Blog

The other day my client from Disney Destinations remarked, “I can’t believe there’s only one of you!” Technically, he’s right. As a freelancer, my enterprise solely consists of me, slogging it out, every day, until the work is done. But that doesn’t mean the work goes unassisted. When you hire yourself, you build a portable sales force. People and resources to help to make it rain when you’re not…

 [ Email me, buy prints, inspire the office! ]  The purpose of online is to get offline. Every time we email, tweet, retweet, direct message, instant message, write somebody’s walls, upload pictures, publish videos, post reviews, chime in on message boards, write blog posts, leave comments, press like buttons and share links, our goal is to get one one step closer to interacting with other human beings, face to…

There are a thousand ways to kill a startup. Bad locations, unprofitable niches, sloppy execution, unremarkable products, inflexible owners, poor hiring decisions, bad timing, broken business models, the passion paradox, lack of financing, lack of market traction, premature scaling, poor investor management, fights between founders, uncontrollable growth, just to name a few. No wonder half of them die before their fifth birthday. But we can’t overlook the silent killer….

For a long time, I insulated myself from stuckness. I executed, day in and day out, without the slightest hint of resistance, without the mere possibility of shooting blanks. I was on a never ending creative tear, rarely coming up for air, rarely questioning whether the volume of work was dangerously high. And it paid off. I impressed people, made good money and built an artistic identity predicated on…

My whole life, I never fit in. Never felt understood, never felt accepted, rarely had strong a sense of place, always felt like an outsider and constantly felt like creature from another planet. So I tried everything. I played sports I didn’t like, joined clubs I didn’t enjoy, wore clothes that didn’t fit and made friends who didn’t reciprocate. I took classes I didn’t understand, tried religions that didn’t…

[ View the infographic! ] “Everyone should wear nametags, all the time, everywhere, forever.” That’s my thesis, philosophy, dangerous idea and theory of the universe. My name is Scott, and I’ve been wearing a nametag for past four thousand days. And after traveling to hundreds of cities, a dozen countries, four continents, meeting tens of thousands of people, constant experimentation and observation, building a enterprise and writing a dozen…

Yeah, but shouldn’t I be out there generating business? That’s the artist’s dilemma. That it order to monetize our creativity, sustain our career and support our lifestyle, we have to put down the pen, put on the commerce hat and start pounding the pavement, spending most of our days trying to get noticed, get liked, get retweeted, get interviewed, get booked, get hired, get reviewed, get paid and get…

Entrepreneurs relish the romantic notion of having no boundaries, no obligations, no expectations, no responsibilities, no schedule to keep, no time constraints, no place to be, no one to answer to and no one breathing down their neck. That’s why we hired ourselves in the first place. So we could do whatever we want. The flip side is, too much freedom is a dangerous thing. First, it means too…

Too often, mediocrity rises to the top. I watch marginally talented people get fame they didn’t deserve, land gigs they didn’t earn, make money they didn’t work for and achieve success they didn’t sweat for. Meanwhile, I’m hustling my ass off, doing legitimately great work, work that actually improves humanity’s future, and the marketplace yawns at my efforts while greatness passes the world by like a fart in the…

In baseball, just over a hundred players hit a homerun on their first at bat. Makes sense. That’s a lot of pressure without a lot of experience. Most players are lucky enough to eek out single, barely get on first, maybe steal a base or two; then, with smart running, a solid lineup and little luck – score – then hustle back to the dugout in the hopes of…