The V-Word

“To set up what you like against what you dislike, this is the disease of the mind.” -Sengcan

What we most love about someone, given enough time, we usually come to find repulsive. It is an odd but insistent phenomenon that moves through most all intimate relationships, usually at regular intervals. One useful way to think about this swinging attraction- rejection response is as an energy wave...

You have to have bad days, even bad weeks sometimes. You know the good ones in comparison to the bad ones. This is what I am reminding myself this week as things anticipated are not happening and things that I thought were fine are completely broken. Making mistakes in a product business is really costly and generally takes a significant effort to dig out of. It is almost always the smallest, most...

A week ago I was on the East Coast for a few meetings. One of my flights was cancelled and the closest I could get was to Washington DC, which was going to oblige me to drive to Pennsylvania to meet with Rite Aid. One way cars are the most expensive ones to rent, and as it happened on Hotwire, the cheapest car to get was a luxury model. On arriving they offered me a Cadillac with no CD player- or...

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” -Thomas Merton

Ashley Madison founder, Noel Bidermanonce told me that the biggest day of his year is the day after Valentines day. More women sign up to cheat on their marriages on this day than any other, which is no small thing coming from a guy whose website generates $25K every hour...

Running a product company is like trying to solve an algebraic equation that has no answer.  By definition, you never have the money you need to get bigger, because the inventory you need to buy now won’t sell until much late and the faster you grow, the more you have to buy now for later.

The biggest expense that any business has is the cost of people to help you grow. In some financial...

I think something is happening to me. This new attention to positivity is going in deeper than before- and I am able to feel grateful and generous at times that used to be taken over by anxiety. The other day, on my trip to see Rite Aid and Kroger, I stopped in CVS and saw a couple of my main natural competitors on the shelf.

At first, my old insecurities popped up, but then,all by itself, it was...

Traveling again.  Moving through time zones across the country.  I am in Baltimore at the historical Lord Baltimore hotel, which is currently under renovation. My room is one of the first to be renovated.  It is beautifully appointed, but they didn’t account for the single digit temperatures when they were dealing with the old single pane windows.  The bathroom is an ice box.

I am awake at 7:30...

It has been really foggy where I live for days. Yesterday, the sun popped through in part of town and it was astonishing to me how bright the world seemed. I felt like I could breathe again and I was uplifted. My mood was bright for the first time in days. Again today, though the fog is covering our little community like a cap. I hear that just 25 miles in any direction there is light. Getting up...

A marked point is the space in the field of chaos where order begins to take shape. I learned about this piece of chaos theory from my good friend, writing partner and social movement architect, Jenn Hirsch. Jenn’s business, Marked Point -named after this theory, (which the less trained eye might call just another marketing firm), is helping me create a Love Movement. It started out as an idea to...