My Inc.com story yesterday, “Hope Is For Losers. Here’s What Winners Have Instead.” begins Hope Is For Losers. Here’s What Winners Have Instead Mainstream society values hope. If you’re in business, relying on hope means you’ve nearly failed and you should know why. In a scene in the great TV show Cheers where Sam is down on his luck, Diane says in a chipper tone to cheer him up, “At[…] Keep reading →

Here is an interview with a student who took my online entrepreneurship course, Sofia, who is an entrepreneur in Greece and got her Masters degree in Technology Management at NYU. Reach your potential in business and life. My courses don’t take time from the rest of life. You work with people in your life that you care about on projects that you care about without distracting from the rest of[…] Keep reading →

My Inc.com piece today, “How to Break Rules and Succeed Like Kobe Bryant,” begins How to Break Rules and Succeed Like Kobe Bryant Kobe Bryant polarized and broke rules most of us can’t, yet earned admiration and support. Why can some people break rules, yet get support? The LA Times called Kobe Bryant “the most polarizing figure in the history of L.A. sports.” He spoke out against his team. He[…] Keep reading →

If you think business is about money, people will control you with it. If you want money and they have it, you’ll do what they want. What do you think looking for a job is? It’s finding people with money and asking them what you can do for them. It reminds me of a student of mine at NYU who came to me asking for referrals for a job. After[…] Keep reading →

What do you do when they cancel your flight? In the late 70s, a man and his fiancée were visiting the Caribbean. They found themselves stranded in an airport when their airline canceled their flight to Puerto Rico. The man was disappointed, but based on his experience running a record business that he had founded, he took initiative to solve the problem. Noticing other people from the same flight were[…] Keep reading →

My Inc. article today “Want to Succeed as an Entrepreneur? Learn This One Lesson From ‘The Martian’,” begins Want to Succeed as an Entrepreneur? Learn This One Lesson From ‘The Martian’ Think The Martian was about solving technology problems? Those were the details. You missed the big picture that ties it all together. Though engineers and space aficionados probably loved The Martian, entrepreneurs had the most to love and learn. We got the[…] Keep reading →

My latest Inc.com story “Resilience: What The New York Times, New Yorker and Most of Academia Got Wrong” begins Resilience: What The New York Times, New Yorker, and Most of Academia Got Wrong If you want to be resilient, not just know about resilience, research and the media won’t help you. [the story starts with a picture of an athlete covered in mud, struggling to make it] You’re covered in[…] Keep reading →

I loved university. Studying physics, universities are about the only places to learn it. I value university for many things. They do a lot of valuable things better than any other institution or alternatives—the hard sciences, for example. It’s not right for everyone and it does some things terribly. Places other than universities do some non-academic activities so much better than school. Experiential learning—how I teach leadership, entrepreneurship, sales, and[…] Keep reading →

School Doing a gratitude exercise recently, writing my undergraduate advisor who helped me figure out how to major in physics starting my second semester junior year. Physics is intense so most of my classmates were younger, having known their major since high school. So academically, I was catching up with classmates from when I chose my major. I just finished the major in my last semester and got into Penn[…] Keep reading →