A version of this column first appeared on Inc.com on April 7, 2026. It's not easy to talk about this, but I've failed. Many, many times. Not just the big public failures that show up in the press. Small failures. Product failures. Hiring failures. Strategy failures....
There I was, sitting by myself at a Barnes and Noble book signing for nearly two hours. For one hour and fifty-four minutes, not a single person approached me to buy a book. To make matters worse, I just had a little spat with my wife and told...
Depressed, exhausted, starving, sweaty and anxious. That's how I was feeling as I walked towards a big investor pitch meeting on a muggy day in June of 2013. I had had the WORST day so far - I had woken up early to take a train from...
The other day, I had an issue with my television service. As a social media author and CEO, I did the first thing that comes natural: I tweeted, and posted a complaint on the company's Facebook page. To their credit, the company responded right away,...
Last week, Business Insider CTO Pax Dickinson was fired after gossip tech blog Valleywag reported his homophobic, racist, misogynistic tweets he'd been tweeting for years. His tweets included phrases such as: - "In The Passion Of The Christ 2, Jesus gets raped by a pack of ni--ers....
"Leave me alone!" I said it to my boss at Radio Disney many years ago. I was a young, very high-performing salesperson, and he was my sales manager. Even though I was generating huge sales numbers, I was often late to work, or meetings, and every...
I sat in traffic in Boston, Massachusetts one cold fall morning 16 years ago, cursing myself, cursing the cars around me, and cursing the world. I had prepared so much for the job interview at the prestigious firm I was driving to – done research,...
We tend to either glorify or oversimplify the life of the entrepreneur. We've all heard the stories of entrepreneurs slaving away in their basements, garages or dorm rooms until they hit the jackpot and build their fortunes. But for many entrepreneurs, it's more of a...
“Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.” - George Arliss Last month, I keynoted an entrepreneurship conference in Monterrey, Mexico in front of 3,000 people. Today, I just spoke in front of 3. No,...
In the third chapter of his new book, Smartcuts, author Shane Snow discusses the use of “The F Word” in business. No, it’s not that F word. The word he’s talking about is “failure.” Starting anything, especially a business, is risky. Nobody ever succeeded without risking...