Welcome to Manager Tools. Today's show The Direct Relationships Acid Test.

And a quick note before we go on, we just recently announced the October 7, 2009 Effective Manager Conference in Houston, Texas.

Over the past couple years, we've been asked a lot about going to Houston,

and we're finally going to be there on October 7th.

So if you're interested in learning more about 101's feedback, coaching, and delegation, and then how to roll it all out.

The Effective Manager Conference in Houston is for you.

Hope to see you there.

All right folks, here we go with the show. Oh, Well, we're doing something a little bit different today and if the audio quality suffers, I hope people will put up with it but we are

we are in business travel right now and

we have to forego our normal high quality microphones and

talking to these lapel mic.

So...

It does amaze me to this day that people still are surprised,

particularly when we're talking to clients

and you know they ask about how did it start and how did

the podcast start and I say well you know how we do the podcast right and they say oh you're

both in Virginia and you have a recording studio and I say no no I'm in Texas and

mics in Virginia and they're stunned.

Yeah, they were not in the same room.

The whole double-ender thing is, yeah.

So we are actually in the same room.

So if there's a scuffle if the scuffle breaks out

...