I grew up in Texas, where summers were hot, humid, and relentless. Once school let out, summer break meant three months of unstructured and unsupervised days, spent mostly indoors to escape the heat. My parents worked all day and couldn’t afford camps or daycare, so my older brother and I were left ...

As we close out the year, I’ve been thinking about the pressure to measure progress in tidy increments. One year to the next, one quarter to another. As if growth were supposed to be linear and compounding, like interest in a bank account. That might be the game in corporate environments, where numb...

A couple of months ago I pitched a concept for a major opportunity. I knew it was a long shot, but that didn’t stop me from pouring myself into it. The proposal reflected where I am creatively right now—sharp, confident, and fully committed. Winning the pitch didn’t feel like a vague possibility. I ...

I am a student of entrepreneurship. For many years I studied the founders I thought I was supposed to become. The icons, disruptors, the ones who built billion-dollar companies by outworking, outsmarting, and outlasting everyone around them. I read their biographies, studied their habits, and copied...

Many years ago, in what feels like a completely different life, I worked in medical sales. My friends had launched a startup while I was in business school, and it felt like the perfect chance to apply everything I was learning in real time.

It was old-school, traditional sales. No email campaigns,...

I’ve spent years trying to build and maintain momentum as an artist. Most of my projects require complete dedication and working around the clock for months at a time. The stakes are high and the deadlines are tight. Each project brings visibility to large audiences where the environment is intense,...

Looking back over the course of my career, timing has often felt like it was working against me. One of my first careers was in real estate, and once I was doing enough business to become an equity partner in my company, the mortgage crisis hit. In 2019 I started my own business to design experience...

There was a time when I held my ideas too tightly. I worried that if I shared them too soon they might be judged or dismissed, or worse, that I might run out of new ones altogether. It felt safer to wait, refine, and guard them closely until I was sure they were ready. 

Over time I realized that th...

We often talk about leadership as a responsibility, but rarely as a form of creative expression. For business owners, it’s both.

Early in my career, I thought being an artist meant doing everything myself: the concept development, the design work, the fabrication, even the photography and documenta...

The idea of following your passion sounds nice, but I don’t really subscribe to it. Passion isn’t something people are simply born with. It’s developed over time through curiosity and experience.

Think about the passions you discovered as a child. For me, it was drawing. I wasn’t just interested in...

As an artist, I know none of my ideas are truly original. Everything I create is shaped by what I’ve seen, heard, and experienced in the world. What makes my work unique is not the materials or the techniques, it’s my personal experiences and the story I tell through them.

Rick Rubin, in his book T...

I used to think that doing multiple things at once meant I was being productive. Like many people, I measured my output by how much I could juggle in a day. I’d brush my teeth while checking email, walk my dog while listening to an audiobook, eat lunch while watching YouTube tutorials on how to fix ...