Here is an interview with a student who is taking my online leadership course, Ellen, who is an entrepreneur who recently sold her latest business. As you’ll see, she is also finding that the lessons she’s learning apply to other deeply challenging areas in life.: 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[…] Keep reading →

Here is an interview with a student who took my online leadership course, Bethany, who is an Associate Partner at IBM and has an MBA from Columbia Business School: 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 your[…] Keep reading →

I just read yet another post of someone saying eating healthy takes more time and money. I can’t believe how wrong that view is, at least by my experience. Living in New York City means I have access to some of the best restaurants in the world. I can afford to eat at them. Yet my past year’s cooking has disillusioned me in them. I find them disappointing. Their food[…] 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 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 →

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 →

I write about beliefs and mental models. We humans have a weird pattern that we will often believe something that’s catchy just because it sticks in our heads. “No pain, no gain,” for example, rhymes, so sticks in our heads. We often choose not to do painful things, as if the statement were true. Commercial jingles often work this way. Another examples is “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It’s[…] Keep reading →

This passage interviewing a guy who walked in space, plus some context, can help you enjoy life more, even—especially—if you can’t get to space but expect you’d love the experience. From the article: In the 1960s, he says, “astronauts were celebrities. They were invited on JFK’s boat. If you wanted to go to space, you had to become Neil Armstrong.” Today, however, space-travel companies like Virgin Galactic and SpaceX are[…] Keep reading →

Teaching entrepreneurship, I often hear people say they want “to become an entrepreneur,” “to be their own boss,” and “to run their own company.” I have to distinguish between thinking and behaving entrepreneurially and “becoming an entrepreneur.” Thinking and behaving entrepreneurially means identifying problems that people would pay you to solve, figuring out how to solve them, creating sustainable models to implement the solutions, attracting teammates, marketing and selling the[…] Keep reading →