A gent called me a few months ago. He’d been selling online since the early eighties, one of the first people to do it, long before anyone called it internet selling. He’d since tried Amazon. Tried Facebook. Tried LinkedIn. Failed on all three. He wanted to know what he’d missed. It took me those same […]
Ryan’s mom is a worrier.One day he asked her why she worried so much.“My mom was a worrier,” she said.And her mom?“Her too.”Now Ryan’s sister is a worrier. Think about that for a moment. His great-grandmother’s worry is living in his sister today. Nobody chose it. Nobody sat down and decided to pass it on. […]
I got myself (three pairs of) new glasses last month. Somewhere in the middle of the eye test and the final fitting pick-up, I realized something else had changed along with my eyesight. I’ve become almost impossibly picky about what I’ll actually read. A few years ago, my sister-in-law gave me a stack of romance […]
The one very specific feature I want to talk about today is the one that never leaves you alone. Look, I spent part of this summer with the Stoics. Marcus Aurelius mostly, some Seneca, and every version of the Odyssey plot that isn’t actually the Odyssey, because I cannot stand Ulysses, and I’m not going […]
Some of the most capable people I know are quietly running on information that never shows up in a business case. Not intuition in the vague, decorative sense. Something closer to data they can’t fully explain and have learned not to ignore. I think dismissing that, in ourselves or in the people we work with, […]
I thought climate change was overblown. Not a casual opinion. A considered one. I had spent decades inside corporate structures, watching how data gets weaponised for agendas on every side of every argument. I was skeptical of the volume. I thought the urgency was exaggerated and that business, if it got serious, could course-correct. That […]
A woman told me last week that her life’s work can’t be translated into business language. Twenty years of trying, she said, and the honest answer is it simply can’t be done. I spent more time obsessing about that response than I meant to. Here’s what I eventually decided. The only way she’s ever reached […]
This is the final piece in the trilogy: Think Big, Choosing Vintage First, and Steward the Planet. And fair warning: this one is likely the most provocative. I need you to set aside your beliefs about organized religion and whatever else you’ve come to believe over your life, just for the next few minutes. You […]
A colleague of mine, writing a book for millennials, asked me what advice I’d give about living, loving, parenting, and leading courageously. I gave her three things: Think Big, Choose Vintage First, Steward the Planet. This is about the first one. Make sure your entire reason for getting up in the morning is genuinely big. […]
This year, the 5Cs podcast went down a few dark alleys and I promised I’d find someone who could help us work through what we’re feeling. I found a fabulous clinical psychologist who does exactly that. And before she comes on, I need to set the stage so to speak this week. I want to […]