Category: A Better World

No task in my life has defined me more than that of being a good father. Help change the world by empowering other fathers.

The Voice of Compassion

My best friend’s wife died recently. Suddenly. Nothing can explain a tragedy like this. But in the midst of bottomless grief and sorrow, I learned something important about voice. No words sufficed. Nothing I or anyone could say really mattered. Not in a situation like this. My words didn't even...

How the Voice of Emma González Saved me

I saw the news and I felt numb. Yet another cruel shooting in my home country of America... in sunny Florida even. Yet another senseless slaughter of innocent children. And what followed was just as disgusting. Instant denial and deflection from spineless right-wing politicians. I'd lost hope. Maybe there is...

Learn from the Speakers You Admire

I just listened to an old speech by Martin Luther King Jr. from April 4th, 1967 at the Riverside Church in New York City. It wasn’t his most famous speech, but perhaps one of his most underrated. In this speech he changed his course and for the first time spoke out...

What’s Wrong with Positive Thinking?

Whenever I talk so enthusiastically about entrepreneurship, a few people really feel the need to correct me. They say that positive thinking is naïve, oversimplified and at best just a placebo. The serious pessimists love to point out that nothing so simple as positive thinking can be true. (more…)

Off The Beaten Path

Over the last year I have been working on a project funded by the European Investment Bank to help young entrepreneurs in the occupied territories in Palestine. The project has been an amazing learning experience for me. Sometimes you have to move outside your comfort zone and beyond your normal...

Spiderman’s Vulnerability

Whether you are standing onstage in an auditorium speaking to an audience of 1000 or meeting a new client for the very first time, you will not succeed in influencing others unless you are able to connect with them first. Connection is absolutely essential to communication, especially if the message...

A Three Minute Course in LEADERSHIP

Whether you are creating a business or creating an amazing life, you can benefit from thinking like an entrepreneur and by taking leadership. Unfortunately, some of the most fundamental assumptions that we make about leadership may be wrong or over-glorified.  A leader is just a lonely nutcase without followers. The...

Why Do Dyslexics Make Great Entrepreneurs?

I spend a lot of time being curious about what makes some people great entrepreneurs. I recently found an article in BusinessWeek that discusses the fact that an abnormally high percentage of entrepreneurs are dyslexics. They raised the question - Does the struggle that is required to overcome dyslexia prepare...

Kill the Cow

What will Norway live from when the North Sea oil wells run dry? I believe that some answers lie in empowering young entrepreneurs. The following cow story made me think about the fact that sometimes we get very creative when we are forced to do so. What are your cows?...

If there is no struggle, then there is no progress

"If there is no struggle, then there is no progress" The title of this blog is a quote from Fredrick Douglass. He was born a slave in America in 1818. After two failed attempts to flee from a brutal slave owner, he finally succeeded in escaping to freedom and went...