Did you know that the average consumer is bombarded with around 3,000 advertising messages every day. Do you wonder whether your advertising and marketing have become invisible? Are you struggling with how you get a consumer to stop long enough to hear what you are saying?

These are the issues that Joe Vitale will help you understand to create more effective marketing messages and advertising that actually results in customers. If you don’t already know Joe Vitale you should. He is a prolific author, recognized as Mr. Fire and was heavily involved in The Secret. In addition Joe is a magician,  a hypnotist and has been studying those arts for quite some time.

Buying Trances is about the way that people function in everyday life and what you must do to “break the trance” and get them to listen to your message. There are  great business and personal psychology principles here. In fact, the subtitle to Buying Trances is  “A New Psychology of Sales and Marketing”

We found a lot of stuff here that made us rethink the way we were marketing and the messages we were sending. It’s a great read and you will find stuff you really need to know to grow your business.

I ran across this gem in an Indianapolis bookstore and finished it on the plane ride home (understand my ride home compliments of American Airlines included a detour through Little Rock Arkansas and an unplanned stranding in Dallas overnight) . Maestro is one of the best books on leadership I have ever read and chances are that for most of you it comes out of a profession in which many of you have not spent a lot of time.

The author of Maestro, Roger Nierenberg, is a world class conductor. He has had an extremely distinguished career leading prominent orchestras across America. He has participated in the Carnegie Hall Series of Great Orchestras and has recorded with the London Philharmonic. In his recent book Roger takes you inside the art and science of great conducting all the while making clear the analogies between what he has done and leadership in the business world.

As an example he takes a young conductor who accurately leads the orchestra through a technical piece of music by indicating note for note what the musicians should be playing. The impact comes when Niergenberg has the young student turn away from the orchestra and Nierenberg instructs the orchestra to play the piece without his assistance. They do and it is better. Then Nierenberg explains, the musicians, like top executives in a company, do not need you to show them what to do note for note and your micromanagement gets in the way of their creativity and performance. They do need you to set the rhythm, the pace and the emotion of the music. I think you get the point and I also think you will find Nierenberg’s treatment of the concepts fascinating.

Nierenberg has created a very unique leadership training program where he seats executives among the orchesttra and then interwoven with performance pieces takes them through leadership principles. The concept is know as The Music Paradigm and is one of the creative and ingenious teaching concepts I have seen in a long time.

If you have been involved with the Music Paradigm or have read the book I am interested in your comments and insights.