Your Pot of Gold is a Handshake Away by Linda Ballestersos - Book review

Your Pot of Gold Is A Handshake Away

A Step By Step Plan To Quickly Grow Your Business Through Referrals

By: Linda Ballesteros

Published: August 1, 2012
Format: Paperback, 130 pages
ISBN-10: 1105681750
ISBN-13: 978-1105681752
Publisher: Lulu











"Client relationships are perhaps the most important aspect in deciding the fate of your business. In fact, your current clients are your best referral partners", writes networking strategist, speaker, and radio host Linda Ballesteros, in her transformational and client relationship building book Your Pot of Gold Is A Handshake Away: A Step By Step Plan To Quickly Grow Your Business Through Referrals. The author describes the importance of referrals to building a successful business through customer relationships and developing lasting trust.

Linda Ballesteros understands that a company's most loyal customers are also the most powerful source of referrals to create new customers. The author presents an alternative concept of networking based on building a deep emotional relationship with clients. In place of the intellectual basis for referrals and networking as is typically the case, Linda Ballesteros guides business people toward establishing a commitment based on the heart.

In effect, the author teaches business people to develop relationships that go much deeper than mere financial transactions, but move to the level of an emotional partnership. Linda Ballesteros offers the concept of going far beyond traditional referrals, and into the realm of a complete transformation of how the business, its people, and the customer are viewed, treated, and cared for in with this completely new way of thinking and behaving as a company.

Linda Ballesteros (photo left) recognizes that people want to be part of a community, and that the company and its brands can form the foundation for creating that very community feeling. All too often, however, business people are unaware of the critical importance of relationships and community to the overall growth and success of the organization. Linda Ballesteros shows business people how to transform your clients and your business into the at all important community built on loyalty, trust, and mutual commitment.

Linda Ballestaeros changes the way business people think about clients, and how they behave toward those clients. Instead of the standard idea that the company values the client's business, the author transforms that view into one of the company valuing the client. This personalization and relationship building approach changes the entire dynamic of the arrangement between the company and the client, creating a deeper commitment and sense of loyalty and community.

To establish this desirable and transformational, relationship based community, Linda Ballesteros offers ideas and principles in the following areas:

* Community and relationships
* Confidence
* Consistency
* Positive outlook
* Ethics and values
* Vision

For me, the power of the book is how Linda Ballesteros provides a completely different approach to referrals through the development of relationships and community. The author presents the concept of caring about the customer as a more mutually beneficial alternative to caring about the client's business. This change of focus to the customer as a person and member of a community creates a complete change in thinking on the part of the business person. For companies seeking to grow based on referrals, this fresh approach makes referrals not only desirable, but a natural part of sharing within the community.

Linda Ballesteros establishes an intriguing format for her ideas as well. The concept is presented at the beginning of each chapter and sub-section in the form of a quotation by a well known individual. The people selected for quotations represent a wide range of backgrounds and personalities as well. Linda Ballesteros adds to the quotation by establishing the relationship between the quote and referrals. Each chapter and sub-section ends with an actionable item that can be applied to a business immediately.

I highly recommend the engaging and very practical book Your Pot of Gold Is A Handshake Away: A Step By Step Plan To Quickly Grow Your Business Through Referrals by Linda Ballesteros, to any business leaders, managers, or entrepreneurs who are seeking a fresh approach to building a referral based business. This book will guide you toward establishing deep and lasting relationships with your clients through the formation of a mutually beneficial and vibrant community. You will never return to the old fashioned methods of networking or obtaining referrals again.

John Keats: Ode On A Grecian Urn read by Chris Moran

John Keats: Ode On A Grecian Urn read by Chris Moran


Ode on a Grecian Urn

By: John Keats

THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 5
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40

O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' 50

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan read by Ted Hughes

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Kubla Khan read by Ted Hughes

Kubla Khan

By: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.