement to commit myself to run weekly started fading away.

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Continue reading My Take on SoulCycle →

The Power of ‘Thank You’

I first heard about the power of frequently writing ‘thank you’ notes a couple of weeks ago at a training about leadership. The instructor of the training made a point of highlighting the power of saying thank you for a job well done, and how effective ‘thank you’ notes are for appreciation and recognition.

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Motivated and inspired by the training I started writing these notes for a couple of days until my excitement started fading away, and I just stopped doing it. I felt that it really wasn’t that important, and that people wouldn’t care anyway. Until last weekend… Continue reading The Power of ‘Thank You’ →

What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’

The Startup Kids is an excellent documentary about young entrepreneurs starting their own businesses. It talks about entrepreneurship and how successes are the consequences of failures.

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So what does it take to be a Startup Kid and build your own business? Continue reading What I Learned from ‘The Startup Kids’ →

How Do You Get People To Like You

Working in the hotel industry just like any other service industry it’s all about people, it’s about one person respecting another person.

It’s about people trusting each other, because if there is no trust between people, efficiency and productivity will go down to zero.

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Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So how do you get people to like you, or better yet, how do you get people to want to work with you and for you? And I am not talking about a popularity contest, I am talking about respecting another person, respecting his or her values and beliefs. Continue reading How Do You Get People To Like You →

Are You Really Busy or Just Lazy?

Being busy is just another form of laziness!

‘Excuse me? I am running around the entire day putting out fires and getting things done!’ This would have most likely been my response to above statement just two years ago when working more than 12 hours a day and seven days a week. Two years ago I honestly believed that I added value every minute of all those extra hours worked.

As Tim Ferris describes it in The 4-Hour Workweek ‘Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action’, and what this means is that being busy is only a sign of not being able to prioritize tasks and being able to focus on the important stuff.

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Continue reading Are You Really Busy or Just Lazy? →

How to Get Promoted in 3 Steps

You are eager to get promoted and move on to the next step. You are constantly comparing yourself to your peers, are impatient about your own job situation and cannot wait for something exciting in your career to happen. You want to get promoted!

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Image courtesy of dream designs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Every once in a while when your personal life calms down a little and work isn’t as busy for a change, you’ll get the feeling that it’s time for something new… that you’re standing still and that something new and exciting needs to happen for you! Continue reading How to Get Promoted in 3 Steps →

How To Make Feedback Effective

Giving and receiving feedback can be a gift, as it can help you build or strengthen a relationship, if done right, or it can damage a relation, or be career hindering and de-motivating.

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Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Concerns with giving & receiving feedback:

When receiving feedback our potential concerns are that we fear criticism or our reaction to feedback and that we are nervous about having to hear something that might make us feel uncomfortable. When giving feedback we could fear that we hurt the other person’s feelings or that the other person might get defensive… and just like when receiving feedback, we could be nervous about giving it. Continue reading How To Make Feedback Effective →

You Are The CEO of You!

Congratulations on being the CEO of what should be the most important corporation for you, congratulations on being the CEO of ‘You’! Understanding yourself as a business, that requires planning, investment and exercise is the foundation for a balanced and fulfilling professional and personal ‘career’.

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Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.Net

What’s important to keep in mind as the CEO of ‘Yourself, Inc.’: Continue reading You Are The CEO of You! →

212° the extra degree

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, water starts boiling. With boiling water comes steam, and with steam you can power a locomotive. It is that one extra degree that makes all the difference, and it is that one extra degree that separates the good from the great!

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Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How often did you have the feeling of frustration and lost motivation because you couldn’t seem to achieve your goals, and that no matter how much efforts you put in and how hard you tried, nothing was going to change? … chances are that you were sitting right at 211 degrees, and all it would have taken for you to succeed was that one extra degree.

Much too often we give up right before that moment when we would have accomplished everything what we strived for, and we just needed to keep trying. If you want to get ahead, become great at what you do and be successful in achieving your goals you’ll need to keep going when it seems to be the toughest and not turn around.

The 30 most important minutes of your day

It’s your 30 minutes lunch break! You either believed it to be an interruption of your day as you had so much work to be done, or the highlight as you were able to step out of your busy day for a moment to take a deep breath!

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Image courtesy of sirikul at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

But one way or the other, it turns out that you were wrong. Talking to my dear friend McKinley the other day, who follows this blog loyally from the beginning, and listening to him talking about the importance of not only never sitting alone while having lunch in the staff canteen, but also making a point of always sitting with different people, and use this half an hour to connect with people and build or strengthen relationships, opened my eyes. Continue reading The 30 most important minutes of your day →

If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way!

Are you just pretending that you want to know what’s wrong in your business that you can improve it, or do you really want to hear the hurtful truth and are ready to make the uncomfortable decisions that are necessary?

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Image courtesy of nokhook_buchachon at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Either your managers are conducting superficial meetings pretending that they want to learn what’s wrong in their business so that they can learn from it and fix it, or they really want to know what’s wrong but their middle managers are filtering reality and telling them only what they want to hear so they can look good in front of their bosses. Either way any necessary progress and healthy change is being made impossible. Continue reading If You Want Your Business to Improve, Do It the P&G Way! →

Who Else Wants to Achieve Work-Life Balance in Hospitality?

Is work-life balance a loanword in hospitality?

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Image courtesy by Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I took me about eight years to understand the importance of work-life balance in hospitality and that it’s not just a myth. Continue reading Who Else Wants to Achieve Work-Life Balance in Hospitality? →

Do you know what your goals are?

What’s my goal, is one of the most important questions you can ask yourself at the beginning of your journey and your career in hospitality!

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Image courtesy of pakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am recruiting graduates from hotel management schools for the position of housekeeping floor manager now for years, and my experience is that many, if not most, do not have clearly defined goals and are rushed to get promoted as fast as possible, and definitely faster than their peers from school. Continue reading Do you know what your goals are? →

How to Make the Most Out of Your Review

Getting a review can help you develop and grow or be a complete waste of time for you and your boss.

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Image courtesy by Jeroen van Oostrom at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I remember getting my first reviews and I was eager to receive ‘exceed expectations’ for every single one of them without understanding the true importance of it. I must have received over ten excellent reviews since the beginning of my career until about four years ago when my boss at that time gave me a ‘met expectations’ only on my review, and went on to tell me that he believes in me and wants to help me to get better. He tried to explain to me the true value of a good review and that it’s not just a process for him. Continue reading How to Make the Most Out of Your Review →

8 Reasons Why You Should Start Cross-Training Now

You’re conducting the daily pre-shift meetings and your employees cannot stop complaining about the other departments and venting their frustrations. You feel that the lack of trust between your departments makes progress and greatness impossible. No matter how well you’re trying to explain how the other departments work and what their challenges are, your employees don’t want to hear you.

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If this sounds familiar to you, cross-training is the right solution for you! Continue reading 8 Reasons Why You Should Start Cross-Training Now →

Who Else Wants to Know the Secret to Happiness?

Does a truck full of money, a celebrity status, or a designer suit buy you happiness?… and if it does, how long does this moment of happiness last?

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Anyone who says money doesn’t buy happiness should talk to a homeless person, and anyone who says money does buy happiness should talk to Bill Gates! The difference in happiness between a person making 5 k a year, and 50 k a year, is huge, as it is a matter of security and covering the basic needs. The difference in happiness between a person making 50 k a year and 50 million a year is minimal. Money does not buy happiness, but it’s a necessity to cover our basic needs as shelter, food, clothing, medical care and so on. Continue reading Who Else Wants to Know the Secret to Happiness? →

If You Want to Grow Fast, Step Out of Your Bubble!

Your bubble is your worst enemy! I am talking about your bubble of comfort, or simply put your comfort zone.

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Image courtesy of graur razvan ionut at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is the place that you feel most comfortable, and it’s the area where you know exactly what to do and what not to – chances for you to make mistakes are very small, if you just remain there! Continue reading If You Want to Grow Fast, Step Out of Your Bubble! →

The Key to Prevent Most Guest Complaints

Most guest complaints can easily be prevented by managing expectations. I remember working the overnight shift as a butler being responsible for the guest and housekeeping services in the entire hotel all by myself during a sold out night receiving one guest request after another within only a few minutes… and of course everything was an emergency and had to happen right NOW.

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Image courtesy of noomhh at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Having to wait ten minutes for a an extra pillow or blanket during the day can still be considered prompt service, but at 2 am in the morning when you are tired and have to get up early in the morning for an important meeting ten minutes can feel like an eternity… and it’s even worse when you don’t even know how long you have to wait. Continue reading The Key to Prevent Most Guest Complaints →