The choice to make good choices is the best choice you can choose. Fail to make that choice and on most choices you will lose.
Life is a web of intersections and choices. Your 1st choice is to recognize an intersection. Your 2nd choice is to be grateful for it.
Get off the treadmill of consumption, replication, and mediocrity. Begin lifting the weights of creativity, originality, and success.
A professional headshot in front of a bookshelf says you’re an intellectual. A professional headshot peeking though a bookshelf says you’re probably under a restraining order.
One of my relatives invented the sensory deprivation tank. Appropriately, most of my family has never seen or heard of him.
When I first tried a sensory deprivation tank, people thought I had lost my mind. In fact, I had found it.
I’ve never written a quote I feel would be suitable for my gravestone. Wouldn’t it be ironic if it were this one? Oh, and could you pull a few weeds while you’re here?
The best cure for a stick up your butt is a dog to play fetch with.
Part of my soul goes into each quote I write. A book of my quotes can be yours for just $19.99.
Quotes are echos of voices transporting wisdom, humor, and love. Returning again to the human condition, fleeting once more as a dove.
A quote is a story, suspended in a sentence and treasured through time.
I get this buzz every time I’m quoted online. The ego high… yes… but also a Google Alert.
If all it takes to motivate you is a quote then this quote has nothing to say – except to go soar with the freakin’ eagles.
I’m considering writing a self-help book and giving people 20 cents to read it. This way, I can be sure they all get new paradigms.
Success = Wisdom + Courage + Discipline. KNOW what to do, be BRAVE enough to do it, and LEAD YOURSELF to doing it again and again.
Look yourself in the eyes in a mirror each day. You can ignore the small voice still inside you, but your reflection will always have something to say.
Progress across the time axis is passive. Progress up the results axis is passion.
The heart pointed to the brain and said with great disdain, “Those who live their lives in here live the lives most full of fear.
Those with calling also find wealth, so jump and start swimming towards your true self.
Those without passion are often passed and shunned.
Not only should we encourage kids to daydream, but also to jump-in and build those dreams. Dreaming is largely lost among adults drowning in self-imposed realities.
Never underestimate the collective strength of your weakest connections.
A life spent at the edge of the pier is a life full of regret, a life full of fear.
Unwavering incremental change can create remarkable and monumental results.
The irony of sensory deprivation tanks is that in order to think outside the box, you must first go inside one.
A degree helps to a degree, but your work is largely what you create it to be.
Business ideas are like those flying dragons in Avatar. First you have to find one, let it choose you, then be brave enough to ride it.
Creation pulls something from an abyss of nothing. Startups take the something & give it to those in the dark, at first, perhaps, for nothing.
Creation pulls something from an abyss of nothing. Startups take the something and give it to those in the dark, at first, perhaps, for nothing.
Consuming the content and culture of creatives does not make one a creative. Creating makes a creative.
If you’re struggling to “think outside the box” remember the box is self-imposed. Who says it has to be a box? Why not a bowl of petunias?
Everyone breathing is broken. Keep breathing light into them until the stained glass collage takes your breath away.
Imagine our imaginations were limited only to the limitless. Still, it wouldn’t matter without a motivation to move.
The best way to get over your fear of meeting new people is to imagine them naked. Unless you’re networking at a nudist camp, then you may have to get more creative.
I’m friends with a guy who is friends with a former Playboy model. So I guess you could say I’m 1 degree away from 212 degrees.
Make something people want and sell that, or be someone people need and sell you.
The focus of gap analysis should be getting to the other side. If you bend-over to analyze a gap too long, you’ll probably fall into it.
Entrepreneurs pay the price of a road less traveled, while everyone else takes the freeway and perpetually misses their own exit.
Most startups actually start down and only go up if they catch the winds of market demand.
You can’t force creatives into a box. If you try, they’ll no longer be creative. And no one will want your box.
Capitalize on charm by continually captivating your customer.
20% of management theories are responsible for 80% of results. That’s assuming the Pareto Principle makes the cut.
Entrepreneurs don’t ask for permission. They act per a mission.
Let’s form a committee tasked with exploring why committees are so ineffective. Then we’ll stand-back and watch it argue and self-destruct.
The greatest irony is that people with Rolodexes are no longer LinkedIn. And if that pun doesn’t make sense, don’t ask anyone in your Rolodex to explain it.
A personal brand, once local and temporal, is now global and forever. That’s the blessing and the curse of the internet with regards to your reputation.
The opportunity cost of an unlived dream is not only that dream, but also the dreams the dream was meant to inspire.
Entrepreneurs see what others can’t, do what others won’t, and accomplish what others dream.
Don’t simply dream, create. Don’t simply create, ship. Don’t simply ship, dream.
Deciding which relationships to pursue can be difficult. Especially if you’re trying to get hired by the Magic 8 Ball factory and that little triangle thing isn’t floating right.
Build a valuable brand by branding what is valuable about you.
Corporate & personal branding both require storytelling to be captivating. Stories provide context, meaning & the opportunity for relationship.
Stop waiting for creative inspiration. Start creating and inspire yourself along the way.
I’m creating a self help show called Self Talk. I’ll insult myself for an hour then open phone lines to a fitness coach & my mother-in-law.
Self leadership requires us to lead and motivate ourselves. But it looks a heck of a lot like schizophrenia during a ropes course.
Be a pro at what you do. No one shows-up to meetings of the Unsuccessful Skydivers Club.
I’ve written for the waste basket so often that we’ve become friends. He writes too, but it’s mostly garbage.
Yesterday is a pile of rubble. Today is a pile of opportunity. Life takes a new dump each morning
A hammer made of deadlines is the surest tool for crushing writer’s block.
The only personal branding consultant who can ever hope to have a clear understanding of you and your value can be found in the mirror.
A product in the marketplace is the result of thought in an inner space and action more than the common place.
Yeast is to flour as action is to ambition. Rising to success requires adding and alternating starters.
Personal brands are determined by a track record of actions, not a track record of plans.
Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.
We are not creators; only combiners of the created. Invention isn’t about new ingredients, but new recipes. And innovations taste the best.
Soylent Green is made out of people. So is your personal network… but let’s hope its non-toxic because you drink it every day.
In the long-run, regrets consist less of bad choices and more of choices not made at all. Little do we realize, those were choices too.
Never before have the tools of value creation been so great and the potential artisans so busy watching the Kardashians.
I surround myself with books when I write, thus surrounding myself with writers… only they don’t critique me and then get up for coffee.
I enjoy self-publishing & sending publishers rejection letters. They’re like, ‘Who is this guy?’ And I’m like, ‘the end of your industry.
Every day is full of opportunities, but an opportunity is full of only so many days.
Jean-Baptiste Say may have coined the term ‘entrepreneur’ but he totally missed the opportunity to put it on a t-shirt and sell it.
For any creative thought to be contagious, it must first be worthy of a sneeze.
A personal brand is determined by what you have created, whom you have connected, and how you have made those people feel.
My best ideas come in the shower, where I’m showered with water, but also ideas.
Create lightning bolt ideas during brainstorms by causing disturbances in your atmosphere.
Fortune follows those who can create ideas by connecting old ones. Strong personal brands are created when connection and creation connect.
A brand precedes, parallels, and leaves a path behind. What your brand will say, is saying, and has said matters more the deeper we go into the globalized, digitized, connection economy.
You don’t have to submerge. Just take a D.I.P. in Daily Incremental Progress.
There’s been a lot written on the topic of minimalism. But I still believe in it.
Gamblers take blind risks. Entrepreneurs take risks while visually impaired and feel their way up and out.
Proformas rarely perform; missed projections are more often the norm. Still, we skew them up high, we miss but we try, for proformas which rarely perform.
Entrepreneurs see the “no diving” sign and back-up to get a running start.
The one thing all entrepreneurs have in common is that they started. The one thing everyone else has in common is that they haven’t.
I wonder if the highlighter was highlight of the career for the person who invented it?
I like to go to Starbucks and watch the intellectuals. I observe them and their intellectualness. They in turn observe me drinking coffee and being a creeper.
I check every can of Barbasol I buy for dinosaur embryos. I haven’t found any yet, as evidenced by the lack of T-Rex screams in my apartment.
The most honorable part of a network are the hubs, not the nodes that lead to nowhere.
Legacy accounting: Will you have been an asset or a liability on the world’s balance sheet?
My greatest expectation is that I expect more of myself than anyone could expect.
Social media is not just a spoke on the wheel of marketing. It’s becoming the way entire bicycles are built.
The smell of new office supplies is so satisfying while being kicked out of Staples for inappropriate behavior with a file folder is so embarrassing.
Do billboard salesmen record their sales on charts? If so, who’s at the top of the billboard charts for billboard sales?
Entrepreneurs often underestimate costs and overestimate rewards. But the fact that they estimate & still take action sets them apart from peers.
Beautiful mosaics are made of broken or torn material. The most spectacular personal brands are compilations of the same.
Metal business cards are a good investment. Especially if you were to meet Magneto. He would have no other choice but to be attracted to you.
Carve-out a niche, craft a personal pitch, push-out content and your brand is enriched.
If your personal brand were at a trade show alongside several thousand others, how would you fare? Now scale that to the global economy.
For a case study in personal branding. Google “Jarod Kintz.” He’s kind of a big deal.
Sensible brands lend themselves to all of the senses.
Contributors and distributors tend to do better at personal branding than takers and fakers.