Like Rick Steves, when I have to fill in the occupation line on a form, I write, “teacher.” Even though I do other things, I’ve always thought of myself that way. I even have credentials to prove it, although the things I teach have nothing to do with the diploma I earned.
In the past decade [...]

A reader sent me a message today asking if I’d write about dealing with—and I quote— the heartbreak of starting a business. Would I!  And I’d start by dumping the word heartbreak. Let’s tone it down a bit and call it by its proper name, disappointment. There’s a subtle, but important difference there. Heartbreak stops [...]

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 [...]

The other day one of my Twitter friends posted a message that said, “Listening to two 50-year-old men complaining about their boss Never want that to be me.” I’ve eavesdropped on those kinds of conversations myself and am always reminded that such grumbling would never happen in a chat with my joyfully jobless friends. 
It’s not [...]

1. Do not take advice from uninformed sources.
2. Do not confuse an expense with an investment.
3. What I don’t know can be learned…or hired.
4. Personal growth is a daily discipline.
5. Do not confuse a project with a dream.
6. Do not declare failure just because you’ve run out of patience.
7. There’s a difference between risk and [...]

Here in Las Vegas, we post the odds in our casinos. They are not in your favor. That does not seem to dissuade people from attempting to beat them, of course.
I learned about  more favorable odds from my sister Margaret. Years ago, I was fretting about something–earthquakes or tornadoes, perhaps–and she said, “Barbara, don’t you [...]