“Uncertainty is a reality when you start your own company, but staying with a large company hasn’t been much of an employment guarantee in the last decade either.” – Mark McClain, founder of SailPoint (Noticed on the HBS Blog)

Ever heard someone say “no rest for the weary”? I shuddered when I thought of the alternative. No work for the rested! The agony of nothing to do, with no point in getting up, and nothing to go on for. I’ll take weary, please. The other sounds like a punishment from Greek mythology.

“Geniuses and supergeniuses always make their own rules on sex as on everything else; they do not accept the monkey customs of their lessers.” – Dr. Hartley M. Baldwin

“One might almost define intelligence as the level at which an aware organism demands ‘what’s in it for me?’ – George Perrault

“Brainpower is the scarcest commodity and the only one of real value. Any human organization can be rendered useless, impotent, a danger to itself, by selectively removing its best minds while carefully leaving the stupid ones in place. It took only a few careful ‘accidents’ to ruin utterly the great Prussian military machine and turn [...]

Definitions are really only descriptions. They’re always less than the thing they describe. So here’s a definition written as a description: thinking involves considering other options to every assumption you’re working with. Thinking involves treating your premises as subjective, not objectifying them. Thinking involves, out of principle, never absolutizing your own perceptions, but ever challenging [...]

Never market your own services by saying “I’ve been trained to…”. It makes you sound like a terrier. It might be a simple mistake, but it could also mean that you still are thinking of your work as merely a job. What will a client be more interested in – someone who makes his success [...]

I’m a big fan of types, lists, rules, that sort of thing. This list of Types of Clients is insightful. If you’re working for yourself, especially on an internet-based business, the advice at that blog is invaluable. Here’s another recent article on Client Relations, that I think is excellent.

I’m pretty proud of this gent, as a fellow entrepreneur. He has the courage to step out in a different direction and market his own thing. Switching his whole appraisal marketing footing over to a venture of selling information, training, and networking is not only the smartest move I’ve seen lately, but the most inspiring. [...]

Work is a fundamentally ascetic enterprise (an ascesis). You learn not to lie in bed awake. You stop luxuriating in long showers. You fast from excess food and sweets and drink – fast from excesses of all kinds. You may work with others, but the fundamental things are solitary. Restraint, self-control, moderation. You are what [...]

If you have a theme and a plot, you have a product. It may not yet be the right product, but now you can make that decision. Put another way: The plot is simply your goal. That means that products come from within. They’re a function of your life. The theme is the goal’s meaning. [...]