• The simple tip that cured my writer’s block forever

    I’ve spent the past several months now posting five times a week here, and I’ve recently started extending that practice to a few other ventures, both blogs and email newsletters.  All told, I probably write between 3000 and 5000 words a week on various topics, which I guess would work out to a decent book’s […]

  • Leverage via automation

    24 hours in a day. Less if you’re selfish enough to sleep. This is the Big Trick, increasing the number of hours you “work” without actually doing them.  I first got a taste of this when I co-founded a podcast for a local non-profit.  Boom, 300 hours of outreach for every hour put into it. […]

  • The two worst (and maybe most common) reasons to start a business

    Reasons matter, folks.  It’s true in sales (the whole “reason why” thing and all that) and it’s equally true in your motivations.  If you start your own show, you will be tested.  There will be days where you won’t want to get out of bed, and you’ll trick yourself into just taking a break, and […]

  • Vaccinations for Entrepreneurs

    As far as getting out of my idiotic comfort zone goes, the number one tactic that I’ve found useful is entrepreneurial vaccinations. This isn’t about health care plans.  If you’re serious about building your business, you need to start a regular course of vaccinations… for your mind. Here’s the thing, as distilled from one coach […]

  • Newsflash: other people aren’t you

    The secret to good copywriting, and effective communication in general, is to get inside the heads of your audience. Duh. Here’s where many people in startups get it wrong: by trying to communicate with and treat people how they themselves would like to be treated. Here’s a newsflash: if you’re the founder of a bootstrapped […]

  • My comfort zone is an idiot

    Three days into the week, and I’ve had three examples of how stupid my comfort zone is.  No need for the gory details, but each time, I agonized and pushed and prodded myself into doing the Right Thing, overcoming my terror of rejection, offending people, and *gasp* actually having to have awkward conversations, and each […]

  • This is probably the last post (for you)

    I’ve been pushing posts out, 5 days a week, for a few months now, which begs the question: why? And if you’re one of the ones asking that, you’re wasting your time here. Today’s money quote, taken from this blog post I found via Ramit’s mailing list: It wasn’t until I decided to launch my […]

  • Avoiding the news with the nuclear option

    Despite talking about avoiding the news, I’ll confess that I dip in more often than I should.  I blame my data hoarding tendencies, but I think it started for me a little after 9/11 when I started obsessively checking the headlines every 5-30 minutes to make sure nothing else had blown up. The reality is, […]

  • Red car opportunities

    There’s a thing called the red car phenomenon.  Or maybe it’s red sweaters.  I can’t remember, but the concept is the same either way: you buy a red car (or sweater) and for the next few weeks you’re seeing other red cars/sweaters everywhere.  Like everyone got on the bandwagon and did exactly what you just […]

  • Loneliness and entrepreneurship

    Starting a company can be lonely, lonely work if you’re not careful. If you’re in bootstrap mode, with the majority of the work falling on your shoulders, there’s often not a lot of time to spend doing other things.  Like, say, socializing.  Years ago when I worked from home, I found myself going out for […]