The business of business

Do you ever feel like your business standards are lower than they should be?

If so, identify the three most important aspects of your business — maybe it's your product, your customer service, and your team (if you have one). Write down the current standard for each category. And then write down what excellence actually looks like.

The gap between... See more

Leadership, it turns out, is the courage to stay in the room when things get messy.

The first step of any meaningful pursuit is to severely underestimate its difficulty.

“Greatness is consistency.

Meditating once is common. Meditating daily is rare.

Exercising today is simple. Training every week is simply remarkable.

Writing one essay rarely matters. Write every day and you're practically a hero.

Unheroic days can make for heroic decades.”

If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way. The show was successful because I micromanaged it—every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That’s my way of life.

It’s not enough to tell one good story; you have to create an entire world that people can step into, familiarize themselves with, and spend time getting to know. Initially you’ll have to walk them around and show them what’s in your world, but your goal is to familiarize them with your world sufficiently, and motivate them to participate, to the... See more