Insights

Popular spirit animal choices often include buffalo, lion, and hawks. You know, the don’t-F-with-me type of animals. But never piglets. As you begin to execute your 2026 plan, I encourage you to consider calling on the piglet when things don’t go as well as you’d like. Here’s why. In David Toomey’s book, Kingdom of Play, […]

No employer will pay you as much as you will. In addition to pay, no employer will value: It’s not their priority. It’s your priority. The invitation I want to talk to you if 1) you are serious about turning your side hustle into self-employment, 2) you answer “true” to 4 of the 5 criteria

I just finished watching Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream ” speech from 1963. I don’t know about you, but I feel like we are living in some combination of the 1960s civil rights movement, the 1980s Cold War, and the 1990s Operation Desert Shield. My dad, who passed almost a year to

It’s 1999. Super Bowl ads are a big thing and Monster (a job website) comes out with a doozy. It’s a 30-second spot filmed in dramatic black-and-white about getting a better job. It features a bunch of kids reciting the epitaphs of their respective dreams with the lines: “I want to have a brown nose.”

What do you need to move forward with your 2026 goals? More of something? More time, more credentials, more training, more customers, more services, more products, more human resources (big breath), more software, more hardware, more funding, more followers, more likes, more of this, or maybe more of that. Some of us certainly need more

For some of us, working for a company in a particular role IS the dream. You get to learn, flex your knowledge, and have resources to support your projects. There can be a lot of satisfaction from doing that. There’s camaraderie, happy hours, and coffee. That was me for 20 years. It works for most

Unless you got yourself a TARDIS or some other fancy time-travel machine this past Christmas, you have a limited amount of time to get your sh*t done. So, how do you decide how to use your time well? Here is some free unsolicited advice (worth every penny, which they don’t make anymore). After you do

I’ve always wanted to work for myself. When I say “always,” I mean it was a thought for 20 years before I stepped into my own full-time business. I’ve been self-employed for 6+ years now. It hasn’t always been easy. “Easy” isn’t why did it, and anything worth doing is rarely easy. I can say

My sport of choice is surfing. Not football, not baseball, and certainly not golf. Nonetheless, I found myself involved in a spirited conversation about golf the other evening out with friends. The term “gimme” was used. If you don’t know (I didn’t), a gimme in golf is a short putt, maybe the length of a

I started my digital marketing agency when I was 46.   I was a life-long W2 before then—working for someone else, building their business. It was fine until it wasn’t. Time to go I didn’t have a single client lined up when I gave 4 weeks’ notice at what I refer to as “my last