“One day that autumn, a staff sergeant who had written some short stories knocked on the door of Hemingway’s hotel room. He had never met Hemingway and didn’t how he’d be received. But he was ushered in and given a drink. Hemingway had seen one of his published stories, asked to see another, liked it, […]

   My Advice if You’re a Leader Leadership = Energy + Direction Direction = Vision + Courage Therefore, leaders are people of Energy, Vision, and Courage. If you are a person of energy, vision, and courage: (1.) I have noticed that people like you often become surrounded by wanderers who are looking for a leader. […]

To Set the Record Straight:The guys who “don’t give a damn about any trumpet-playin’ band” in Sultans of Swing (1978) were “dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles,” an affliction from which the wizard and I have never suffered. Having never been thus attired at any time in our lives, we are […]

“I was in Iraq 05-06 with the United States Army. And after a long day of fighting we settled down with some Iraqi soldiers for a few hours. One of the Iraqi soldiers asked me and few other US soldiers if we liked this song. Here I was thousands of miles from home in a […]

  “Then a crowd a young boys they’re foolin’ around in the corner,Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles,They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playin’ band.It ain’t what they call Rock and Roll.”– Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing

“If you say that there are elephants flying in the sky, people are not going to believe you. But if you say that there are four hundred and twenty-five elephants flying in the sky, people will probably believe you. One Hundred Years of Solitude is full of that sort of thing.” – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Pickin’ Up RocksWoody Justice is the friend the wizard wrote about in today’s memo. – Indy Does It Seem Cold in Here? Are You On the Ball?

Riding Rockets & Shooting Stars Riding this rocket toward my 67th birthday, memories of my life flicker in the twilight of my mind like shooting stars in the night. My gaze lingers on a long-ago day when I began writing ads for a jeweler. I saw the cover of a book that said, “Follow Your […]

The brand of Tommy Cool, by Matthew Burns with Ryan Chute(Notice how the radio ads don’t sound like ads. In just 3 minutes, you feel like you know Tommy Cool.) When your logo, your color palette, and your visual style guide work together to reinforce your story and your personality – as they do for […]

“Tell me, what’s troubling you?” “Profits are down. Our employees are unhappy. And I don’t know where I should be going.” The client is not a person, but the therapist is real. Dr. Nikki Blacksmith uses data analysis to help companies diagnose the business personality traits that are preventing them from achieving their goals.  Dr. […]

Michele Miller        Dennis Collins        Leah Bumphrey         Vi Wickam

Twenty-four hours a day, the north star – Polaris – hovers just above the hilt of this sword when you are standing on the Laughlin Stone in the causeway of the tower at Wizard Academy. You should see it sometime. – Indy Beagle

“Average people are afraid of looking stupid. This is what holds them back. It is only by attempting the ridiculous that we can accomplish the miraculous.” – Roy H. Williams

“As to the quality of the beer we cannot testify – perhaps a taste of it today would leave us sadder Budweiser – but when it came to perfumery, the monks were not inexpert.” “Their quarreling chewed through  the curtains, pierced the casements, and rattled over the cobblestones outside. How strange it must have sounded, […]

      “No one wants to be a leader anymore. Everyone wants to be a commentator. You want to know how to identify a leader? Just look for the person who’s making the decisions.”– Manley Miller, New Orleans

You are inside your business, looking out. The customer is outside your business, looking in. Your inside-out perspective makes you blind in one eye. Confirmation bias makes you blind in the other eye. You cannot see yourself the way your customer sees you. You imagine how they see you based on your mission statement, your […]

株式会社金剛組 Kabushiki Gaisha Kongō Gumi is a Japanese construction company founded in 578 A.D., making it the world’s oldest documented company. The company mainly works on the design, construction, restoration, and repair of shrines, temples, castles, and cultural heritage buildings.

She served as an FTC Commissioner and as staff director of Ronald Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. Her name is Margot Machol Bisnow. In her post-government career, Margot is guiding parents on how to grow their children into successful business owners. In essence, Margo is an evangelist for entrepreneurism. Although she focuses on kids, teens, […]

“We are suspended in that eternal moment between the past and the future.”– RHW, July 5, 2022 “It seems to me that most animals have this superb economy of motion. The instinctual notion of how much energy to expend, the ability to do a thing thoughtlessly and do it right, is a quality that I […]

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“Christianity is not a religion. Christianity is the proclamation of the end of religion, not of a new religion, or even of the best of all religions.” “If the cross is the sign of anything, it’s the sign that God has gone out of the religion business and solved all of the world’s problems without […]

   

    “The thing about learning the correct pronunciation of a word l’ve been saying wrong for 30 years is that instead of pronouncing it correctly moving forward, I will simply never say it again. Nothing is macabre or hyperbolic. Segues are transitions. The river in London has no name.”– Alix E. Harrow

Your business needs three strategies because your business has an inside and an outside and an engine. This is why every successful company has a Mother and a Trumpet and a CEO. The CEO choses a destination and builds a machine to take us there.The Mother looks inward to the people in the company. The […]

Below is the story behind the story.

Five hundred years ago, the Ottoman poet Latifi said each of the books in his library was, “a true and loving friend who drives away all cares.” What makes a library a reflection of its owner is not merely the choice of the titles themselves, but the mesh of associations implied in the choice… A […]

  Dr. Laura Gabayan is an emergency medicine doctor and associate professor at the UCLA School of Medicine, and for many years she has conducted a scientific study of wisdom, including how to define it and cultivate it. Dr. G., as she is known, recently published her findings and is sharing them today with roving […]

“The house has grown into a knowledgeable witness. It has been party to early seductions, it has watched homework being written, it has observed swaddled babies freshly arrived from hospital, it has been surprised in the middle of the night by whispered conferences in the kitchen. It has experienced winter evenings when its windows were […]

“My town had grown and changed and my friend along with it. Now returning, as changed to my friend as my town was to me, I distorted his picture, muddied his memory. When I went away I had died, and so became fixed and unchangeable. My return caused only confusion and uneasiness. Although they could […]

“The hunter who wanders through these lands sees sights which ever afterward remain fixed in his mind…. Apart from this, yet mingled with it, is the strong attraction of the silent places, of the large tropic moons, and the splendor of the new stars; where the wanderer sees the awful glory of sunrise and sunset […]

MICHELE: Today’s presentation of “WTF is THAT?” from granddaughter Kaitlyn’s backyard in Boulder.  INDY: The only thing that’s missing is Goldilocks. Did the bears eat her? MICHELE: It’s Boulder, so if she was lactose-free and had no GMO’s, I’m sure they did.

The worst technology of the 21st century: QR code menus at restaurants. The best definition of technology: The ability to do more with less. Based off this definition, QR code menus at restaurants might be the worst technology ever made. QR code menus do the opposite of technology: They do less with more. You have […]

“You can sway a thousand men by appealing to their prejudices quicker than you can convince one man by logic.” – Robert A. Heinlein

  What can business owners learn from America’s Michelin Star and James Beard award-winning chefs? David Page, creator of the mega-hit Food Network show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, has interviewed numerous world-class chefs including Dan Barber, Nancy Silverton, Jonathan Waxman, and Michael Stern for his new podcast that launches on August 27th. David says these culinary […]

      “Mediocrity comes from having perfectly implemented the tried and true, traditional wisdom.”– The Wizard of Ads

    “To those devoid of imagination, a blank place on the map is a useless waste; to others, the most valuable part.” – Aldo Leopold

You come fromDust. You will return toDust. That’s why I don’tDust. It might be someoneI Know. Speaking of dust, here is that grand ballad of existential angst from 1978 – Indy Beagle

A Whiter Shade Of Pale” becomes utterly mesmerizing the moment Matthew Fisher’s Hammond organ pierces the air. Procol Harum’s singer Gary Brooker was responsible for writing the music, although Fisher’s organ part was so prominent that he also eventually received a songwriting credit after a protracted court battle. Keith Reid, who served as the band’s […]

  Becoming a children’s book publisher is not “sugar and spice and everything nice.” It is one of the toughest journeys an entrepreneur can take. When Georgia Lininger launched her children’s book imprint in January 2020, she quickly discovered that success was going to require more from her than sweet stories and colorful illustrations. Join […]

Under the wide and starry skyDig the grave and let me lieGlad did I live and gladly dieAnd I laid me down with a willThis be the verse you grave for meHere he lies where he longed to beHome is the sailor home from the seaAnd the hunter home from the hill

Robert Louis Stevenson on the island of Samoa where he died at the age of 44 from a lifelong lung deficiency. The woman with the necklace is his wife, Fanny. This photo was taken shortly before he died.

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The Tiny Tribe thanks Mike and Cathy Fleck for sending this to our attention.

Wear it, give it away, use it to create an act of kindness. Studies have shown that Kindness actually creates a chemical reaction resulting in reduced anxiety, wellbeing, & joy. It is a wonderful solution to bullying, discrimination, hatred, & fear. The pin is just an opportunity for us to shift the world on it’s […]

Brad Pitt, Ron Howard, and Me I never write click-bait headlines, but I wrote this one just to prove I can. Brad shines from Shawnee, Ron comes from Duncan, and I bailed from Broken Arrow. We’re all Okla-Homeboys. Now that my click-bait headline has done its job and convinced you to keep reading all the […]

Angie Hyche is a clutter expert. Whether it is a storage room, garage, basement, self-storage unit, or your email inbox, Angie knows how to help you sort your possessions and your calendar. Angie is a professional organizer, helping a wide array of organizations and individuals clean up the chaos in their lives. She is also the author of […]

    “When the first baby laughed for the first time, its laugh broke into a thousand pieces, and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.”― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

    While at LSU long ago, my friend Roy Laughlin went to an Indian reservation with his roommate who was 100% American Indian. Roy thought they were celebrating a baby’s first birthday — came to find out they were celebrating his first laugh — this is when they believe a child becomes fully human. […]

Artist: Sebastião Salgado (Brazilian, born 1944) Title: Serra Pelada, Brazil, 1986 Medium: Silver gelatin print Edition: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm.)9,500 USD 16 x 20 in. (40.6 x 50.8 cm.)11,000 USD 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61 cm.)13,000 USD 24 x 35 in. (61 x 88.9 cm.)22,000 USD

[Video at the bottom of this page.]Good evening. My name is Fredrik Backman. I’m here tonight because my agent said that this would be good for my career. She said I need to learn how to speak in front of people. ‘It’ll be fun,’ she said. So I told her that I write books. I […]