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I know this guy named Dalton. I wouldn’t say we’re friends, but we’ve met a few times. We tend to speak at some of the same conferences. And I happen to think he’s pretty good, even though his style is much different than my own. Still, I’ll never forget the day when I overheard one of his audience members tell her friend, “You know, with that mullet, I’ve always…

This one goes out to my friends at Famous Footwear. Their AWESOME tagline inspired me to write this piece… Let actions talk. Your execution will become the hallmark of eminence. And people will follow you. What have you DONE today? Let content accumulate. Your intellectual assets will build wealth. And expertise will grow around you. What have you PUBLISHED today? Let everything mentor you. Your learning curve will vanish….

Everyone loves a teacher. Unless you attended one of those parochial schools where the nuns used to beat you with rulers while you recited scriptures and cried for dear life as your ass slowly turned beet-red. But enough about my childhood. Now that you’re all grows up and all grows up, it’s time to leverage the power of teaching from a business perspective. GUARANTEE: If you execute it effectively…

Yes, you have to decide to be successful. Yes, you have to believe that you deserve to be successful. Yes, you have to expect that success will come to you eventually. But that’s not enough. If you truly want to increase the probability of success, you’ve got to put yourself in the way of success. Kind of like Zacchaeus, the tax collector. You may remember this story from The…

1. Write what you know about, run into, have a passion for and obsess over. Do this, and I promise you two things: (1) You will never run out of material, (2) Writing will be easy. Otherwise your work is going to be boring to write and laborious to read. Zoinks! What percentage of your writing is infused with your passion? 2. Writer’s Block is a lie. Doesn’t exist….

1. Stick to your writing schedule. This forces you not to rely on inspiration. This keeps you disciplined. And this instills a blue-collar, working stiff, clocking in/clocking out mentality that MUST exist for the Muse to even consider stopping by. The secret, according to my hero, Julia Cameron, is thinking of yourself as being “due at the page.” Same time. Every day. No matter what. Because a writer writes….

1. Now that I have this, what else does this make possible? I call this “The Ultimate Leverage Question.” I ask it to myself all day, everyday. And it comes from Edward DeBono, who defines the movement value of an idea as, “The ability of one idea to lead to another.” So, every time you finish writing ANYTHING, you need to ask yourself the following question: Now that I…

Instead, all you need to do is follow these eight practices: 1. Harmonize the influences within you. Everything you’ve ever read, seen, heard, touched, tasted, watched, experienced and learned. All of this brainstuff is your creative soil waiting to be tilled in those golden flashes of inspiration. That’s why the art form of writing is so cool. You can’t “prepare” to write – your life IS your preparation. You’ve…

1. Avoid adverbial garbage. Let your words speak. Don’t tell people what they’re supposed to see in your art. Don’t make your readers do your job for you. If you have to tell them, you haven’t done a good enough job with the writing itself. For example, the man you met on the bus wasn’t “extremely attractive.” He was handsome. Or chiseled. Or had a smile like Denzel Washington….

You can’t make the world notice you. You can’t make the world love you. All you can do is increase the probability that the world will attend to, approve of and offer applause for you. By making yourself more yessable. Today we’re going to explore eight practices for boosting your yessability: 1. Be of duty and destiny. The world cannot resist a man on a mission. And if you’re…