Gary Miller is a highly successful insurance professional running a third-generation family firm in Spring House, Pennsylvania. He didn’t want a book to drive business—he had all the business he could handle—but instead, he wanted to get a passion project across. He wanted to teach teenagers how to assess risk. Teenagers, Gary believes, minimize risks because their brains aren’t fully formed, and, well, they are teenagers, so they do stupid, reckless things. Mostly, they get away with those insane choices. Sometimes, however, they don’t. Conversely, Gary points out, teens can be overly risk-averse and miss out on opportunities for growth or happiness. Maybe they won’t try out for the school play or the football team or ask that girl or boy to prom. And then they have to live with the disappointment and frustration over “what could have been.” Measuring risk is what Gary, and his father and grandfather, spent…

I want you to be really careful if you are going to put serious money into a book marketing campaign. There are some awesome book marketing people out there. I know who they are, so drop me an email, and I will let you know who is great, depending on what you are trying to accomplish. The most important thing I can say about spending money on book marketing is proceed with caution. There is more disappointment around book marketing than practically any other aspect of getting a book done. Some of it is just plain silly. If you spend $10 on book marketing, you will not be sitting next to Oprah next Tuesday on a special. Let’s get real. But it is more than that. As I say elsewhere in these pages, one of the hardest things to do in the world is sell copies of your book to…

Humans are wired to love stories, because the stories we tell ourselves explain life to us and make us feel safe. This has been true ever since man sat around the campfire after a long day’s hunt, interpreting experiences and remembering the days of old. Today, instead of sitting around a fire, we stare into screens, but it is the same thing. We are looking for people to tell stories that help us make sense of the world around us. Today, we call these stories “news” or “movies” or “shows.” At the end of the day, stories are how humans connect with others and make the world safe. So, it is not surprising that storytellers have important roles to play in society today, including in the business world. Stories are sticky. They remain in our minds long after facts and figures fade. Or, as I was advised at the beginning…

The hardest clients to satisfy are those who have been burned by a prior writer. Not only did they lose trust in the writer they had hired, but they had also lost trust in the whole concept of bringing someone in to work with them on a book. Writers disappoint their clients in many ways. Some just don’t show up. They take the upfront fee and then good luck getting them to respond to an email or text. Then you have the ones who do show up but do a lousy job. The client is stuck. The agreement may allow for refunds in the event of client dissatisfaction, but a lot of the time, writers just simply don’t have the money to payback. It is a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence for writers who are not established or who don’t have good financial skills. And if the client wants to sue them,…

I was sitting outside in the sunshine at a trendy restaurant on Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles interviewing the executive producer on Shark Tank, which was in the middle of its second season, for a client’s book. He was telling me about one amazing entrepreneur after the next who had been on the show. I have to admit that I felt somewhat “less than” as I listened to his tales of Congressional aides creating barbeque sauce, a woman who invented a self-cleaning litter box for cats, and so on. What didI do for a living? Nothing that interesting. “Let me ask you a question,” said the executive producer, a man named Brien Meagher. “Have you ever thought about appearing on our show?” I looked over at my assistant, who was sitting in and listening, to make sure I had heard him correctly. His question knocked me speechless. “But there’s nothing…

Lives have turning points, or “hinges,” as some people say. For me, two such turning points happened within weeks, and as a result, I had a sense of purpose and the skills I would need to live that purpose. Although I certainly didn’t understand that at the time. As my sophomore year at Amherst College was ending, I was invited to the Classics Department’s annual year-end party. It was the 1970s, so there were no rules. And classicists, at least at Amherst, had a reputation for out drinking every other department on campus. I had never tried shots of tequila, lime, and salt before. I don’t think I felt the first eight or nine. The tenth or eleventh hit home, though, and by the twelfth or fourteenth—if you can remember how many you had, you didn’t have that many—I actually silenced the entire room and swore that since they were…

In Viktor Frankl’s classic work Man’s Search for Meaning, he says that his fellow prisoners in the Auschwitz death camp were more likely to survive not because they were young and strong but because they had something to live for, something that gave meaning to their lives. Someone they loved and hoped to see again. Compelling work. Religious faith. At Auschwitz, meaning was often the difference between death and life. And the same rule applies in our world. Meaning changes everything. I was always a huge Zig Ziglar fan. Zig, as he called himself, was a premier motivator, sales trainer, and inspiring individual of his time. As I recount elsewhere in these pages, it was my incredible privilege to edit his last book. Zig loved to tell the story of an individual who passed three workers digging a ditch. He asked each of them what they were doing. “I’m digging…

It’s not a new question. In The Canterbury Tales, written more than 600 years ago, Chaucer asks, “What is life? What does man ask to have?” An even older quote from a prayer that goes back more than 2,000 years puts it this way: “What are we? What is our life? What is our lovingkindness? What is our righteousness? What saves us? What is our strength? What is our power?” Human beings have been meaning-seekers and makers since the dawn of time. We have sought to understand our place in the cosmos, our purpose, responsibilities, and destiny ever since our ancestors first gathered around the fire to tell stories. Humans find meaning in a wide variety of domains, including from love to war, service to self-centeredness, and competition to cooperation. While we are busy marrying, raising children, and launching our careers, we don’t always have time or focus to devote…