A FAST CAR WON’T GET YOU THERE A few years ago my wife and I were driving northbound on LA’s infamous 405 freeway, me in the passenger seat, while she was at the helm. She’s an aggressive driver, constantly changing lanes to get ahead. During one of these maneuvers I…

I was recently watching a previously recorded video call with a well known entrepreneur who has a vast social media following and influence. During the call he was asked how he came up with content ideas. …

The British explorer, writer, scholar and diplomat Richard Francis Burton, once said (or wrote): “Make of your mind an empire.” Burton was one of the first Europeans to explore regions of Africa. A great adventurer and autodidact, he dropped out of university, yet wrote many books, including translations of the…

Here’s the thing: I’ve always had trouble focusing. In school, in sport, in life. It’s popular these days to allot some overarching pathology to this issue. Terms like ADHD are thrown around as freely as beer at a football game. Regardless of the label, for me, it comes down to…

If you’re still trying to understand what all this talk of personal branding is, allow me offer some helpful insights as I’ve spent thousands of dollars and a couple of years now learning and parsing through it. First of all, let’s simplify the term “brand.” In the past, a brand…

My wife has had a sort of battle cry for many years now. When I hear her interact with people, this battle cry — maybe ethos is a better word — often comes up. It’s proposed in the form of a question: So, what’s your daily practice? When someone has…

And so came the revolution. It was 1979. I was a kid. This was Tehran, Iran. For every Iranian, 1979 is an important year, to say the least. …

Writing, like any form of technology is a tool, ideologically neutral. That of course does not mean it cannot be used for idealogical ends; it surely can. It can also be used for commercial ends. The meaning, the use of the tool is up to you, the writer. Writing develops…

In the late 1980’s my mother was sent off to Istanbul, Turkey to help rescue my cousins, who for the purposes of this story I’ll call Pedram and Leila, while my father and I stayed in Toronto. I was around ten or eleven years old. This being Iran post Islamic…