Are you recognized as a go-to authority in your field?

Do prospects seek you out as THE expert to bring in to solve their problems?

Has your business been increasing steadily, despite recessions and tough competition?

If you can’t answer YES to all three questions, get a copy of McGraw-Hill’s “The Expert’s Edge: Become the Go-To Authority People Turn to Every Time” by Ken Lizotte anytime today January 25!

If you purchase “The Expert’s Edge” today, you’ll not only reap the benefits of its “5 pillars of thoughtleading” and how to implement them, but you’ll also gain access to over a dozen valuable professional gifts offered by a formidable array of well-known business experts and thoughtleaders… and at no extra charge!

Why read “The Expert’s Edge”? Favorably reviewed by numerous critics and business leaders, this book will move you toward “thoughtleader” status, separating you from your competitors and making boom-and-bust cycles a thing of the past.

But don’t take our word for it… listen to just a few of the many highly regarded business authors, professionals, consultants and CEOs who have endorsed both the book and Ken’s ideas:

Sean Gallagher, Chief Value Delivery Officer, MarketCulture Strategies
“Want to be the leader in your field? Read this book… You can’t be seen as an expert without it.”

Jan Phillips, author of The Art of Original Thinking: The Making of a Thought Leader
“If you aspire to be a thoughtleader in your field, you won’t find a better guidebook than Ken Lizotte’s ‘The Expert’s Edge.’ It’s a no-frills, cut-to-the-chase manual for mastering the tools of visionary leadership in a fast-paced, ever-changing world.”

Fred W. Green, Chairman of the CEO Club of Boston
“Brilliance is defined as ‘distilling the complex…to the simple,’ which is just what Ken Lizotte has accomplished. Ken’s latest work is a must read for CEOs and all other leaders who want a practical way to separate themselves and their companies from their competitors.”

As for the bonus gifts, you’ll receive tip sheets, articles, videos and much more! But remember, these complimentary gifts are available only if you purchase “The Expert’s Edge” today, Monday January 25, so don’t miss out!

Just forward your electronic receipt to michaela@thoughtleading.com to receive this list of downloadable bonus gifts!

Check out “The Expert’s Edge” NOW

How I Took My Life Back After Thirty Years

By Michael Finch
BookSurge Publishing 2009

For thirty-one years Michael Finch gave his total allegiance, energy, devotion, dreams, time and love to Guru Maharaji (the Lord of the Universe, Prem Rawat). He also gave the Guru and his organizations two inheritances, a house, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. As Maharaji’s former chauffeur Michael was close to him personally; he lived as a renunciate in Maharaji’s ashrams, and was later authorized and empowered to reveal the Guru’s secret teachings (the “Knowledge”).

Michael explains that his new book “Without the Guru: How I Took My Life Back After Thirty Years” is a story of “how I came to live, think, feel, behave, and love, without ‘the Guru’, meaning both Maharaji, as the actual guru in my own life; and in a more general sense of learning to face myself and the world without any intermediary or negotiator, of any kind, in between.”

Michael’s background brings a particularly moving voice to the chronicle of his life from “beatnik and hippy roots of the mid-1960s,” and the later struggle to reclaim his life once it had become complexly intertwined with Maharaji. “Without the Guru” is not only a narrative about extricating oneself from a cult. Michael’s prose is self-reflective, honest, and eloquently describes the overlapping experiences of devotion, spirituality, and being human. In one passage Michael examines what Maharaji meant to him and others within a crowd:

“Actually, not loved us so much as he loved me, each of us locked in our own private fantasy that he was really noticing us individually, or we were aching for such notice. We identified the outer guru we saw out there with the inner guru we knew existed in here, so the figure on stage we were yearning for was also our own inner essence. And the consequence of such identification was to give ourselves away, to wrench our self from its true home here and place it at a distance over there on that stage.”

Michael’s book is about “a process of discovery,” of how he learned to feel, love and act without Maharaji: “It is a story of being confined within a rigid belief system, realizing it, and discovering how to break out from it.”

This ability to recognize the guru dynamic and be able to side-step it, is not just relevant to Eastern gurus such as Michael writes about, but especially to both business and life decisions in our modern western world.

To be mesmerized by the supposed expertise and charisma of a guru-figure, whether religious or business, can lead to dependency, unclear thinking, reliance on flawed beliefs, and bad decisions.

Just how bad such decisions can be was revealed by the tragedy in October 2009 involving a sweat lodge run by another guru (this one Oprah-approved) James Ray in Sedona, AZ. This sweat lodge was completely unlike ceremonial Native American sweat lodges and violated elementary safety guidelines. Sixty-four people were crammed into a space deliberated created to be physically challenging, and the guru-figure James Ray repeatedly affirmed that they needed to go “beyond themselves” and remain in the lodge, to surrender to something more than themselves. The result was three deaths and nineteen serious cases of collapse.

The interesting thing about this incident is that no one was physically prevented from leaving the lodge. It appears that people stayed against all reason, in spite of severe physical distress, because of the pressure from the guru-figure to surrender and “transcend themselves.”

It is easy to say “Well, I would have left in a situation like that” — and perhaps you would have. But then it is hard to appreciate how insidious, seductive and powerful the guru dynamic can be. By examining the dynamic in such detail, Michael does us all a favor by showing us an “up close and very personal” view of human relations, in the business environment and in life in general, that it is important we enter well prepared and alert to its dangers.

To learn more about “Without the Guru,” click here and then click on the book’s cover. You’ll also learn about other books authored by our emersongroup client thoughtleaders. Just scroll down the page to view our many thoughtleaders’ books!

Here’s a message from thoughtleader guru Ron McCall:

Rationale for Thought Leadership

Thought Leadership is more than corporate PR, it’s a sound business strategy.  But where’s the evidence?  Recent studies now confirm that senior management who have the vision and the dedication to build a credible reputation for innovative ideas significantly increase shareholder value.

Here’s why:

1.  Endorsements by the national media and the business press provide external validation that the company is being competently managed,

2. High-status in the executive suite leads to sound corporate governance by tightening the linkage between executive pay and firm performance, and

3.  CEOs with reputation premiums provide long-term management continuity by creating enhanced career opportunities for their direct reports.

If you’d like to have a copy of the paper titled, “Rationale for Thought Leadership,” drop me a note or give me a call, and I’ll forward one to you.

Voice: 423.288.2929 | Email: rjmccall@executivecom.com

Visit Ron’s website: http://www.executivecom.com/