Brandy Cerne

Remember that most of us aren’t born with passions. Passions form from interest, dedication, and practice. The more you give to your craft, the more it gives back to you.

Rarely in our life is money a place of genuine freedom, joy, or clarity, yet we routinely allow it to dictate the terms of our lives and often to be the single most important factor in the decisions we make about work, love, family, and friendship.

There is the constant struggle to live as an effective giver and receiver of gifts. There are millions of people around us whose lives are defined by generosity and service. Personal being, Mounier continues, is essentially generous. But our society does not teach us how to be an effective giver of gifts. The schools don’t emphasize it. The popular

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That next endeavor that you launch, whether it’s creating handcrafted products for the farmers market, starting a new coffee shop, if you share your story and give people a way to follow your journey, they will. Some will buy your products, others will tell their friends, and still more will cheer you on.

An audience is actually easier to build than... See more

My impulse is to say I don’t mind whether my ideas are original, but that’s not exactly true. I don’t want my writing to feel redundant or derivative of popular ideas that have been circulating forever, but to me that’s less about having wholly original thoughts and more about being in conversation with the world around me. Taken too literally,... See more

Avoid vague platitudes or anything that sounds like marketing, such as “all in one,” “faster,” “revolutionary” or “convenient.” These platitudes engender cynicism, and people will not infer what they mean. It forces prospects to either guess at what you do or take your word for it that you're awesome — which they’re unlikely to do, given that your

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