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How Do You Define Success?

August 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

NavalloI recently did an interview with a young entrepreneur named Jason Navallo who is collecting and publishing life advice on his website Navallo.net. Jason has some ideas for interesting things he may do with the site over time, but right now it is just a free resource full of life perspectives from interesting people. Well worth a browse. In the meantime, since I have a lot of early-career entrepreneurs as Scratchpaper readers, I figured I’d share my answers here.

1. How do you define success?

Achieving balance and sustainability. Finding something that stimulates you enough intellectually and pays you enough financially, but also gives you enough balance with other aspects of your life to be sustainable over the long-haul.

2. What is the key to success?

Finding work that suits your temperament perfectly and fits with your natural curiosity.

3. Did you always know you would be successful? [Read more…]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Literary Humor & Miscellaneous

Entrepreneur at Work: Caine’s Arcade

May 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Ordinarily with a story like this, I’d just tweet it or stick it into one of my Links You May Have Missed posts. But this is such a sweet and inspirational tale and the documentary is so well done, that I think it deserves its own post. Using tape and recycled cardboard to build his own arcade, a young kid in East L.A. follows his vision and his passion with enough determination and ingenuity that he teaches the world some important lessons. (The fantastic video documentary by Nirvan Mullick appears below). [Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Entrepreneurship, Literary Humor & Miscellaneous, Social Networking

The Future Of Publishing – The Book is Dead; Long Live the Book

December 3, 2011 by 1 Comment

Is the traditional publishing model dead?

I’ve touched on this topic before (for example,  Amazon becoming a publisher; Amazon really stepping up publication efforts; ebook growth; blogcasting), but three recent events bring it back to the forefront. First was a conversation with someone at a TCN panel talk I gave last week who had just self-published her own book, second was a conversation with a friend who had just published a book with a traditional publisher and third was an interesting piece just published by Matthew Ingram at GigaOM about the value of publishers.

At the panel last week I was discussing intellectual property issues in the start-up context, and one of the participants was focused on IP questions around a book she had just published. The questions were straight-forward, but what was interesting was that when asked who her publisher was, she said that she had self-published.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Apple / Google / Amazon / Big Tech, Business, Crowd Sourcing, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things, Literary Humor & Miscellaneous, Media / Publishing, Photography, Social Networking

Amazon Moves Up the Food Chain

August 18, 2011 by Leave a Comment

I guess this is the week for partner conflict.  With Samsung, and HTC still reeling from Google’s announcement that they are getting into the mobile phone manufacturing business (discussion here), Amazon has now announced it is stepping up its nascent publishing efforts and going to war with the traditional publishers who have feed its business for so long.  Amazon has signed on to be the direct publisher of Timothy Ferriss, author famous for his series of “4 Hour” titles. The NYT had a great article on this and my four favorite quotes are set out below.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Business, Communication, Internet / Big Data / Internet of Things, Literary Humor & Miscellaneous, Media / Publishing

Hot Summer

July 27, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In recognition of the extreme heat we’ve been experiencing in the Northeast lately I thought I would get a little random and off-topic and dig up and share one of my favorite pieces of commentary about hot weather which aired on NPR about 15 years ago.  Got a kick out of it then, still get a kick out of it now.  Acknowlegements and thanks to NPR.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Literary Humor & Miscellaneous