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I’ve been playing, composing and performing original music since I was twelve. And yet, despite natural talent, despite evolving confidence, despite explosive creativity and despite flowing support, it wasn’t until last week that I finally found the courage to release my music publicly. That’s twenty years. Twenty years of winking in the dark. Twenty years of being selfish with my art. Twenty years of dodging any form of feedback,…

I had an idea for a treehouse and ended up building a skyscraper. Never saw it coming. Never saw myself as much of an architect. But as I lean over the ledge and let my eyes tumble down the side of the glass, all the pieces fit. This edifice, this thing that I have built with gallons of blood and sweat and whatever bodily fluid was required at the…

Success morphs into failure when it comes too fast, too early and too abundantly. I learned this the hard way when I was twenty-six and my left lung collapsed. It’s called a pneumothorax, which is a fairly common incident among young, tall men in their late twenties. And although the doctor said it was sporadic, I chose to tell myself a different story. A story that would teach me…

[ 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…

It costs nothing to encourage. It’s gift we can give to anyone, anytime, anywhere, and change them forever. And it’s our responsibility to be dispensaries of encouragement to everyone we meet. Let us give people permission to do something great. Let us throw people over the other side of the wall. Let us provide the spark that grows into an inferno. Let us take people’s hands and push them…

There’s nothing harder than making a decision. Decisions mean commitment, and every commitment has consequences. But even though we’d rather dwindle indecisively for an eternity, artfully creating excuses why something won’t work, persistently telling ourselves stories about why we wouldn’t deserve it if it did work, eventually, we have to decide. We have to set a drop-dead date, cut the ropes and run. Otherwise we waste our time trying…

It’s tempting to covet other people’s careers. Especially when we see them doing things we’d like to be doing. But the reality is, we can’t have another person’s career any more that we can have another person’s hair. Their history, their trajectory and their motivations are theirs and theirs alone. Even if we did try to copy their path and plug our variables into their equations, we’d still come…

People come in and out of our lives everyday. Some stick around a few minutes, some stick around forever. And what’s amazing is how much they can impact our life, even if they’re only part of it for a short while. Strangers on the bus, neighbors down the street, roommates for a semester, lovers over the summer, guests at a hotel – when we meet someone we like, someone…

[ 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…

It’s not enough to just be amicable strangers. I want to be friends with everyone, all the time, everywhere, forever. That’s just me. I don’t have to warm up to people. I don’t have to get to know someone before we connect. I don’t have to wait until we’ve hung out six times before I start opening up. I just jump right in. I reveal myself quickly, openly, honestly…