On a recent morning I got up early to go to San Diego, leaving my apartment at 5:30 a.m. in hopes of beating the L.A. commuter traffic. While stopping for gas at a Shell station on La Cienega, I thought I’d get some hot water to make a cup of mate tea, but discovered the

Recently I received an email from a young colleague of mine in which he talked about feeling as though he was under water and couldn’t come up for air for a couple of days. When I read this, I recalled something I was told very early in my career by an older and wiser individual:

A couple of days ago I learned that a friend and former colleague of mine, Steve Jacobson, with whom I worked  at Horizon Organic, had died of cancer. Whenever I hear of the passing of anyone I knew, I feel like that individual is sending me a reminder about how brief our time is on

Anyone who’s ever been on a schedule of wall-to-wall meetings knows how after a while it all becomes some kind of crazy blur – how at some point, they all start to run together in your mind, and how easy it can be to confuse the things discussed in one with the gist of another.

Recently, I had the pleasure of escorting an up-and-coming young professional who is just learning the sustainability business on a tour of two facilities that reprocess plastic and rubber. But what made this tour particularly gratifying to me was the mere fact of our being able to take it, and that the individual I was

Before signing off on my latest series of blogs offering readers my recommendations for cultivating business relationships and burnishing one’s professional image, I have one more bit of advice along those lines: never sign off without offering your assistance in some manner. The power of a conversation – especially over the phone — becomes amplified

Recently, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas attracted attention – and got himself lampooned on “The Daily Show” — for a remark he made in response to a fellow justice’s joke about Yale Law School. It wasn’t what Thomas said, however, which consisted of   “Well — he did not — ,” that was considered so noteworthy

In my previous blog, I spoke about about the advantages of showing up for meetings on other people’s territory.  Now I’d like to elaborate a bit more on one aspect of this – the importance of always bringing along a gift. Now by that, I don’t mean a material gift, as that can cause an 

One of the key lessons I have learned in business and life is the power that comes from simply “showing up” on someone else’s territory and terms. No matter how much you may prefer not to go or drive somewhere or how much more convenient it might be or how important it might make you