“Do what you love and the money will follow” is bullshit. The truth? Knowing how to get paid for your passion is just as important as uncovering it in the first place.

Productivity is a disease. Seriously. I really think that our obsession with getting things done has become a global sickness. Notice what I said there. The disease is not procrastination. It’s actually our desire to be optimally productive and efficient all the time.

She must have been five feet tall but she laid me out.“I’m not very good at that move,” she said. “Really? It seemed pretty good to me.” This is what happened last night at Aikido practice. I only started learning the Japanese martial art about five months ago. I'm a beginner, so it's okay.

Any act of creation, whether it is a piece of art or a new business, starts off as a vision. Think about it: Everything manmade that we can see around us began in someone's imagination. If you are a small business owner or entrepreneur, your ability to get other people (clients, customers, investors) to buy into your vision is paramount.

Still searching blindly for your niche? Stop that. This Tuesday, I launched my new website. And I’m really proud of it. Not just because it looks good, but because it reflects perfectly who I am and who I work with. Believe me: it wasn’t always that way.

Last week, I conducted my first Annual Review. An Annual Review is about taking stock. In this sense, it’s similar to the weekly reviews I do each Sunday. It’s just a more macro view. The purpose of this Annual Review was to celebrate the past 12 months, be honest about where I fell short, and look ahead to the future.

Are you a quitter? For most of us, quitting is synonymous with failure. Knowing when to give something up is one of the hardest things in the world. It’s also one of the most valuable skills we can cultivate. After my freshman year of college, I quit wrestling.

It's time to stop the self-sabotage. A couple of days ago, I came across a program that I knew could help grow my coaching business. It was directly relevant to one of the challenges I was having. It came from a credible source, someone who had already given a lot of value away for free. I knew that moving forward with this program would me help solve my problem. However, the product was expensive. Not so expensive that I literally couldn’t afford it, but expensive enough to make me hesitant.

5 minutes before writing this post, I asked for a 10% discount at Starbucks. I waited in line, went up to the register, and ordered a medium roast coffee. My heart started beating faster. “Anything else?” asked the barista. “Actually, yeah...can I get 10% off on that?” At this point I could literally feel the blood rushing through my body as I spoke. She looked at me for a few seconds, confused. “Sorry, I don’t think I heard you...could you say that one more time?”