More than five hundred of the most successful men this country has ever known, told the author their greatest success came just one step beyond the point at which defeat had overtaken them. Failure is a trickster with a keen sense of irony and cunning.

What I mean to say is that sometimes the best way to monetize your work—and we do have to make money to live—is not from the work itself, at least not in the short term. We know that perennial sellers can be immensely profitable over time, but they need room to grow, and what better place to grow them than in the fertile ground of your own budding

Something becomes truly popular when it becomes interesting to those who don’t particularly care. You don’t create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who love movies. You create a phenomenon like E.T. by appealing to people who see one movie a year.

Every year that passes without extinction doubles the additional life expectancy.” In other words, classics stay classic and become more so over time. Think of it as compound interest for creative work.

In fact, some of the best Non-Obvious creators became famous after their death. That’s because when you present the world with a radically new & different POV, you have to accept that you might not reap the dividends of your efforts for many years—maybe ever. (If