Anyone can do it. It cost me nothing. Cleaning my backup hard drive, I found a file with the text of how I started coaching professionally: by offering free coaching on Craigslist. Below is the text. It led to a few clients. One eventually told me he found it valuable enough he insisted on paying me. I insisted on staying with free, as that's what I offered, but he said he'd get more value for something he paid for. He's moved past coaching now and we're still friends. To clarify, I had informally coached friends, also free, for a while…

Many articles lament the restaurant industry's struggles with the pandemic. What's so great about restaurants? Fewer restaurants doesn't mean fewer jobs or business, just shifting them to other areas---people have to eat, after all. People would cook at home more, where they would eat healthier, connect with family more, and pollute less. I would probably like a restaurant from decades ago, when they cooked from scratch, not all so-called comfort food. Nearly all restaurants serve mostly doof, not food. They design menus for comfort and entertainment, not health, nutrition, or local economies. Now kids can't identify vegetables. https://youtu.be/bGYs4KS_djg https://youtu.be/UmKpzKcs_0g Here…

Maybe you saw the headlines that Google and YouTube had to pay a fine, paltry for them, for collecting kids' personal information. From the headline, I didn't think it seemed like such a big deal, as much as I value privacy, as much as I avoid Google, and as much as I value protecting helpless people from predatory entities. But reading the article, I saw how much they used the information to promote and enrich themselves. I couldn't help sharing here what I posted on a message board on the topic: Their meetings must be like Phillip Morris or whatever…

Entrepreneur Magazine covered me for the first time, with a video no less, in Are People Born Leaders? The story begins Joshua Spodek, author of Leadership Step by Step: Becoming the Person Others Follow, talks about how people aren’t born leaders but instead develop leadership skills throughout life as a result of the obstacles life throws at them. He states that every great leader has learned leadership, but “no one’s born leading.” Spodek also says he treats leadership as a performance-based field and that people have to practice being good, effective leaders -- much like one has to practice playing the…

My passion lately has been my talk and other work on leadership and the environment. I've progressed a lot by the measure of my talk going farther without triggering automatic responses to push back. But by the important measure of someone agreeing to change behavior to pollute less, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, consume less resources, or the like, as of this morning, I couldn't think of anyone who took on a challenge. In other words, I felt I failed. Despite working hard for months to develop my talk, giving it many times to many audiences, framing the challenge as improving…

Joshua Steimle quoted me today in Entrepreneur's "11 Modern Leadership Lessons from History's Masters: Helen Keller. Theodore Roosevelt. Ann Bradstreet. Nelson Mandela: Who inspired you?" I'm honored to be a member of an ensemble cast of authors, gurus, and influencers including Simon Sinek, Robert Cialdini, Marshall Goldsmith, Geoff Smart, Gretchen Rubin, Ryan Holiday, Leonard Kim, and more. I had recently finished reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography when Joshua interviewed me, so he wasn't a hard choice. Since you should read the whole article, I don't think I'm giving anything away by quoting the part including me: Nelson Mandela No one likes…