Everything important happens in the pause. Understand that the pause is the between space where an idea is shared, and that idea is understood. I just finished doing 6 weeks of speaking – my first-ever “high season” of doing a bunch of paid keynote speeches back-to-back. At these many venues, I watched the other speakers: [...]
Archive | Entrepreneurship
Are You Standing Out Today?
People buy two categories of things. The distinct. And the generic. The distinct items are the things that have a limited commodity, that are artisan in nature, that are worth paying a premium for. They stand out for some reason. The generic items are, well, the things you find on Amazon. If I start to [...]
What Ideas Are You Fighting For?
Leadership always operates at two levels. There is the immediate and perhaps even pragmatic stuff of leadership – who is in charge, what responsibilities do they own, what defines the shape of their arena. We spend a lot of time paying attention to this stuff, in all domains – work, economies, and especially now during [...]
Courage Does Not Roar
Today, I was in a room full of remarkable people, making a list of what qualities make someone remarkable. The predictable elements were listed: Hard-working Resourceful Creative Intelligent/ Smart Organized… After 15 or so elements were listed on the post-it board… courageous was added to the list. When you are courageous (or fearless, bold – [...]
Gratefulness Amplifies Creativity
We’re ambitious. We strive. We grow. We achieve. We do. We hustle. We push forward. We fail. We learn. We don’t give up. We build. We create. We innovate. There is goodness in all of these things. No doubt. This is the path of progress. We live in a culture with far, far too much [...]
Kill the Meetings
After coming off a 6-month sabbatical from Apple, I returned to work at about 5:30 am, cleared my inbox by 8 a.m. (hey, it was 1994 – this was still humanly possible, back then). By 8:30, I was sitting bright and cheery in the conference room for the regular weekly kickoff meeting that our work [...]
Be Very Afraid. For a While.
Fear of change, fear of stagnancy, fear of failure, fear of speaking up, fear of not being listened to, fear of losing a job, or making mistakes, or looking dumb to others. Fear of loss, fear of disapproval, fear of punishment. I could go on. So probably could you. It seems like the list of [...]
Be Your Own Hero
When I was growing up, I looked for a savior in just about everyone. There were too many fruitless visits from child protective services. There were too many police cars that arrived to “quiet things down” only to let them flare up again the next day. There were too many visits to the hospital ….The [...]
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
When we invite people over at the house, we notice many of our friends have an interesting way of talking about themselves. “I suck at that”. “No way can my company grow given these market conditions” “I’ll never make it”. “It’s never gonna happen because of (these million, ever changing reasons)” “Every time I try [...]
Upside Down, Shake It Up
About 18 months ago, I was sitting teary-eyed and fatigued with my peer CEO group, explaining that I was going to give up. I felt like such a failure. While there were many good things, a bunch of stuff in my life wasn’t working. As I tried to fix each thing at a time, I [...]