Category: Uncategorized
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In Praise of Software Scribes
How automated transcriptions empower authors and everyone on the Internet.
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Learn a Book’s Best Ideas in 20 Minutes
Why you don’t need to read an entire book to learn from it. In The Creative Habit, author and choreographer Twyla Tharp writes, “I read for a lot of reasons, pleasure being the least of them.” Tharp, probably like us, reads for specific, transactional, purposes. For example, she’s often looking for concepts, patterns and situations…
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Announcing: There Is No Right Way to Do This & How You Can Get Involved
This isn’t the order page for my upcoming book, but it’s just as important. There Is No Right Way to Do This is my first book, and I’m publishing it myself. As such, I’m writing to ask for your support. This book has been developing since I wrote this blog post seven years ago. I…
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Doing Something Interesting Is the Best Way to Promote Yourself
I’ve advised a lot of companies, leaders, and friends on how to promote their work through writing. But as I was thinking about it, combing through Eddie Huang’s The Pop Chef archives and having seen one too many aphorisms on Twitter, I thank God for granting me this moment of clarity: If you’re not a…
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The Rise of Personal Infrastructure
The company person is dead; long live the entrepreneur. There are plenty of people who have written extensively about reasons this change is happening; the gig economy, neoliberalism, the winner-take-all system being just a few of many factors. I’ll leave it to the experts to talk about macroscopic changes. One very clear factor is, each…
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When You Can’t Outspend, You Need to Outteach
Showing Your Process Is the Best Promotion One tried-and-true formula to promoting your work requires you accomplish something, draw people’s interest (and sometimes money), by showing them how they can do the same thing. I’ll paraphrase what Kathy Sierra writes: When you can’t outspend, you’ve got to outteach. CEOs, creatives, and marketers all approach me…
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Rethinking Content Marketing Incentives
“To make marketing that doesn’t suck.” I can’t tell if this phrase had imprinted itself into my mind, or if it was an original thought — if there is such a thing — when I was thinking about the future of my business. Then again, this sort of thing is what content marketers do best.…
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Life doesn’t happen to you, it happens for you
“Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don’t have to like it… it’s just easier if you do.” — Byron Katie I originally heard this sentiment in a Tim Ferriss podcast. I’m guessing he got it from Katie.…