Tag Archives: Houdini

Creativity: 7 Heads Are Better Than 1

Leave a reply

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to enhance your resourcefulness. Reading time: 2:23.

Your budget has been slashed. Again. You’re under the gun to generate increased sales. Again. Your advertising spots on TV and radio are few and far between. Again. You feel like you’ve been handcuffed, chained and throw into the river. Again.

Snap out of it. Tear a page out of Houdini’s Resourcefulness Playbook that helped him earn the title of The Great Escape Artist.

Bald heads became a billboard to Houdini

Slip out of those financial chains. Unlock new resources. Free yourself and your creative expression –in Houdini fashion. Here’s how:

When Houdini ran out of money to promote his appearances in Paris, he devised a clever flashing billboard in the most highly trafficked areas of the city virtually for nothing. He hired 7 bald guys (for tickets to his show).

Houdini tasked them to sit side by side on a sidewalk cafes around the city. Each had tatooed a letter on the top of his head. They wore suits and large bowler hats and faced the on-coming traffic.

Every few minutes they would remove their hats and lower their heads toward the traffic , flashing H-O-U-D-I-N-I.

Heady stuff. Houdini proved seven heads are better than one to beat the Budget Blues. Continue reading →

Height Insight: Measuring Your Attitude not Altitude

1 Reply

By Peter Jeff
The Leadership Mints Guy

Here’s an idea to heighten your self-confidence. Reading time 2:58.

He’s the leader of a multimillion dollar foundation. Smart. Witty. And 3-feet-9 inches tall.

He deals with community and business leaders with ease and self-deprecating humor. “I just need a minute of your time. “I’ll make it short. I am expert in that department,” he quips.

The first two Triple Crown races are significantly shorter.

He is also an expert in leadership. He has taught me a key leadership skill: your self confidence is a measure of your attitude. Not your altitude.

Consider William Seward, a 5-foot, 6-inch senator from New York. He ran in the 1860 Republican Primary against 6-foot, 4-inch Abraham Lincoln among others.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, in her book Team of Rivals, says that Seward nevertheless was a “commanding figure, an outsized personality against whom larger men seemed smaller.”

How do vertically challenged leaders seem taller?

Be curious about others and let criticism roll of your back. That’s what Seward did. Again quoting Doris Kearns Goodwin: “Seward was genuinely interested in people, curious about their families and the smallest details of their lives, anxious to help with their problems. As a public man, he possessed unusual resilience, enabling him to accept criticism with good humored serenity.” Continue reading →