The Boss of You

One of the fabulous and unexpected benefits of having written this book is the deeply cool, and frequently nontraditional, women’s business groups we’re coming in contact with. A few weeks ago we got an email from Laura Bucci, maker of beautiful handmade things and one of the many people using Etsy to sell her wares. […]

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We’ve been on the road this week, visiting Seattle, New York, and DC, and all the travelling is giving me a chance to catch up a little on my reading. I finally got a chance to pick up the copy of Venus Zine I bought a couple of weeks ago, and was delighted to discover […]

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Last week Claire over at Loobylu did a giveaway contest for our book, wherein she took inspiration from the book and asked people to describe a meal that would reflect the personality of their business (or the business they dream of creating). This kind of exercise is an example of the kinds of suggestions we […]

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At last night’s event in Largo, MD (a suburb of Washington, DC), a question arose during the Q&A period: What do you do when people try to haggle with you about your prices? The general consensus among the panelists was that you shouldn’t budge; your prices are your prices, and in most cases, undercutting yourself […]

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Yesterday’s event at Elliott Bay Books was a lot of fun; amazingly, about twenty people chose to show up despite the fact that the Pacific Northwest was enjoying its first day of genuine blue skies and hot sunshine all year. I always make a point of stopping in at Elliott Bay when I’m in […]

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I tend to shy away from posting much tech/internet stuff here, even though that’s the industry where Emira and I earn our living. But the fact is, there are a lot of people who see the word “technology” and a part of their brain just turns off, and I like to keep my readers awake […]

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Fast Company has a short, sweet, and awesome article on their site called “Polarize Me,” which is all about narrowing down your target audience by figuring out who you can safely ignore. The authors begin by discussing online personal ads and their general suckiness.
We examined more than 1,000 Match.com ads—from men and women, old and […]

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One of the things we talk about a lot in The Boss of You is the importance of creating your own definition of success. Everyone’s definition is a little different. I’ve been on the lookout for personal definitions of success since we started the book, and I think I’m going to start posting them as […]

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I came across an article yesterday that sets up a totally reasonable, small-is-beautiful model for making a living as an artist (whatever your medium): all you have to do is develop a fan base that includes 1,000 true fans.
This is a completely reasonable approach to take for those artists who a) are comfortable interacting with […]

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A friend of mine sent me an email recently containing several quotes from Carlos Castaneda, and a few of them struck me as particularly relevant to my work life at the moment. (I have taken the liberty of replacing every instance of “man” with “woman,” because I’m sneaky like that.)
If a warrior is to succeed […]

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