There are plenty of fitness influencers and intellectual influencers. There are plenty of classes and programs and institutions to help us develop a sound body or a vigorous mind. But what about developing character?

“Generation Alpha” has been emerging as a term on the internet in recent months. Lots of people saw a viral video titled “The world isn’t ready for Gen Alpha.” It showed two twelve year olds saying funny words while subtly bullying each other.

Have you touched a duck before? Have the majority of people touched ducks before? Then why do we say “get your ducks in a row” so often?

I hate voice notes. iMessage has this terrible feature where you can click and hold to send an audio recording. People use it as a way to hide.

You don't necessarily need to know more than someone, or be more experienced, or be more successful than them to be a good consultant. You just need to see the world differently. And you need to be honest. 

Sometimes I search an old email from a few years back to reference a file, and I cringe. It’s amazing to me how much more concise and clear my communication has become since I began my career.

Receiving feedback isn’t easy. But the viability of a creator’s career depends on it. The better the work they create for their clients, and the better time their clients have working with them, have a direct effect on how often they get hired.

Maybe what makes something a PR nightmare is calling it a PR nightmare. Apple was found guilty for purposefully slowing down older iPhones so people would buy new iPhones. Did you know that?

I think the reason that templates work so well is because they give you confidence and clarity even when you feel unconfident and confused.

That’s when I came up with my best idea yet. I emailed everyone who said they were interested at 10pm, asking them to call me the next morning at 7am. Only one of them did.

So when I’m on YouTube, and Paramount shows me a two-minute trailer for their new movie, I’m willing to watch it. I’m on YouTube to watch content like that anyway, so now I get to see something interesting, and then I get to watch the video I wanted to watch. But when Toyota shows me a 15-second, highly produced ad about their summer car sale, I skip it. I’m not there to see content like that.

I would be hounding Amazing for a refund right now. But hounding an independent writer who is packing and shipping his self-published book on his own? I don’t feel so good about that.

I sat across the dinner table from a man who had been on the moon, and I was racking my brain, trying to come up with something to ask him.

If you can make a great first impression, people won’t see you that way. They’ll just see you as someone doing your job.

No one likes delivering bad news. But when bad news is leveraged to position good news as even better, we can inspire positive action from our communities and audiences.

You can be the most brilliant person in the world. You can know everything. But unless you’re kind and generous, no one will listen to you.

Every social interaction comes with a generally agreed-upon duration. A dinner is a 90-minute engagement, 60-minutes minimum. A picnic is 2 hours. A guest at your house is at least 2 hours, maybe more. But a beer? That’s a beautifully concise, sub 40-minute thing.

Culture is the strongest force in the world. People will do illogical, and sometimes insane things–for better or for worse–because of a culture that inspires them.

Group brainstorms are a great way to get a list of innovative ideas together. But they only work if you’re receptive to the way other people think.

In the world of consumer products, people don’t really care if there’s a mistake. They can always return it, or get a different size, or re-gift it. But with freelancers, it’s different. No one wants to get another haircut if the barber messes up.