Finding Fluency
Learning any new craft is a lot like learning a foreign language. We often want to be awesome at it straight out of the gate, but that rarely -- if ever -- happens right away. What really happens is that we end up looking and sounding like a frustrated toddler,...
Pushing Past Sucking
One of the hardest things to get past in my performing days was the big chasm between what I envisioned being able to do, and what I could actually do. I got all inspired and lit up like I was on fire when I saw Cirque du Soleil, but then the first time I got onto a...
Five Fathoms Down
Big mythology geek that I am, I used to love the movie "Clash of the Titans" when I was little. (The original, not the remake -- the one with the steampunk owl. Super-nerd alert!) One part in it that always stuck with me was the scene where Andromeda gives the...
Outshined
I talked last week about finding a snake in my dishwasher, and how that one experience made me face one of my biggest fears. Before that, I had another fear, not as scaly -- but just as scary: Standing in front of a group of people. The fear was even worse if I was...
Facing Fears
Several years ago, I had one of the roughest periods of my life: I lost my job, which I loved with my whole heart because it was completely aligned with my talents and passions, and it allowed me to collaborate creatively with a group of amazingly talented people. But...
Supernovas and Dwarf Stars
Almost everybody in this business wants to be a star, whether or not they'll openly admit it. I worked for several years as a talent agent and even more as a talent buyer, and what aspiring thought leaders and artists would ask me about most often was lead generation...
Generosity vs. Greed
A lot of traditional business advice would have you believe that greed will beat generosity in terms of making money and making a lasting impact. However, that's not necessarily true... I wanted to build on the post I shared last week, about the moral of the folk...
The Well of Words
My favorite fairy tale growing up was "Toads and Diamonds." I had a beautifully illustrated version of this folk tale in a Big Golden Book that was my mom's when she was a little girl. So not only was the book beautiful and fun to read, but it had sentimental value...
5 Biz Tips from the Girls in Green
As our Troop winds down our Girl Scout Cookie Sale for 2015, it struck me that there's a LOT that business owners and entrepreneurs can learn from the business model of the Girl Scout Cookie Sale. If you were never a Girl Scout, you may not know that the whole point...
Where to Begin
Have you ever seen someone else do something and just known, down to the core of your being, that you HAD to do that, too? I have. But in the very next breath, did you think to yourself, "How in the world am I going to be able to do that? I have no idea where to...