For many solopreneurs, the idea of building a business team is anathema. Creative control is one of the driving forces behind the decision to go solo. Freelance writers, designers, producers, and marketing consultants—I’m looking at you. I’m also looking at me. And I’m looking at me looking at you. Meaning I speak from experience. For most of my career, I’ve been a solopreneur. First, I was a freelance graphic designer […]
When you spend as much time as I have on studying relationships, you notice a lot of patterns and there is one pattern that I see time and again whenever a relationship goes south. Someone says something that does significant harm in a moment of passion. In some cases this has led to deals falling through, friendships crumbling, or just general frustration on both sides and in other cases it […]
I recently received a wedding invitation in which the bride and groom had taken the opportunity to have a little fun with the RSVP card. In addition to being able to reply with the usual “enthusiastically attend” or “regretfully decline,” options to “regretfully attend” and “enthusiastically decline” had also been listed. I checked off the first box, opting to save my bad behavior for the main event. Weddings are meant […]
Humans are saddled from birth with the double-edged sword of writing our own stories. From the first sparkling moments of awareness we are faced with a paralyzing morass of choice. We find ourselves bolted in for the performance of our lives, often moving at speeds too fast to consider the gravity of the sharp turns the road may take. The pauses we take in life not only help identify the […]
You know those people who lose or quit their job and use the time off to find themselves and travel and play the guitar and have a summer fling and work out and read novels? Yeah. I am SO not one of those people. I hate being in the proverbial hallway. Give me a map, a door, an obstacle course, a game plan. I’ll knock that out of the park. […]
I peed my pants (no, really… literally… and not just a tiny trickle) the first time I ran a half marathon. The warm liquid gushed out suddenly during my final mile because I wanted so badly to finish it in under two hours that I had pushed my body into a desperate condition. I’ve shed frustrated tears trying like hell to do a stupidly simple move in dance class when my […]
How to Use Storytelling to Create Trust and Build an Authentic Network for the Shy, Introverted, and Sleaze-Averse As a shy child I dreaded any activity that required an introductory game. Birthday parties, bar mitzvahs, and youth group mixers were attended with the resignation that the first half hour would involve enduring some sadistic adult’s idea of fun. I would do my best to disappear against the wall or attempt […]
In 1915, mathematician Emmy Noether proved that every action within a physical system has an opposite and equal reaction. This was anything but revelatory in the world of spirituality. The religions of our world are infused with the concepts of karma and equilibrium. Enlightenment is for the pure and the balanced. The world of business, too, is premised on profitable relationships, and some degree of balance must be struck before […]
“You just need to tune everyone else out and focus on what you know to be right,” my husband recently told me as I complained, again, about some writing that had been keeping me up at night. That sounded like sage advice; after all, how many times do we hear variations on this like “Follow your heart,” “Find your truth,” “You know yourself best,” etc? So off I went, tapping away at […]
We tend to think of our goals in life as a place, a set destination. Calendar dates become oases, the sensations of completing a major project take on an almost physical definition. We follow “roadmaps” to promotion and advancement. These are the reference points many of us use to define our lives. When the word “travel” is entered into a search bar, the computer screen will explode with a full […]