What is it about some people? You know, those amazingly charismatic ones who just have that something special about them. We all know them, many of us hope to be them, and that is exactly what Vanessa Van Edwards studies, teaches and writes about: the combination of warmth and competence that makes us like people and how we can craft our own personal formula for charisma. 

Do you fret about why your own work never seems to be as good as what you read, watch, or listen to? Today’s episode is an important reminder for all of us: Don’t compare your first draft to someone else’s finished product.

Rarely is a finished product created by a single genius working alone. Far more often, great work comes from collective effort, and our rough drafts are just the first tiny chip away at what ultimately becomes a finished carving.

“If you don’t have a system…you are the system.” That’s just one of Allan’s brilliant gems from this conversation on creating a “marketing oil well” for your business. Listen in for the 5-minute tip that changed my business life, and tons of other juicy tips and ideas to make your business easier and more profitable.

Every interaction with your customers offers an opportunity to be warm and welcoming. It's also easy to make them feel alienated or put off. Where in your business are you being unintentionally grumpy?

For founders who value freedom, one question looms large: How do you keep overhead low while still generating abundant revenue? That’s what Elaine Pofeldt, self-professed “data nerd” is sharing with us today based on her new book, Tiny Business, Big Money: Strategies for Creating a High-Revenue Microbusiness.

Are you working in tasks or on templates? For anything you repeat, take a little time up-front to design a process that will save you time for future sessions.

How do you decide what to delegate, and what to keep doing yourself? What are the best ways to build flexibility into our businesses for ensuring we have plenty of free time for family and creativity?

When is good enough good enough? When is it important to stick to a creative vision, down to every last meticulous detail? Hitting publish means welcoming praise and criticism, and today I’m sharing the nerve-wracking feeling leading up to both, as well as an audio adventure to the book’s unboxing at the Rochester Warehouse!

What if you turned this into a content batching template, and tackled all creative tasks in a Monday sprint every week? That's the experiment I've been running that I share more about in this episode . . . of course, created during my own Made-By-Monday sprint :)

Mark Twain once said, “Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Brian Tracy adapted this for his productivity book, Eat That Frog! to say, "If you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first," and "If you have to eat any frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long.”

What's the difference between a lifestyle boutique and one that is built to scale and sell? Between a commoditized "body shop" and a unique boutique? There are approximately 1.47 million firms in professional services (industry code NAICS 54). Four thousand have reached scale, with more than 250 employees.

As my dad (an architect) always reminded me when I was growing up, clients often want it all — quality, speed, and the best prices. The reality? Pick two. It's nearly impossible to optimize for all at once, so what do you want to be known for as a business?

What is the difference between uniqueness, talent, and onlyness? Nilofer Merchant is here to help us figure out how the room changes when we walk in, how to turn feeling othered or overworked into opportunities to help ourselves and everyone around us shine, and the powerful question that shifted how she leads others.

Today's episode builds on 56: Systems vs. Goals. Now let's talk about how to build smarter systems by looking for measurable loops in your business, then split testing with small experiments. For some of you, this is automatic and already happening, especially if you're familiar with the startup space or the principles of growth hacking. For others, it will be a helpful reminder for you and your team about how to simplify and systematize making improvements in your business.

Writing a book can be a lonely, scary, confusing business...and that's when it's going well. When it's going badly, it's much worse than all of that. In this episode for MBS’ podcast, we share 2 pages of his new book, How to Begin: Start Something That Matters.

Welcome Deep Questions with Cal Newport listeners! I had so much fun recording the "Help me do less!" episode — check it out here if you haven't already :)

Today I'm sharing an easy technique (and some of my favorite tools) for claiming your free time now for the year ahead, before everyone else haphazardly (even if unintentionally) fills in the cracks with scattershot scheduling.

Early reviews are in! Kirkus calls Free Time, "An entertaining, instructive reading experience . . . an invigorating and informative time-management manual." In perfect timing, I read this just before recording today's episode: "All three parts of the book are well written, applicable, and actionable. Stylistically, Blake is a master of alliteration and rhyming; she’s also adept at employing numbered and bulleted lists."

What gets in the way of deep, intentional focus? Hint: the phone sitting right at your desk is designed for distraction and shallow work—at a primal level. Jake and his team at Caveday are taking a stand for social connection while carving dedicated time for deep work.

Jon Kabat Zinn says, "Overwhelm means life is unfolding at a rate that neither my psyche or my nervous system can handle.” Sometimes life (and work) is like a yummy buffet: it all looks delicious, but our eyes are bigger than our stomach. Today I'm sharing a few reasons our perceived capacity can be misaligned with our actual capacity: invisible roles, poor role fit, taking on new exciting projects without first cutting back elsewhere, and broader contextual seasons and collective influences.