I just found out I’m on the cover of We Are All Weird, a new book by Seth Godin. Seth, if you didn’t know, is a business and marketing genius and the reason for my getting the votes I needed to win Dan Pink’s contest and to go to TED Global 2009 and speak at Oxford. He’s also the author of 13 best-selling business books. He rocks.
I’m third from the right on the top row - easier to see in the photo below. This matters to me because I’m on …

I get about two, sometimes three requests a week from people asking me to help them promote their book. I’m happy to do it since I love promoting good books. But I actually only help about half of the people who ask me to help. Why? The half I don’t help won’t send me a copy of the book.
That’s right. They want me to give up two to three hours of my time (or more) to read and review and blog and promote their book, but they want me to …

“When the student is ready, the teacher will come.” The cliche is old, but true. Anna Jackson was ready for a teacher, but not for the oysterman. But then teachers aren’t always what they appear to be.
“Be kind to strangers for unawares, you may be entertaining an angel.”
John Oysterman was a man of the sea, a wise man, a nut job and 100% enigma. He was part Yoda, part Donald Shimoda, and part Mr. Miyagi. If you know the genre well, then you recognize it merely brings the hero’s …

Fools are some of the smartest people I know. I know. I used to be one and still am from time-to-time. Fools are also some of the most talented, brightest and seemingly intelligent people in the room. Yet they are still fools and I’ve learned that talking to them, or acting like one, hurts me more than it helps.
What is a fool? I’m using Dr. Henry Cloud’s definition from his most recent book, Necessary Endings: The Employees, Businesses, and Relationships That All of Us Have to Give Up in …

(this lengthy post is a story, an amazing, never ceases to stun me sequence of events in my life, true story)
(Okay, that’s me 30 pounds ago - I LOST the 30) leaning over to shake author and TED Global Speaker Dan Pink’s hand after my TED talk in Oxford, England in 2009.)
Never say never because HOPE ALWAYS FINDS A WAY.
By that I mean never say miracles never happen. Never say “It won’t get better.” Miracles happen and it does get better. And yes, “Hope does find a way.”
Three years before …