While weak leaders blame their followers for a lack of alignment, strong leaders know that it is their responsibility to create it. Alignment doesn’t just happen. It is created. Here are three ways to make it happen with your team.

Being an entrepreneur is as exciting as it is challenging. There are new opportunities to do creative work—work you find purpose in—and to grow as a professional. For all the excitement, though, there are also plenty of challenges, particularly ones that affect a marriage. Gail and I have experienced this in our 40 years together. […]

Growing up with my dad was like entrepreneurial school. He taught me that I had the opportunity to shape my own future by applying myself to something I loved. I just needed to look for the right opportunity. That first opportunity, at age 11, was selling boxes of all-occasion cards. Honestly, it was a bust. […]

I switched jobs for the first time at age 49. Well, technically, I had several jobs between graduate school and then, but they were all at one employer, a small Midwestern nonprofit that published a monthly magazine and ran educational programs. By the time I left that company in the spring of 2017, it was […]

I met Dave at a residential behavioral health center in Arizona. An older man with stories to match his years, he was great with the clients and even better with our young coworkers. One story he shared has stuck with me. He had been working with a particularly unpleasant young man for several months. Let’s […]

After years of tumult and uncertainty, major parts of Steve’s life were coming together nicely. For more than four years, the website designer had held a staff position at a prominent management consulting firm. Invitations to speak on digital trends at industry conferences flowed to him. Off of work hours, the 43-year-old completed a steady […]

Personal growth comes from self-awareness, and the practice of journaling is a phenomenal way to start that process with regular reflection—as long as your reflection is accurate. If you’ve ever been to a playground or circus with fun mirrors, you know the slightest bend to a mirror creates a distorted image that reflects your image […]

Back in early 2007, I faced an interesting choice. By just about all accounts, I was doing great as an international sales director for a stable infomercial company. I had a family, a house, a car, and all the boxes that we check. But something felt off. I had the energy for something I couldn’t […]

It’s no secret that entrepreneurship is a difficult path, with many pitfalls along the way. According to Merriam-Webster, the very definition of an entrepreneur is someone who “assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.” There’s no magic solution that’s going to remove that risk or guarantee your business will succeed. When you set out […]

At this point in my career, I’ve sold a lot of books. But I was hardly an overnight success. First came work in publishing and agenting. I learned how book sales worked—and didn’t work—well before I published a word of my own. I want to use my experience here to puncture a thought bubble I […]

Here’s an idea for women who bump up against the glass ceiling at work: Create your own business where you own the ceiling. And the good news about that DIY approach to business is that it’s easier than ever before. Christy Wright is an entrepreneur and business coach whose mission is to help create a […]

One way you can reach a larger audience quickly is to piggyback on established email lists from bloggers and businesses with similar interests. “Third party email marketing, whether for Business to Business (B2B) or Business to Consumer (B2C) is a great way of finding new customers and can be an awesome resource for new, fresh […]

The economist Tyler Cowen says the last few decades have seen the rise of what he calls the complacent class. It may not seem like it, but the numbers show people are sticking with jobs longer, relocating rarely, and innovating less. In the midst of this complacency, there’s tremendous opportunity available for the non-complacent. I […]

Elon Musk is widely regarded as one of the most influential entrepreneurs working today. He’s one of the founders of PayPal and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. He wants to help put a colony on Mars and be buried there. Because Musk is considered such a visionary, many people want to learn his methods […]

If you’re an entrepreneur at heart like me, it’s tempting to wear every hat in the business. This is especially true if you’re cursed with being halfway good at all those jobs. That’s not a compliment, by the way. I should emphasize the word cursed. Think of it this way: Would you intentionally hire someone […]

If I had a dollar for every time people asked my wife, Gail, how she lives with an entrepreneur, I wouldn’t have to be one. Scratch that. I would probably figure out how to get more people to ask the question. (Sorry, I can’t help myself!) Being an entrepreneur is part of who I am. […]

When I think of an entrepreneur, I think of someone forward-thinking, creative, energetic, and relentless. I also think of someone forty and up. What? Our stereotypes don’t run that direction, do they? We’re more likely to think of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg dropping out of college than someone who graduated twenty years before and […]