We've got a lot of great events on the docket for the next few months. If you want additional information on any one of them, check out our News about CEOTT section on our website. Hope that you can join us for one - or all - of these exciting opportunities. And please tell - or bring - a friend!

Just to highlight:

Wednesday, July 15th - Join us to meet and hear Verne Harnish, author of "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" and the man Fortune Small Business called "One of the top Minds in Small Business". CEO's and Principals of growth-oriented firms are invited, along with the Philly 100, to join us at the Wharton School for lunch and an afternoon workshop. Verne will be covering the five strategies critical to driving revenue in this economy as well as sharing his insights from conversations with Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and the newly published, How the Mighty Fall.

Wednesday, June 24th & Friday, July 31st - Announcing the Mid-Atlantic Employer's Association CEO Breakfast Series - A special series, designed for CEO's and business owners, will provide you with practical and valuable information to grow your business - including "The Critical Mistakes Companies Make in a Recession" which is being delivered by yours truly. For more info, click here.

Wednesday, August 12th – "Creating Competitive Advantage with Social Media: Integrating Web 2.0 into your Digital Strategy". Social Media is the 3rd pillar of your digital marketing strategy complementing your website and email marketing programs. Learn how to integrate popular tools like Twitter and Facebook into your overall strategy and effectively deploy word-of-mouth campaigns in social media that will make your email marketing more effective and drive conversions to your existing website. You'll also learn to identify metrics and methodologies to track efficacy as well as ROI.

Chris Bryant, our featured speaker, is a writer, accomplished entrepreneur, and new media pioneer. He is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist and has founded and sold several companies in diverse fields from digital marketing to European antique importing. He is currently identifying unique Social Media Marketing concepts in his forthcoming book: They're Talking About You: Influencing the Conversations You Can't Control.

Wednesday, September 16th - Join us at our next "Un-Marketing" event - co-sponsored by Stuart Kahn Associates - on the evening of the 16th and hear Stew Friedman - veteran Wharton professor, world-renowned speaker, bestselling author, and former senior executive - and author of the new book, "Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life" ... for an engaging, interactive workshop in which you will improve your performance as a leader in all the different aspects of your life by learning how to integrate them better. Friedman's is a proven approach for pursuing what he calls "four-way wins" - benefits for work, home, community, and self (mind, body, and spirit).

Take aways include Friedman's book, a practical set of tools you can use now, and you'll also leave with a game plan and scorecard for conducting a real experiment designed to produce a four-way win in your life! You'll also have a peer coach to help make it happen. For more info and background visit www.totalleadership.org. Evites will be coming out shortly!

If you haven't had a chance to check them out, the following two articles, from the New York Times and the Harvard Business Review respectively, make great reading re: what makes for a successful CEO.

The first, from the New York Times, "In Praise of Dullness", shares the findings from a recent study about what are the key characteristics of leaders of successful companies. The trick? Excellent execution and organizational skills - but not necessarily being a good listener. Attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours were the traits that correlated most powerfully with success. And when it comes to being resolute or flexible? The ability to set a clear direction and stick to it is of much higher importance.

The second article, "What Only the CEO Can Do" is both extremely practical and "quietly inspirational". It's written by A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Procter and Gamble since June of 2000, and one of the most highly respected business leaders to run a Fortune 100 company in the past few decades. Lafley shares that while others in your organization can fill the roles of communicator, coach and problem-solver, there's one critical job only a CEO can do: link the outside world (society, economy, technology, customers) with the inside world (your organization) by doing four important tasks:

• Defining the meaningful outside
  
• Deciding what business you're in
  
• Balancing present and future
  
• Shaping values and standards

Lines up a lot with what our members been learning in the Rockefeller Habits. For more insights, take a look...