Good Works Start Somewhere

Dreams Don't Die From Failure. They Die From This. Most dreams don’t die because we don’t know how to succeed. They die because we don’t know how to fail. How would we? It’s not something that’s taught. And failure certainly isn’t praised. In class. In sports. In our careers. At best, we may have been taught to grit our teeth and push through the failure. But even in that scenario, the implication is the same: failure is to be avoided. A lucky few didn’t have that upbringing. Every week...

Before The Dream, There Was Courage Nearly a decade before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream with 250,000 souls, he was shuddering alone at his kitchen table. It was midnight in January 1956, and someone had just left a haunting message. “If you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.” This wasn’t his first death threat, but Dr. King sensed this one was different. So, the son of a pastor and a graduate from seminary school...

Welcome to the Jungle Running after your dreams has never felt like a stroll in a “museum of passion projects.” It’s more like gasping for air as you recognize that you’re buried underneath a canopy of creations. Museums carefully curate their selections. Patient onlookers can find clues on plaques next to the presentations. But in this reality, everything competes for light. And even though the colorful displays can invite us to join their world, the secrets to their success are kept...

This Is My Most Recommended Book of 2025 (Plus 4 Other Favorites) If you’re looking for a stocking-stuffer—or a few books to move higher on your Goodreads—here are the five that stayed with me most this year. 1. The Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene I haven’t been able to shut up about this one. It’s now one of my favorite books of all time—comfortably landing in my top 5. If David Senra’s Founders podcast is “church for entrepreneurs,” then The Laws of Human Nature is the first five books...

Picking Up Your Favorite Puzzle Hi Dreamers, It’s been a minute. I’m sorry for the hiatus. But for the last few months, I expended every ounce of my creative energy into the hardest thing I’ve ever done: writing a movie script. The project is a long way from seeing the big screen—if it ever does. But irrespective of the positive feedback the script has received so far, it’s the proudest thing I’ve done professionally. You get a lot more questions right when you discover what problems you like...

Be Who You Are - Flaws and All I love how dynamic we all are. Our depth, our idiosyncrasies. At the end of the day, we are all just walking contradictions. But that’s a feature, and not a flaw. The numbers guy who loves to paint. The sweetheart who’s perfected her roundhouse kick in karate. Our opposites don’t merely round us out, but they often reveal the hidden source of our strength. These blended curiosities may not make sense to most—they may barely make sense to you—but they were never...

Be Who You Are - Flaws and All I love how dynamic we all are. Our depth, our idiosyncrasies. At the end of the day, we are all just walking contradictions. But that’s a feature, and not a flaw. The numbers guy who loves to paint. The sweetheart who’s perfected her roundhouse kick in karate. Our opposites don’t merely round us out, but they often reveal the hidden source of our strength. These blended curiosities may not make sense to most—they may barely make sense to you—but they were never...

The Hidden Distraction That Derails Dreams (It's Not What You Think) One sure way to fail on your path to achieving your dreams is prioritizing your distractions. For some of us, it’s social media. For others of us, it’s TV. But the scariest distraction—the one that can destroy your confidence or send you in the wrong direction for decades—is often wrapped in a box with a bow on top. Because feedback is a gift until it becomes a distraction. Take Walt Disney, for example: he was dubbed the...

Good Works Start Now When do you know it’s the right time to take a leap of faith? Maybe you’re supposed to jump when you catch the right break. “Life can be understood as a series of opportunities that are put before you, and they’re time-limited.” This is the fundamental principle Eric Schmidt would share with anyone in the early stages of their career. As Larry Page and Sergey Brin were interviewing candidates to become Google's new CEO, Schmidt wasn’t the first recruit. Plenty of others...

Does Your Team Tip The Scales? Dreams rarely come true because of the sheer willpower of one individual. Often, it’s the collective genius of the team that bends reality towards the dreamer’s whim. So, in a world where the odds are stacked against us and most ventures fail, the choice of who joins our team is one of the few places where we can tip the scales in our favor. David M. Rubenstein is a co-founder of The Carlyle Group, one of the world's largest and most successful private equity...