Kareem Mayan emailed me to say that he couldn’t believe he’d never heard of Life Is Good, a company whose founders Bert and John Jacobs go by the respective titles chief executive optimist and chief creative optimist.
I can’t believe I haven’t either, but now that there’s a great article about them in inc magazine, I have. From the article:
Sixteen years ago they hawked $10 T-shirts featuring their own artwork from a card table on the corner, making themselves scarce whenever the cops swung past. “It’s a one-way street so one of us could always keep watch,” says Bert Jacobs, who is now 41, the older brother by three years. “We had a folding table so we could pack up quickly.”
It’s great to hear the founders of a $100 million business saying things like:
“Don’t determine that you’re going to be happy when you get the new car or the big promotion or when you meet that special person,” explains John. “You can decide that you’re going to be happy today.”
John also points out that the assertion is, in fact, a modest one. “It’s important that we’re saying ‘Life is good,’ not ‘Life is great’ or ‘Life is perfect,’” he says. “There’s a big difference. We know that there are lots of bad things in the world. But overall life is good. You have to focus on the good things and help others to focus on the good things.”
I agree, life IS good :o)
According to 
There is a lot of talk about motivation in the workplace these days. Both from managers complaining that their employees aren’t motivated and from employees complaining that their managers don’t know what makes them tick.
Thanks for all the great input folks. I have decided on a title for my first book. It will be called:
Here’s a quote from the horrible book “You Can’t Win a Fight With Your Boss” by Tom Markert, the global chief marketing and client service officer at ACNielsen. Markert says:
The best thing about writing this blog, are all the great comments it gets. As the blog gets more and more popular (and it’s totally getting out of hand right now, I love it), it seems that I get more and more great ideas, feedback, thoughts, input. Here are a few of my favorite recent comments.
This post is part of a series that follows A.M. Starkin, a young manager taking his first major steps into leadership. Starkin writes here to share his experiences and to get input from others, so please share with him your thoughts and ideas.
On Monday October 30, the Danish National Worklife Balance Week kicks. It’s a whole week of activites that companies can participate in to create awareness around worklife balance. 
