I happened to be writing Courage is Calling during most of the crazy period of putting this book store together. Obviously, starting a small business is not the same as running into a burning building or onto a battlefield, but one thing you can’t escape noticing when you read history or biography is just how badly we need people to step up, to put... See more

When I was thinking about opening The Painted Porch, I asked Tim Ferriss for advice. “Think about it as an experiment,” he said. “How are you going to know if it’s something you want to do if you haven’t tried doing it?” The decision to see it as an experiment, not as a permanent life choice, was so freeing. It allowed me to go into it knowing that... See more

Permission assets are everything. All my success as a writer, right down to this bookstore, has been rooted in the email lists and social media accounts I have built. When you have direct access to people who like what you do, everything is more affordable and more scalable. When you don’t? Everything is harder and requires so much more luck.

Confidence is on the other side of having done a scary thing, a thing that a lot of people said wasn’t a good idea.