Thanks, Denise. As I mentioned in the post, I've been poking at these issues and researching on my own for a while and it felt like time to share some of what I've been learning. But as you also know, I hopped into AI Success Club as soon as I heard you were launching it. There's so much to learn and it's evolving so fast that I think every content creator should be getting all the help they can. For everyone reading this, here's my affiliate link to join us: https://odl2023--denisewakeman.thrivecart.com/ai-success-club/ The Founding Member price ends on Monday night (Feb 20, 2023), so hurry! But if you're reading this after that date, the new price will still be a great deal for enormous value and the program is a rolling entry with events recorded. So hop on board and don't miss out!

Hmmm, a webinar? Or maybe a YouTube how-to video? Could be useful in either format. Thanks for your comment and suggestion!

Thanks for the tip on the Adler book. I’ll look for it. The first box should arrive here today and I’m hoping it’s early enough that I can get yours out, but if you want to get started reading, please download the free preview pages. They include the Preface: on Deep Reading (and “MWe”), with discussion of books like Deep Reading: Teaching Reading in the Writing Classroom and What Readers Really Do: Teaching the Process of Meaning Making that I think you’ll find useful, too. [Originally posted July 9, 2019]

Great question on the older sibling as readers, Yvonne! My researcher instinct from the old days in law libraries is screaming that’s been asked and written about before, but regardless, it deserves looking into for new perspectives. Maybe a project for the two of us? I was the older sibling and you’ve been oldest, youngest, and in the middle! [Originally posted July 9, 2019]

Thanks, Steve! Glad you found it useful. Great observation about the different kinds of learning and how they go on (or should) all our lives. Though trial-and-error certainly has the downside of taking longer and often being more expensive, it is by definition learning-by-doing. As such, I think it also carries a likelihood of providing high value and lasting knowledge. So I hope you’ll continue sharing! You might also like the post The Entrepreneur’s Apprentice: Creating Your Business Owner’s Learning Environment. [Originally posted Oct 24, 2017]

Hi Nina, and thanks for that update and tip on cross-selling. I think many people misunderstand or overlook how much a related book (or other content, like a guest-post or podcast interview where they “give away” valuable ideas) can drive/revive sales of your existing stuff. To those agents and publishers you mention, really?!?! Are they going to close all the libraries, too? There are too many examples of authors succeeding by using blogs to gain exposure and audience for their work prior to packaging their content into a book to pay attention to that mindset. Let the author take care of that part of marketing and decide how many words should be “previously published.” Or just wait to bid on the rights after the author self-publishes to that eager audience. [Originally posted Aug 25, 2017]

Okay, following your instructions from Facebook to come share a reinvention story. You know most of mine. And like you, I've reinvented myself over and over. But for your readers I'll go back to a couple of years before we met, to the reinvention that probably made our meeting possible. Looking back, I'd been dissatisfied with many aspects of my career for at least a few years. Appellate lawyer, outwardly successful, but also a combination of bored, detached, and occasionally downright miserable with parts of that role. The reinvention actually started in the 90s, when I resigned my partnership in the law firm, but continued practicing law as "of counsel" to the firm -- a kind of fancy term for contract work. Though I did not yet think of myself this way, I had become a solopreneur. Again in hindsight, much of the dissatisfaction remained. As the 90s wore on and the internet grew in importance, I kept weaving more and more of the new technology into the way I worked. In 2001, on the return flight from a business trip to the ABA Tech Show, it all hit the fan and I made the decision to leave law practice and start my own consultancy for helping lawyers (woefully behind in adopting technology) join the new millennium. Easier decided than achieved, I quickly learned! As our later publishing client, Lee Thayer, likes to say, "You can't confer a benefit on an unwilling recipient." Anyway, I found my way into the Rochester Professional Consultants Network, to grow my skills. And there I found you. Turning my "failure" as a legal technology consultant into the wonderful partnership-in-all-things we share and the sequence of reinventions that I marvel at, even as we continue evolving. Thank you for prompting me to revisit this wondrous time!

Thanks, Mary. Yes, the recent science showing that brain plasticity continues throughout our lives is very encouraging to folks of our vintage! ;-D Your personal experience with inter-generational teamwork provides a useful case study, matching what Yvonne and I found in working with Chloe while building our business. Now we've passed that one on into her capable hands and are on to our next. She shakes her head each time we start something new, but I know it also gives her a glimpse of possible future(s). Just getting started! Tom

Hi Katie, Thanks for chiming in and for emphasizing the beauty -- and beautiful possibilities in striving for more diverse collaborative teams. It's important to hear that younger business owners like you see it, too! Tom

Hey Yvonne, I think you're onto something with your observation about older employees leaving larger organizations, not for traditional retirement, but to start their own businesses. The tragedy for the companies they're leaving goes far beyond losing their work-specific knowledge. Echoing your point about bringing our true selves to our work, the article on Google's Project Aristotle notes the data-driven lesson Google learned about creating the psychological safety that makes work teams more successful: "No one wants to leave part of their personality and inner life at home. But to be fully present at work ... we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us ... to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can't be focused just on efficiency." It's the older workers' higher capacity for positivity, risk tolerance, resilience in the face of negative emotions, and generally growing happiness that both fuels their entrepreneurial spirit and constitutes the greatest loss for the organizations that marginalize them and let them leave.

Too cool, Andy. Thanks! I'm going to play with this and I'll let you know how it goes. I can see all sorts of possibities for the CSS you've shared ... so thanks again. BTW, that was me (Tom Collins, Yvonne's partner-in-all-things) signed into one of our other accounts that's in her name, who asked the question. Yvonne was baffled by the emails notifying her you'd responded to "her" question! ;-D