Big Hitters Still Strike Out

A client hired me to write two different financial packages to be tested to his list. I came up with the most compelling hooks I could… worked on each letter for 3+ weeks… put as much into the letters as I could… and then turned them in. The client loved them. Even the people in […]

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The Biology of Risk-Taking

Have you ever wondered what causes booms and busts? Or why some people are naturally better at risk-taking than others? In the new book The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, John Coates examines these questions and the biology that affects our appetite for risk. Coates’s lab is a New York trading floor where individual traders […]

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Is It Going to Work? And How Can I Make It Better?

I recently retained a patent attorney to help me with a product idea. I hired him for two reasons. First, I needed him to do a patent search for me. I had done some searching on my own and couldn’t find any similar products or patents. But I needed his expertise to determine whether other […]

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Mark Twain’s Biggest Writing Failure

If ever there was an American literary giant, Mark Twain was it. He was somehow larger than life — loved for both his stories and his outsized wit and personality. Yet did you know that one of the books Twain wrote was a flop? It’s true. His autobiography was a failure by most objective standards. […]

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When the World Conspires Against You, Redouble Your Efforts

The past four days have been challenging to say the least. My wife got sick Thursday night and had gastrointestinal issues all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. In fact, she spent most of Friday on the sofa since her gut hurt so badly. Then, within 5 minutes of coming home on Friday afternoon, my son […]

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