Prophets and Loss

Prophets and Loss

What’s the most valuable attribute of successful people? We can find lots of answers to the question from lots of sources: Courage. Vision. Imagination. Persistence. Willingness to fail. Iconoclasm. Lunacy. Every one of those attributes is a factor in the...
Quote Me on That

Quote Me on That

Prevailing wisdom contends that the most important aspect of direct-email marketing is the subject line. I hadn’t given the notion all that much thought until I started receiving a blizzard of such emails, all with this attention-grabbing subject line: Burial...
Strategy vs. Tactics

Strategy vs. Tactics

A statement finding its way more frequently and annoyingly into the vernacular of business and politics is this: Hope is not a strategy. Yeah. The statement is true. But enough already. Its corollary statement is this: A tactic is not a strategy. Yeah. That’s...
Go After the Ball

Go After the Ball

A few weeks ago, I attended a local basketball camp to watch the son of a friend play. During the game, it occurred to me that young basketball players are like elderly drivers: They have no idea anyone else is around. They’re always surprised to discover...

Tell the Truth

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” (Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast) When I first began presenting my book, Martin the Marlin, to large groups of children, I’d find myself getting anxious. Oddly enough, I...