12 life skills advantages to starting a business young — “Wow. Great handshake!” It took me by surprise and lit me up. It was better than those of many adults I’ve met as a business owner. “Thanks,” he beamed back. “I practiced it!” I recently began coaching and mentoring tentative entrepreneurs, budding small business owners, and Kids with Questions at…

Commit to showing up consistently and doing the work from where you’re at — “Isn’t it a bit unnerving that doctors call what they do ‘practice’?” — George Carlin I love this line. When you think of the rehearsal sense of practice, it is the realm of amateurs and it is not where you want to find your doctor. But this quote gets to…

What if you had enough of everything in your practice to minimize worries and problems, disappointments and resentments? — In my mind, I’m always pushing at the edges. The next thing. The internal, external, overlooked, and conceptual boundaries. I can’t help it; my brain just goes to those outer colonies. The next frontier. Must be the wiring. Here’s the thing. I used to live somewhat the way my brain…

A book dives into the realities of our current economy; here are my personal compensating takeaways — Dry name, important book: The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition (Jonathan Tepper with Denise Hearn, 2019). Complicated topic, easy explanations: The authors clarify their key points further by summarizing each chapter with a concluding bullet-point list. When it comes to historic labels and concepts like capitalism…

With your ebooks, Gumroad content, or a single published book — There are some truths I know from 27 years as an indie book publisher, leading with… Publishing is a stupid-tough, deeply rewarding business in a constant weird flux of disruption and sclerosis (which makes persistence and creative approaches a necessity). The prevailing experience of too many authors and content creators…

A points-to-remember checklist for thriving and not just surviving what’s ahead — Oof. The news these days is devastating. Inflation. Inequality. Climate chaos. Gun violence. Democracy is on the brink. Supply chains were disrupted. Putin. Yadda. Yadda. I like being informed but I kicked into real defense mode over a month ago, and stopped consuming news first thing in the morning in…

Building hard stops into life and work changes everything — Stopping in the middle of it. I first encountered the idea in the poetic phrasing of Ernest Hemingway: “I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at…

Make each action effective by setting the stage for what’s next — They had us at, “and then the children clean up their work and put it back correctly for the next person to use.” We toured our local public Montessori school when our son was three and we liked what we heard. A fundamental of Montessori education is a child assuming…

The Case of the Overperforming Apple Orchard — At the very beginning of my life as an independent book publisher, a corporate exec who retired early to publish a series of hiking and biking guides told me something that registered as meaningful but took me years to unravel: the number one place where his books sold — to…