The literary world was abuzz recently when soon-to-be debut author Jumi Bello confessed in an essay on Literary Hub to plagiarizing parts of her debut novel, “The Leaving,” which was then yanked from Riverhead’s summer lineup. The New York Times reports: “The essay chronicled her history with mental illness and the pressures of producing a debut…

How long have you been “working on your talk?” My guess: Too long. If there’s no deadline, you can work on it forever. And it will take about that long. We don’t give talks because they’re “ready.” We give talks because it’s time. And because nothing can put you on people’s radar like being right…

Just as we’re all writers, we’re all speakers. You don’t have to make your living traveling the world doing keynotes. EVERY time you stand up in front of a room with other people in it, or speak up, even if you remain sitting. You’re public speaking. Period the end. It’s not something just professional speakers…

We all feel resistance around things we don’t want to do. But ever feel resistance around things you actually want to do? How maddening is that? Public speaking is one of those things. It’s easy to just not do it.  But the people who struggle with it aren’t those who flat-out refuse; they’re the ones…

The two images below were taken almost exactly a year apart. The image on the left is what my book manuscript looked like when I was trying to figure it all out. The image on the right was taken a year later (a week ago). As finished as it will ever be. It easy to…

Would you say you’re a good writer? Or a bad one? This was the question Entrepreneur’s editor in chief Jason Feifer, host of the Build for Tomorrow podcast, posted on LinkedIn recently. OK, I’ll bite, I thought. I selected “good.” Here were the poll results: Wow — More than half thought they were good, and…

My brilliant, sweet friend Jenny Blake, founder of Pivot, had me on her podcast for the launch of Unfollow Your Passion. And her first question? “Tell us about the MLM days.” Ah, yes. For a few years in the early aughts, I was a multi-level marketing member, someone who sold jewelry for a now-defunct company…

The Washington Post reported a charming tale of an 8-year-old kid named Dillon who wrote and illustrated his own book, then snuck it into the stacks of his local library in Boise. Dillon later admitted that what he did was “naughty-ish.” But the covert act of analog sharing not only won over the librarians, they…