I detest the myth that you need a great idea to start a venture. Believing it inhibits people from pursuing their passions. Successful people don’t believe it, at least not that I know of. Among my ways to undermine the myth is to show how most great ideas didn’t start as great ideas. Let’s look at some successes that looked like sure failures at first. Google started as a search[…] Keep reading →

Years ago no schools taught entrepreneurship. Some enterprising people had the idea to create business plan competitions to motivate entrepreneurially-minded people to create business plans. I applaud their idea and its implementation at the time. Business plan competitions filled a gap in academia by promoting action and learning by doing. That was generations ago. The academic gap no longer exists. Today business plan competitions are an academic distraction from business[…] Keep reading →

Do you like business success? Then read “Going the Distance,” in Columbia Business School’s alumni magazine, on how sports contribute to business success in an interview of me. Here is part of the interview, to whet your appetite: Skills mastered through endurance sports fuel success in business, says marathoner and serial entrepreneur Joshua Spodek ’06. […] First things first: why run?  One of the attractions of running is that there’s[…] Keep reading →

Leading others begins with leading yourself. Part of my daily workouts is to stretch my hamstrings by sitting with my legs straight in front of me, like this: How do you feel about your abdomen when you crunch forward like this? Does it show fat that you prefer people not see? Do you look flabby? Do you avoid such positions for that reason? I noticed that my entire life I’ve[…] Keep reading →

You are reading my two-thousandth blog post. Here’s the list of all of them. I’ve posted daily since January 2011, plus twice daily around my North Korea trips since that content seemed different. Why? I write for two main reasons, one related to content, the other to process. The content reason is that writing helps me develop thoughts and ideas. When I started I thought I’d run out of ideas.[…] Keep reading →

If you earn $10 and then have to pay $3 to taxes, you net $7. Emotions don’t work that way. Many people think they do, which leads them to miss out some of the most interesting parts of life. Say you like a friend and they also annoy you. If you net out that you kind of like them you miss out that you have a complex relationship with them.[…] Keep reading →

Continuing my series of alternative responses to the New York Times column, The Ethicists, looking at the consequences of one’s actions instead of imposing values on others, here is my take on today’s post, “Should I Set the Record Straight About a Suicide?” I am in the military and have been deployed a number of times. Recently, a friend with whom I served in Iraq took his own life and[…] Keep reading →