Herbert Lui

Blog on creativity, marketing, and the human condition.

  • About
  • Creative Doing
  • Newsletter
  • Recoverable and irrecoverable decisions

    When you need to make an anxiety-inducing decision, ask yourself: What is the worst realistic outcome? Will you be able to recover from it? Let’s say you want to make a product and sell it, and you need to invest in inventory. The manufacturer needs you to order $1,000 worth to meet their minimum. The…

    Herbert Lui

    February 7, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • Going through the motions

    Going through the motions is incredibly useful. It gets you showing up, which means it gets you started. You’re metaphorically greasing the grooves. It’s better than the alternative, which is not getting started.  One way to do this is just ask yourself, “What’s the next physical action?” Then plan a time and place to do…

    Herbert Lui

    February 6, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
  • It’s also your idea now

    Some of my family members recently stayed over as houseguests. As they settled into the guest bedroom, the room became theirs. When I realized I’d left my pants in the guest room closet, I needed to ask them if I could go in. It was still my guest bedroom, but it was their bedroom for…

    Herbert Lui

    February 5, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
  • Balance

    When I was younger, I let ambition drive my work. I was fully committed to achieving my goals as quickly as possible. As the years went by, I realized this wasn’t effective. Ambition caused me to chase prestige, look for shortcuts, and spread myself too thin. I needed to be the driver, channeling ambition when…

    Herbert Lui

    February 4, 2026
    Creator Confidential, Life, Turning Stories
  • The night I became an entrepreneur

    Before I can talk about that, I need to tell you about the first time I bought something from an entrepreneur with my own money: In elementary school, my friend made me an offer. He would make me a CD of the best songs of the month, for $2. At the time CDs sold for…

    Herbert Lui

    February 3, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • Foundational content

    There are many, many, good entrepreneurs with good businesses who have a website with only a homepage. If you’re one of them, maybe you haven’t put much effort into marketing promotion. (You might say, “We’ve done zero marketing!”)  Or you might have hired some marketing firms in the past—SEM, publicity, social media, etc.—but you haven’t…

    Herbert Lui

    February 2, 2026
    Contentions, Creativity, Creator Confidential, Promotion
  • The 48 Laws of Power started with powerlessness

    Early in his life, Robert Greene wanted to be a writer. His first attempt at this started early, with a job in journalism. After working for several years, one of his editors took him out for a liquid lunch and told him, “You should seriously consider a different career. You are not writer material. Your…

    Herbert Lui

    February 1, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • Escape velocity

    When a rocket launches into space, it needs to reach a point where it can break through gravity, known as escape velocity. Once the ship reaches that point, gravity is too weak to pull the ship back down to earth. It can get through the earth’s atmosphere on its own. In business, particularly early stage…

    Herbert Lui

    January 31, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential
  • The hungry ghost’s favorite ingredient was ambition

    In Asian mythology, there are ghosts known as pretas with insatiable appetites. They have big mouths and thin necks. They can eat all they want and never feel full.  Spoiler alert: There’s a scene in The Ballad of a Small Player, in which the protagonist is possessed by such a ghost. Together, he wins big,…

    Herbert Lui

    January 30, 2026
    Creativity, Creator Confidential, Expectations, Turning Stories
  • A return to my business writing practice

    My strategy with making and shipping creative work has, generally, involved earning money through business writing (in the form of working independently as a marketing consultant, or in a marketing full time role) and investing it into creative projects. Projects like Creative Doing, pretty much all my writing online (including Medium), Prologue, The World According…

    Herbert Lui

    January 29, 2026
    Contentions, Creator Confidential
1 2 3 … 158
Next Page→