I had some great professors in college, although even the best of them made me want to fashion voodoo dolls from old leg warmers (hey, it was the 80s) and spend afternoons slashing their little voodoo term papers with a thick red pen. One I remember quite vividly is my freshman English Lit. professor. I had spent tons of time on a paper that was returned to me with a pulsating “C” on it. “What gives?!” I thought and marched up to her desk, requesting an explanation for why she panned my 18-year-old brilliance. “This is nothing...

Not sure if you’re cut out for blogging? Try this: Start blogging. Build an audience. Get some response. Interact. Get excited. Then stop. If you’re a blogger, you won’t be able to get blogging off your mind. Blog post ideas will pop into your mind as you choose the best peaches, walk the dog and get your car inspected. You’ll obsess over missed opportunities to share ideas and insights, and conversations you wished you’d started but didn’t. How do I know? Check the dates on my last few posts. Yeah, I’m a blogger. If...

OK, everybody. Steve Woodruff put me at the helm of Five in the Morning today (I know, what was he thinking?!) and I’m going to rouse you from your mental slumber with a few inspiring posts from some of my favorite bloggers. It’s time to stop talking about how awful everything is and open ourselves up to opportunities. What’s that? You have to get a few more things off your chest? Go right ahead. I’ll wait. Ready? I think I’ve got something for everyone here. Have at it! Get the job I never miss Penelope Trunk’s (Brazen...

The number on the bedside clock read 3:48 a.m. and I had spent an exhausting day driving from North Carolina to central Pennsylvania, but I just couldn’t sleep. My mother’s words kept running through my mind. First, on the phone: “They’re taking her off the respirator today. It won’t be long after that.” Dressing. Packing. “It’s horrible. They’re watching the monitors, waiting to see if she’s letting go.” Driving. “She’s gone.” My nieces’  mother died of lung cancer...

So the word on the street is that 2009 is the “year of small business.” And everyone’s looking for the marketing silver bullet. How to integrate old and new? How can I use Facebook? What role might twitter play in building my business? Where do I begin? What’s the ROI of all this friending, tweeting and linking? As David Meerman Scott is fond of asking, what’s the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning? There are no easy answers. Building a business is more about faith than fortune. It’s more about passion than profit....

I used to think optimists were out of touch with reality. Wide-eyed Pollyannas who refused to see that tough challenges lie in wait for all of us, ready to pounce like meaty-pawed tigers. But then I started writing for business journals. After a few months of interviewing successful entrepreneurs and CEOs I detected a pattern. They were all optimists. This punched a big hole in my Pollyanna theory. Slowly I discovered that true optimism – the powerful stuff that fuels leaders and visionaries - isn’t rooted in blithely ignoring reality....

My friend and I were having lunch on a restaurant patio the other day when a lime green Lamborghini roared past. “Your son would have gone bananas if he had seen that,” she said with a chuckle. She knows my teenager loves classic rock, skateboarding and expensive cars - and that he’s intense, artistic, quick-witted and wants to be everybody’s friend. My family and close friends know they’ll find my daughter by my side as I roll out the crust for Thanksgiving pies, that we’ll have to call my middle-schooler three...

The evening of September 7, 1996 was hot and muggy. I know this because it was the day after Hurricane Fran blew through Raleigh and blew out our electricity. Six trees had fallen in our yard and we had a freezer full of food that would defrost within hours, but my eight-months-pregnant self was focused on just one thing: how would I live without air conditioning? (Note: I will only entertain accusations that I’m weak and spoiled from women who have carried a 10-pound baby to term somewhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.) Despite my misery, I was a...

There was an interesting article about global defeat in the June issue of Psychology Today. It seems we’re hardwired to give up easily. Thousands of years of cutting our losses rather than risk death by saber-toothed tiger make us more inclined to run for cover than stay and fight. “Today, an overwhelming sense of helplessness is a blunt instrument, less necessary for survival than it once was because our options are vastly more numerous,” the article says. “Nonetheless, we still carry within us the tendency to feel easily trumped...