Practice makes perfect. Benjamin Franklin We’re driven to try to produce a perfect product. We want the thing we do, sell, or provide to be picture-perfect, and we’re disappointed when it’s not. What if we stopped for a moment to think about this? We’re human. We’re not perfect. What makes us think that anything we produce will ever achieve perfection? …

We are all slaves to our routines. We wake at the same time (most) every day. We follow the same bathroom routine, same morning routine, same breakfast routine, same route for our commute. We do the same job, (generally) talk to the same people, solve the same problems, following the same well-worn path to our evening where we eat the …

Oftentimes in life (and in business) we’re faced with a situation where we’re just not sure how things are supposed to go. Either we’ve never experienced these particular circumstances before or our understanding of them is so limited that we’re in no position to offer a strong position. It’s at this point that we’re faced with a choice: do we …

Conspiracy theories are all the rage right now. People love them. They prey on our need to easily understand things in a difficult-to-understand world. They often (but not always) contain some semblance of fact, but not enough that they can be proven to be true. And the people that believe in them don’t care whether or not they’re legitimate, they’re …

We all love to offer our opinion on someone else’s work. We’ve got no problem telling people what we think. We’re eager to put in our two cents. Nobody, on the other hand, is willing to do the hard work of building something for you from scratch. Ask for help creating that new product and we’ve likely to get nothing …

Pricing what we do is a business decision that’s fraught with anxiety. What if I charge too much? Will people be willing to pay for what I do? What if I charge too little? What about how much my competitors are charging? For the most part, what we charge for our services doesn’t matter. Most people aren’t looking to see …

Do we still love what it is we do? It’s a question that, eventually, we’ll all face. If our answer is “no”, then we’ve got to decide what we’re going to do about it. If what we do is still paying the bills, so to speak, then the answer might not be to do something different. The answer may be …

Starting out in any new venture can be tough. We see all these successful people doing all kinds of different things. We’ve been taught to look to those people who are industry leaders and copy the things that they’re doing, but how are we supposed to know which things to copy? We can’t do everything they’re doing. We’re new to …

While no one can know the future, it sure seems like we’re coming up on some hard times. Signs are indicating that things will get worse before they get better, and there’s little anyone can do but wait to reach the other side. Everything about life is cyclical. Ups and downs; highs and lows; bulls and bears; peaks and valleys. …

Depending on what we do for a living, some of us provide our customers with good news while others deliver bad. Think about the car salesman: I’ve got great news! We’ve got that one on the lot and you can drive it home today! Compare that with the auto mechanic: It’s not good. We’re going to have to rebuild the …