Building a body of work will change other people for the better. It will change the way they look at you as a person. It will change the way you believe in yourself. A body of work is a change agent. But for you personally, it also matters that you use your body of work […]
Use the Sabiki Principle to Give Every Story a Hook That Resonates
Sabiki rigs are one of the most fascinating tools I’ve ever seen used in fishing. They consist of anywhere between six and ten small lures with individual hooks, all attached to one fishing line and rod with a sinker at the end. If you’re not much of a fisherman, a typical fishing line has just […]
Build A Body of Work Worthy of a Lifetime
J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. He spent countless hours building the legend of Middle Earth and the history of that world… what he would go on to call his own legendarium. He spent his life cultivating the ability to tell stories in an engaging way. Tolkien might be one of the […]
Happy Employees Make for Happy Shareholders
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson are the notorious duo behind Basecamp, project planning and management software for small teams. Their approach to business has been widely debated thanks to their transparent culture and popular books, Rework and Remote. In the spirit of their culture of transparency, Fried published the employee benefits Basecamp offers as of January 2016. […]
Good Writing Still Matters
Read for a while on Medium and you’ll see the debate: do the “personal development” writers deserve to be at the top of the charts… every day? What does it say about the state of society that dumbed down listicles and celebrity gossip often rise to the top of the popularity charts… at the same […]
When Mother Theresa Driving a Ferrari is Not the Point
D.A. Wallach believes we should expect more from companies we support than the “compassionate capitalist” movement popularized by TOMs and other companies like them. He argues that while consumers are busy lauding TOMs (which is just the straw man in the article) for their work donating shoes to children who need them, TOMs is busy using their commitment […]
The Writing Process
It’s 10:57pm and I’ve just gotten home from a dinner with friends. On the way home I remembered that I haven’t published today. Time to write. Over the past week, I’ve had four different people, on different occasions, ask me about my writing process. It’s 11:00pm and I haven’t published yet today. People want to […]
What is the role of education?
In 1837, at the age of 51, Horace Mann accepted an appointment as the secretary of the Massachussetts Board of Education, becoming the the first secretary of a board of education in the history of the United States. Just one year later, in November 1938, Mann penned the prospectus for The Common School Journal, which would become one […]
How to Demand More from Corporations
1. Bank locally 2. Invest locally 3. Invest sustainably 4. Buy local goods 5. Buy goods made using fair labor practices 6. Buy goods made from sustainable, non-toxic materials 7. Start a business to solve a problem 8. Go to work for a company that’s solving an important problem (and refuse to go to work […]
You Should Be a Social Enterprise Consultant
Admittedly, I left no room for argument in my post about our need for fewer coaches to social entrepreneurs and for more actual social entrepreneurs. There are exceptions, of course. Some people should become consultants and coaches to social enterprises as soon as possible because they have such unique expertise. People like: The world’s leading […]