You need to think in terms of a portfolio of projects around your lighthouse. In the short term, income from one area can support investment in another. Over a longer period of time, the collection of projects functions like a diversified portfolio, with gains in one area balancing out losses in another.

These three core conversational roles are the guide, the colleague-friend, and the producer. The guide, like a good teacher, offers you your own wisdom. The colleague-friend offers honesty and encouragement. The producer takes on the secondary creative task of fitting an idea to the constraints of the market. Whether you are being managed or

Synthesizing is a form of putting things from two different fields together.

When uncovering a lighthouse question in the business world, you need to think particularly about how you will erect barriers to entry to prevent a second mover from copying your success in the event that you have it.

That simple observation led to the distinction between fixed costs—those that you incur no matter how much you produce—and variable costs—those like materials that you only incur when you produce something. The distinction led Wedgwood to realize the advantages of specializing in product lines where he could produce larger quantities of the same

the superpower of the guide is in reflecting you back to yourself, the guide exudes rigor—the honesty of a mirror—but in the language of kindness and with the generosity of accepting your own premise as the starting point.

“We never lost hope that there is a path forward. We just have to find it.” Their mantra was to “shine your light and walk to the end of what you can see” and then to keep going again after that.

The team is everything. That moment of bringing people in sets the ceiling of possibility. The new hire is as serious to the health of the team as an organ transplant is to the health of the body. You want the best people you can find, and the ones who will contribute most positively to the team.

Change and reinvention are essential to longer-term success.