As I was busily rearranging the hotel ballroom where my seminar was to be held, a man arrived, marched to the front seat, sat down, folded his arms over his chest and said in a demanding voice, “This better be good!”
I was quite certain that he was about to be disappointed.
During the break at the [...]

Before I started my first business in 1974, I went looking for all the information I could find. I haunted my local library trying to find something that could help me start the kind of business I envisioned: small, at home, creative. The scant offerings on starting a business all assumed that the reader intended [...]

On February 29, 1992, I woke up in my New York hotel room scared to death. I was about to teach Making a Living Without a Job to 125 students at the Learning Annex. Although I’d taught the class dozens of times before and had done so on three previous occasions in NYC, this [...]

The more people who own little businesses of their own, the safer our country will be because…for the people who have a stake in their country and their community are its best citizens. ~ John Hancock

A common trait shared by the successfully self-employed is their willingness to mobilize the resources at hand. You won’t find them stalling, making excuses about not being able to move ahead for lack of funds, equipment, experience. It’s a practice we can all adopt. Here’s an exercise that can be duplicated in all sorts of [...]

 A successful employee talks about going out on her own in Marci Alboher’s A Career in Transition: 5 Questions for Gina Trapani
One of my favorite books of recent times is The Art of Possibility by Ben and Rosamand Zander. I’ve read it several times and keep going back to their brilliant insights. If you haven’t [...]

This week I’ve been reading the galleys for the new Making a Living Without a Job. I came across this story (which you’ve seen if you’ve read the book) and knew it was worth another look.
When you are willing to invest in yourself and your ideas, you have put your money and time into the [...]

Even  if you knew nothing about my sister Nancy, you wouldn’t need the detective skills of Miss Marple to discover her passion. A visit to her charming apartment in Rome has all the clues you’d need. From the terracotta ornaments on the walls and shelves, to the books lining her bookcases, to the etchings on [...]

Anyone who’s visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s masterpiece of a home, has a favorite memory. While the gardens are spectacular and the house filled with clever inventions, I’m partial to Jefferson’s office which was situated so he could roll out of bed and get to work. Of course, in Jefferson’s time, homebased businesses were more common [...]

Here’s an astonishing roundup of 163 ideas on how to be an entrepreneur. It could take the entire weekend just to ponder them all.