Today we bring you back writer Dave Baldwin who chose The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber as our featured book review. If you’re thinking about taking that entrepreneurial leap, get this book before you do so! Thank you, Dave, for sharing your time and talents on Write from the Inside Out. We look forward to more wisdom from you in 2012!

Bringing this year of writing book reviews to a close, I realized that I wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t touch on one of the most influential volumes I’ve read since 2007. The E-Myth Revisited, by Michael Gerber, is a must-read business book for any entrepreneur in any season of business. It’s also a great read for an employee looking for a promotion at work. If you’re working at a dissatisfying job, thinking of starting your own business as a ticket to freedom from your dreaded boss, read this book twice before you make the leap.

Gerber says that most small businesses don’t work simply because their owners are not really entrepreneurs. They are “technicians” who have had an “entrepreneurial seizure.” A “technician,” by Gerber’s definition, is one of the three fundamental personalities required to operate a business, and the technician is the one who does the actual work, skilled or otherwise. The other two personalities are the entrepreneur and the manager. The entrepreneur is the visionary and the living force behind the business, while the manager is the problem-solver who makes sure that everything gets done and that the details get handled.

I had my entrepreneurial seizure in 2007 on a Friday morning, and I left my notice with my employer on Monday. The catalyst was burnout. I was driven to red-hot rage by the incompetence of my superiors, who called my cell-phone repeatedly on my day off, demanding that I immediately clean up the mess they had made. After calming down, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t need my job. I decided that I would start my own business. With chest puffed out and full of bravado, I charged forward, praising myself in advance for my anticipated success. To make a long story short, let’s just say that things didn’t work out nearly as well as I’d envisioned.

Gerber doesn’t try to exhaustively spell out every single thing there is to know about running a business; rather, he illustrates, from a bird’s eye view, the fundamental competencies that a successful business owner needs to develop. He uses a fictitious pie store as an illustrative example. The store owner is fed up with baking pies, even though she used to love it. Gerber says that this happens often, because of the false assumption that startup business owners nearly always make. People assume that if they are good at doing a particular thing, they will succeed in building a business that does that same thing. In Gerber’s example, the pie store owner loved baking pies, but didn’t appreciate the universal set of required business ownership skills – most of which has nothing to do with baking pies.

I wish I had read The E-Myth Revisited before I decided to work for myself. What I had failed to understand at the time – what I couldn’t possibly have understood – is that the transition to entrepreneurial life requires a fundamental shift in the way one thinks and operates. That shift does not happen overnight. I naïvely expected that I could teach myself to operate a business with the training I had, and a few other tricks that I would surely learn along the way. I didn’t realize that, because I had just spent thirty years being conditioned to think like a cog in the machine, it would probably take another thirty years to reverse that conditioning. At first, I took this as bad news, but soon, I realized that it was a perfect opportunity.

I thought that I would succeed at starting my own writing business, because I love to write and have been told by many that I am good at it. What I came to understand, after three years of marketing myself as a freelance writer, is that owning a writing business has nothing to do with writing. Owning a business is about engineering a brand, identifying a set of market segments, and developing a systematic methodology for reliably delivering a customer experience consistent with the values of the brand. It takes a true entrepreneur, combined with a skilled manager and a methodology for training writer-technicians, to make this happen.

I came to the conclusion that the enterprise I’d envisioned would indeed happen, and that I would create it just like I envisioned. It was just going to take a lot longer than I thought. Contrary to what I had believed previously, I would not have to spend thirty years suffering through unpleasant jobs in exchange for the promise of “someday” getting to build the enterprise. In fact, there was only one way the idea would stand a chance of working—I would have to evaluate every decision I made in light of my vision. This past October, for example, I went to work as a writer for a local marketing firm in Raleigh. When I initially received the offer, I asked myself if this position would truly train me in the skills I would need to build my vision. Would this employer support my journey at each step? Would they encourage me to do what I knew was my calling, or would they put roadblocks in my path? I came to believe that they would be active supporters, and they haven’t let me down so far.

Gerber’s message has really come alive for me in recent months. I’ve begun to experience his words at a deeper level. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is not about having an “entrepreneurial seizure” and becoming an overnight success. It’s about nurturing and cultivating the traits which we all have inside us, one day at a time.

If you’re thinking of starting your own business, The E-Myth Revisited would be a great place to start. Read it before you quit your day job.

About Dave:

Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).

Your Turn:
What are your entrepreneurial traits? If you are an entrepreneur, how do you think others view your skills and talents? If you’re in a traditional job, what do you think you’ll need to take that entrepreneurial leap?

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Today we welcome back regular guestblogger, Dave Baldwin. Dave shares his review of Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. Enjoy and think about what brings you happiness.

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert does a great job exemplifying what it looks like to distill psychology into a practical layperson’s science. I’ve found that re-discovering happiness and fulfillment is an art, a science, and at times, an uphill battle. Gilbert helps to shed some light on the question of why. Gilbert doesn’t present a solution to a problem; he presents perspectives that I’ve found useful in my own process of unraveling it.

Gilbert is a great storyteller, and the book is a fun, fast read – which is my number one criteria for any book I recommend. He starts by raising ubiquitous questions that are not always asked out loud. For example, why do we often expect that certain things will bring us happiness, only to discover that they fail to meet expectations? That question forms the central inquiry of the book, and Gilbert attacks this question from various different angles, citing stories of happiness-based research projects and university studies.

When I read this book the first time, I recalled a particular incident in the Phoenix airport. I was flying home after a three-week trip to Tucson, Arizona, and our flight had a one-hour layover. I went into the airport to get a cup of coffee and something to read during the four-hour flight to Philadelphia. As I started walking back to my gate, I had a moment of panic. I had left my bag in the airport! I spent the next ten minutes hurriedly retracing my steps in a vain attempt to locate the bag, afraid that if I didn’t find it, it would be confiscated and destroyed by airport security. Out of time, I gave up and got back on the plane, thinking about how many things I would have to replace. When I arrived at my seat, the bag was sitting right under it.

Here’s the insidious part that had continued to haunt my mind for some time afterward. I remembered standing in the coffee shop. I could play back a mental video tape of the scene. I leaned over to set down my carry-on bag so that I could use both hands. The fact that I was able to remember doing this so clearly was the very reason why I could feel certain that I had, indeed, brought the bag off of the plane with me. This memory turned out to be completely false. After I read Stumbling on Happiness, it made perfect sense. According to Gilbert, the human brain does not store picture-perfect memories of what happened – it fabricates them on demand.

What does this have to do with happiness and the pursuit thereof? Since our memories of the past are not nearly as accurate as we think they are, we are likely to inaccurately project what will make us happy in the future. We believe that certain things made us happier (or less happy) than they did in the past, and we leave out critical details from our memories – even when we have the same experiences repeatedly. Gilbert cites the all-too-familiar example of Thanksgiving dinner. We overeat, then feel the consequences of overeating, vow never to do this to ourselves again, then proceed to repeat the whole mess in December.

Gilbert also talks about the process of making decisions, and how we select different options based on what we believe will make us the happiest in the future. The process, says Gilbert, is made complicated by a number of factors, including one that he calls “presentism.” Gilbert asserts that we all unconsciously assume that we have always felt (and will always feel) the same way about things that we feel now. He cites a study which found that people were far more likely to say they were happy with their lives on sunny days, and unhappy with their lives on rainy days.

Since reading this book, I’ve learned to re-evaluate the ways I seek to bring fulfillment into my life. For example, when I find myself wishing that I had more of this, or less of that, I automatically challenge the assumption. I now find myself looking for happiness in new places, and I’m finding that the process of pursuing happiness brings me more happiness than it used to. For example, I found that disciplining myself to write consistently brought me happiness, a little bit more each day. I also have found it easier to resist the temptation to indulge cravings for things like candy and rich desserts. I am able to walk past the ice cream aisle in the grocery store, indulging my senses with the visualization of each flavor – and not buy any of them.

I plan to re-read Stumbling on Happiness at least one more time in my life. I definitely recommend it. It may or may not give you the secret to happiness, but you’ll at least enjoy reading it.

Your Turn:

How do you define happiness? What makes you happy and fulfilled?

About Dave:

Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).

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Glad you’re here! We welcome our regular contributor, Dave Baldwin, who reviews Olalah Njenga’s 37 What Were They Thinking Moments in Marketing. Olalah is originally from Chicago and now makes her home in Raleigh where she is a sought after marketing guru who helps growing companies succeed. Thanks so much, Dave, for guestposting again for me this month. Enjoy!

Earlier this year, I picked up a copy of 37 What Were They Thinking? Moments in Marketing by Olalah Njenga. I know Olalah personally and have attended her workshops, so this is a bit different than my typical book review in that my opinion might be a bit slanted. But I know a good storyteller when I see one, and Olalah is definitely that.

The book is a fun read, and as its title implies, it’s broken down into 37 easily digestible nuggets that you can absorb in 5-minute reading sessions. The stories are priceless, and as Olalah herself says in the introduction, you just couldn’t make this stuff up. The overarching theme: embarrassingly unskillful attempts by small business owners to market themselves. She deliberately chose examples of business owners who went to ridiculous extremes. I can personally vouch for the authenticity of the stories, because I’ve seen some of them played out in person. In fact, I even played the starring role in a couple of these stories at the beginning of my entrepreneurial endeavors.

I alternated between wincing, laughing, face-palming, and shaking my head in sympathetic embarrassment as I read through Olalah’s tales of marketing blunders gone wild. There were two common themes I could hear throughout the stories: penny-pinching and refusal to look at reality for what it is.

Several stories depict entrepreneurs who emphatically argued that they didn’t need a plan or a strategy for their businesses, believing that they had passion for what they did, and that nothing else mattered. Olalah perfectly captured the fallacy with this thinking; she titled one vignette “When Your Passion Meets the Repo Man.” I felt some chagrin here, since I myself drank the “passion Kool-Aid” at the outset of my writing business. I remember deluding myself into believing that if I threw myself headlong at what I loved, the stars would align to my dreams and I would live happily ever after. Reading stories of others who traveled the same precarious path was a bit stinging, but a useful reminder of what can happen when ambition runs amok.

The bigger problem with small business, as Olalah illustrates, is the erroneous notion that one can market a business on a “shoestring” budget. While there is wisdom in finding creative ways to make marketing dollars go as far as possible, small businesses have blown this out of proportion. For example, two particularly comical stories jump out at me. In one example, Olalah recalls meeting a woman who handed her a business card, only to snatch it back promptly and scratch out the contact information written on it, which had gone out of date. In another example, a business owner tried to staff an event completely with volunteers, resulting in weeks of continual breakdowns and an event that ended up making her company look unprofessional.

Every first-time entrepreneur needs to hear these stories and others like them. While there is humor in the stories, there’s another side to the picture. If you’ve been in small business for any length of time, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Getting excited about big ideas and charging out into the marketplace can lead not only to humiliation, but financial disaster. It is possible to become thoroughly and dangerously engrossed in big dreams, to the point where it distorts your view of reality and blinds you to pitfalls that are right in front of your face.

It can be a rude awakening when you’re finally forced to confront the fact that, passion or no passion, you don’t know where your next car payment is coming from. When your dreams of making millions in your business melt into visions of moving back in with your parents and taking a job at Mickey D’s, you will find yourself dropping back down to Earth like a lead weight. When this day of reckoning comes, passion turns into ice-cold terror. While the stories in Olalah’s book are amusing, I believe that her core message was designed to illustrate that the end result of this insanity is often not the least bit funny.

If you think that you can “do what you love and the money will come,” you need to wake up, smell the coffee, and accept the cold reality that successful businesses are built on a plan. Olalah’s book may just be the cold shower you need to snap out of it. Regardless of where you are in your business, you’ll find value in these stories. Grab a copy today. You won’t be able to put it down.

 Your Turn:

Do you feel you’re good at marketing your business? If so, what  marketing tips can you share that could help any small business succeed.

Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).

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Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

We welcome back regular contributor Dave Baldwin who reviewed Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. Enjoy his insights and please let us know what you thought of this book, too!

I must admit that I hesitated to read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert when my friend recommended the book. I was afraid it would turn out to be “chick lit.” Based on the blurb copy, I expected to read “Eastern Philosophy Meets Sex and the City.” My fears proved unjustified, and I found myself fascinated to get the female Generation-X urbanite’s perspective on world religions as they apply to real twenty-first century life. For me personally, the book had the added bonus of helping me to understand  women a tad bit better, and that alone made the book worth reading.

Gilbert’s raw, authentic, matter-of-fact writing style was the first thing that hooked me. I later learned, after finishing the book, that she had deliberately written the book as if talking to her best friend. That made perfect sense. Throughout the story, I had a sense that the juicy morsels of the story weren’t held back at all. Don’t get me wrong; she doesn’t delve into exhibitionistic detail about the goings-on in her bedroom. She shares the little things that one would only expect a friend to understand.

I would have sworn that I didn’t have a sexist bone in my body until Eat, Pray, Love forced some of my unconscious gender biases to the surface, starting with the first chapter. My ever-judging mind read the opening scene – where Gilbert shares her revelation that she had no desire to stay married – and immediately began to expect a paleo-feminist man-hating tirade. “Great,” I thought. “This is going to be a book about what a creep her husband was, by extension, the whole male sex is.” She shattered that illusion. Gilbert’s frankness in admitting her own guilt in the matter of her divorce and going inward to work on herself was admirable, but what really sold me was her leap of faith that led to a conscious awakening. I was a bit ashamed of myself.

Not once throughout the book did I find it difficult or even challenging to relate to her writing from a male perspective. The struggles that Gilbert shared, for the most part, did not occur to me as distinctly female, but as universal to the human condition. It also didn’t strike me that she wrote her book just for women. Gilbert seemed willing to be heard and understood by anyone willing to listen. For one example, she shared her comical Abbott and Costello-esque battle with her mind during meditation. Her recounting of several episodes struggling to quiet her mind was all too familiar.

I clearly saw a “before” and “after” picture of Gilbert’s life that showed both compassion and warrior-like discipline. She started out in what appeared to be a sleepwalking pattern, living life according to what she thought everyone else wanted. Little by little, page by page, I could see her questioning her own assumptions and the artificial unwritten rules of the culture that had kept her self-expression stifled during the decades that had preceded her 18-month journey. The Elizabeth Gilbert at the end of the story was clearly a different Elizabeth Gilbert from the one at the start, but I could also see that the real person underneath all the layers and masks hadn’t changed from page one. She exemplified what it can look like to allow one’s real self to float gently to the surface.

The most valuable aspect of this book, from my perspective as a reader, was getting to see what it looks like to move from a “default” life to a created life. I saw the essence of adventure in Gilbert’s writings, and it challenged me to take more aggressive steps forward in my own life. It made me just a bit more uncomfortable with the ordinary aspects of my existence, which is what a good book should do.

About Dave: 
Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).

Your Turn:
For those of you who have read Eat, Pray, Love what did you think about it? Did it move you? Did it make you see things differently (or not)? Tell me!

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Girls Gone Child by Amanda Lamb

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In her second book on parenting, Amanda Lamb continues her journey into motherhood when her two girls reach school age and start asking questions about everything from politics to race to religion. They also start noticing things and want to talk about them. Like when three-year-old Chloe starts pointing out that some people are larger than others, usually in a loud voice within earshot of the person in question.

“Mommy, that man is lar-” she begins. Before she can get the word out, I do a drop-on-a-dime u-turn, the best I can under the circumstances. Like a NASCAR driver I have the cart up on two wheels making the hairpin turn into the next aisle in record time, trying not to nail anyone in the process.

The book touches on many of the usual issues of parenting, including the kids’ fascination with body functions, negotiating the treacherous world of popular culture, exercising with kids and braving the hazards of illness with humor and sensitivity. As a working mom, Lamb juggles her professional life and her personal life, with sometimes surprising results. She was booted out of the carpool in part because the kids overheard her talking on the phone regarding her work as a TV reporter on the crime scene.

I mean my own kids are used to my switching back and forth between talk about blood and guts and “The Wizards of Waverly Place,” but most mommies don’t have this kind of life.

Although the book is often laugh-out-loud funny, at times Lamb also manages a tender reflective tone that many parents will identify with. She’s well aware that these days of childhood are numbered and makes an effort to step back from her hectic life and appreciate the sweetness of her children’s early years. As part of a two-parent family, Lamb occasionally gets frustrated with her husband, but she also appreciates his contributions to the family.

When a baby is born a father is born too. I can be a lot of things to my daughters, but a father is not one of them.

Many parents will appreciate the chapter on animals and pets. From the shelter to the backyard to the veterinarian, Lamb struggles to make peace with her children’s desire for pets and her own reluctance to deal with them. The section on “revenge poop” in particular gave me a good laugh and made me glad I’ve been able to avoid having pets that don’t live in a cage (we own three parakeets).

It’s impressive that even with a full-time-plus job, Lamb takes time to record the little day-to-day events and funny things her kids say. I guess it comes naturally to her as a news reporter to keep a notebook with her at all times and to record things as they happen. Of course, her kids are no dummies and they caught on pretty quickly to her writing things about them. When Mallory was six, she and her mother had a particularly vivid conversation about God in the car one day. Lamb grabbed her notebook and began scribbling notes at a stoplight. Suspicious, Mallory asked if she was writing about her and Lamb confessed rather sheepishly that she was.

“How about using your own thoughts,” she says, slumping back into the seat with a chip the size of Texas on her shoulder.

Because yours are a lot more interesting, I think to myself.

I don’t know about you, but I can hardly wait to see what they’ll come up with next (see below).

Amanda Lamb

Amanda Lamb’s new true-crime book, “Love Lies” (The Berkley Group) will hit store shelves in December 2011. It is based on a high-profile case in Cary, North Carolina, that she covered for WRAL-TV. Nancy Cooper was found dead in July 2008 a few miles from her suburban home. Her husband, Brad Cooper, said she went jogging and never returned. He was convicted of her murder in July 2008.

Amanda Lamb is a hard-charging veteran TV crime reporter for WRAL-TV in Raleigh. She writes in two completely different genres—true crime and parenting humor. Her true-crime work includes “Evil Next Door” (The Berkley Group) and “Deadly Dose” (The Berkley Group). Her parenting humor includes “Girls Gone Child” (CreateSpace) and “Smotherhood” (Globe Pequot). She’s currently working on her next parenting book, “I Love You, to God and Back” (Thomas Nelson), set for release in Spring 2012.

Find out more about Amanda Lamb HERE

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My review of Helen Losse’s Seriously Dangerous ran in Issue 65 of The Pedestal Magazine. Read the full length version here. Enjoy!!!

What’s God’s intention? What is out there that we cannot see? In her new book of poems, Seriously Dangerous, Helen Losse meditates on God, Jesus, the passing of time, prayer, racism, and injustice, as well as the nature of sin, faith, and redemption. In these serious poems, the titles of which represent both themes and places, Losse plays with the opposites of light and dark, inner and outer, and urban and rural, using evocative but accessible language and understated rhymes.

Her considerable knowledge of Christianity, specifically Catholic church history and its customs, informs many of her poems, resulting in frequent employment of Christian metaphors and symbols. Readers who are less familiar with Christian history and theological specifics may not connect with all of Losse’s references. Fortunately, the poems work on several levels, also integrating familiar subjects such as weather, the moon, and candles.

          Losse introduces her work with two epigrams, one from Oscar Wilde (“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all”) and the other from scripture (“God is light and in him no darkness” from I John, 1:5), which set the tone for what is one poet’s search for God’s presence in ordinary objects.

In the titular poem, “Seriously Dangerous,” Losse drives readers to the Deep South’s memories of racial injustice as the poem references Jesus’s crown of thorns (“the prick of a thorn”) and baptism in the last line, “nor wash us clean, till truth bleeds.” Losse is at her best when she employs specific images such as “old dryers bob beside alligators.” The cover art for the book is the image of a burning cross, a central motif that particularly comes alive in the line “Seriously dangerous,/ the cross without a savior.” The poem in its entirety:

The evening begins with kudzu—
summer memories submerged
in a deep southern swamp—
where spirited black boys, old dryers
bob beside alligators. Late in hot night,
flashes of yesterday surface in pain
like the prick of a thorn, the mock
of a crown that continues its burn.

Low whispers, deep shadows remain
where trials by fire have left actual trails
after a tromp in slime & muck,
with tell-tale footprints from society’s
work boots. Seriously dangerous,
the cross without a savior—
deniable today, but for masks, hoods—
cannot burn away filth & dross,

nor wash us clean, ’til truth bleeds.  

Central to Catholic ritual, candles represent hope, loss, and the Holy Spirit. In “Candle,” the speaker remarks on valuing the ugly the same as the beautiful.

I do not avoid spots where leaves now decay—
virtual ghosts of their green-spring existence

in rain on city sidewalks and ominous shadows—
and fall, when the moon’s orange light glows

soft as an ember. I light a candle on Friday,
autumnal wind chilling, as we wait in unspoken prayer.
    
Losse is “an old soul/ wearing nerdy glasses,” who won’t let go of her hope, perseverance, and patience no matter the challenges in this world. Her poems reflect her deep beliefs and faith, how she recognizes God in nature and the power of stillness.  But watch out—there’s an undercurrent of violence in God’s beauty that may strike at anytime. Losse seems to suggest that the best way to face this world is to pay attention to the wind, the snow, and the rain, as well as to acknowledge and perhaps eventually make peace with our dangerous personal and historical pasts.

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Today regular guestblogger, Dave Baldwin discusses The Power of Half–enjoy! 

I first read The Power of Half about a year ago, on a recommendation from a good friend. I found myself nodding and relating to the story on a number of levels. Kevin and Hannah Salwen, the co-authors, are a father and daughter who jointly inspired the other half of their immediate family to sell their house and give half of the money away. I’m a supporter of The Hunger Project, the same organization that stood in the spotlight of the story, since 2006. That was partly what motivated me to read the book.

While the Salwen family’s experience is quite different from mine, I still found myself relating to the story. They lived in a $2 million mansion, and the kids had their own fireplaces. Based on the way they described their family’s van, it sounds like it was bigger than the houses some people live in. They paint a “before” picture that clearly illustrates the ridiculous preoccupation with accumulating material possessions that seems to infect American families. Kevin Salwen, the primary author, describes how members of the family rarely spoke to each other, zoned out in their separate worlds.

At one of the pivotal moments of the story, Kevin and Hannah were sitting at an intersection. There was a homeless man on their left, and an expensive car on their right. They shared the insight that they could make a real impact on global issues like poverty, and that it would require giving up some of the comforts to which they had grown accustomed. The family decided to put their house on the market and move into a house half its size. They had to shed half of what they owned, and the process breathed life back into their family.

I had experienced something similar when I left my corporate job to move to Raleigh back in 2007. I got rid of a sizable percentage of what I owned. I brought no furniture with me except a mattress and a bed. I had fit everything into one layer of the moving truck, and I moved everything into the house in 45 minutes with no help from anyone. There have been several periods in my life when I aggressively rid myself of possessions, and I’ve felt like a snake shedding my skin every time. When I read the Salwen’s story, I smiled as I pictured the family discovering a new freedom.

The remarkable thing about the Salwens’ story is how well it highlighted the inherent self-interest in giving things away. There was no sense of resentment or guilt-driven charity at all. The family had fun shedding many times their weight in physical goods, and I never got the sense that they significantly missed the money (a sum of over $800,000).

The family’s biggest concern about the money seemed to be the danger that it might not be put to good use. They exercised a lengthy period of due diligence for that precise reason. Kevin recalls having woken up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep from the thought that the money might disappear and make little impact. The Salwens also bought a second home before finding a buyer for the first, which put a strain on their finances. From their account of the situation, though, I got the sense that they just knew it would all work out in the end.

During the past two years, I’ve personally felt the squeeze of the recession, and I’ve had to cut a number of expenses. I count it as a blessing, and the Salwens’ story is a reminder of that blessing. Every time I have to live without a luxury, the experience reminds me that I’m no less happy without it. The Salwens gave up a comfortable life in exchange for a meaningful one. When I read their story, I can’t imagine them even thinking about going back. When I look at my own life in this light, I see that meaning and purpose have naturally displaced comfort. I can’t imagine going back, either.

When I find myself growing petulant over a superficial desire for something I know I can live without, I often think back to The Power of Half. I think of how, even in my poorest moments, I’ve still had access to greater wealth than most people on Earth can even imagine. I think back to the times when I had everything material that I wanted, and how unfulfilled I was. The Power of Half has served as a gentle reminder that, ultimately, I can do without almost anything.

The book is a quick read. I definitely recommend picking it up.

 Your Turn: With the current economic downgrade, how are you fighting fear and living your best abundant life?

About Dave: 

Dave Baldwin is a writer, originally from Pennsylvania, who has lived in Raleigh since 2007. He works for a local internet marketing company that specializes in creating content for the Internet.

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Today we welcome back regular contributer, Dave Baldwin who will share his thoughts with us about Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Thanks again, Dave!

I first read The Art of War in 2009, when the library didn’t have the book I was looking for. I kicked myself for having not read it sooner. I had heard a lot of people recommend it, but I didn’t understand what it was. When I started to read the material, I realized that it has nothing to do with warfare – unless, of course, you’re at war. It’s an operating manual for solving any conceivable kind of problem. One might just as well call it The Art of Productivity, The Art of Writing, The Art of Dance, or The Art of ___________.

Sun Tzu’s prose is elegant and simple, and the English translation reads with a soft, steady cadence. It is a fun book to read, and it really made me think. I consult it often when dealing with difficult problems. The first line that stuck with me: “One who knows when he can fight and when he cannot fight will be victorious.” I have only recently begun to appreciate the depth of this profound statement. Weighing my options against this statement has become routine and habitual for me since reading The Art of War. I often ask myself, “Can I win the battle I’m about to fight here?”

To decode the metaphor and make it relevant, I will sometimes replace words throughout the text with more specific language, and it works like a charm. Here’s one example of how I applied the text to a challenge with my writing. I was coming up against self-doubt about the material I was creating and whether it really had value.

The passage that I consulted:

“In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it…”

I did a little bit of substitution:

“In the practical art of writing, the best thing of all is to keep one’s self-doubt whole and intact; to overcome it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture a stream of negative thoughts than to suppress it.”

I realized that Sun Tzu was right on the money. Trying to overcome my self-doubt might get me over a short hump, I saw, but I would never achieve lasting and permanent victory against it. Instead, I saw, I needed to use my writing to bring my fears and doubts into the open. This insight occurred early during the writing of a new book, which is still underway at this time. I started to write about the struggles I was going through, and the book came alive. I read a passage aloud to a few people, who all gave me very positive feedback. My writing was real again, and other people could find inspiration in it.

In context, Sun Tzu was referring to the idea of taking over an opposing army. I realized that I could do the same thing with my own fears. I could take them over and use them as an asset in my writing.

Sun Tzu’s manual is chock full of practical applications like this. I will continue to explore the depths of this book for the rest of my life, and I’m sure that I will manage only to scratch the surface a bit more. Don’t just read this book. Apply it.

About Dave:
Dave Baldwin is a writer who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He currently works for Bottom Line Internet Business Consultants, a local online marketing firm

How do you overcome self-doubt when it comes to writing? Any practical tips you’d like to share?

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Today we welcome back regular guestblogger Dave Baldwin with his review on Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards. Enjoy!

Do you think you can’t write? Do you think you can’t dance? Do you think you can’t paint? Do you look at the work of great artists and wish that you’d been “born with that kind of talent?” Are you willing to consider that the artistic world may be closer within your reach than you might realize? If you’re ready to suspend disbelief for a week or so, Betty Edwards’ self-study course will cast aside your preconceived notions about artists (and your reasons why you believe you can’t be one).

I went through the Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain course in 2000, shortly after I realized that I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was working the evening shift in a factory, and I knew that I was slated for layoff within the next few months. I dreaded “going back out there” to the job market, but at the same time, I looked forward to leaving the dull gray box-shaped environment that had been slowly bleeding my soul dry. I wanted to do something creative for a living, but I didn’t think I had it in me.

The first exercise in Edwards’ course stunned me. I drew an upside-down picture of a knight on horseback, and the accuracy of my own freehand work surpassed anything I’d ever drawn in my life. What surprised me the most was the sheer simplicity of the instructions and the steps involved. I realized that it wasn’t a lack of talent that had halted my artistic development. I had just never learned how to shift my brain into what Edwards dubs “R-mode,” or the creative mode of thinking. If that sounds difficult, I can relate. It sounded difficult to me, too, until Betty Edwards showed me how easy it was.

Doing the exercises in Edwards’ book resembled the thrill of staying upright on a bicycle without training wheels for the first time.  Like riding a bike, shifting into “R-mode” just requires a little bit of practice, and it’s impossible to explain directly. Once I experienced it, I couldn’t believe how simple it was. I also found it more than a little bit addictive. While I never pursued drawing seriously, my discovery of “R-mode” led me to re-energize my creative writing practice. During the next few years, I felt my latent passion for writing beginning to re-awaken. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was the initial catalyst that set this process in motion.

In 2006, my friend Julie taught me how to paint with acrylics. When she initially made the offer to teach me, I remember feeling a twinge of resistance, followed by the thought, “What if I just can’t paint?” Then, I thought back to Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain and reminded myself that I probably just hadn’t learned how. As I put the final brush stroke to my first painting, I had proved once again that Edwards was right.

Eventually, I developed the confidence to pursue writing full-time in 2007. When I left my job, I soon began to doubt whether I was capable of being an entrepreneur. However, this self-doubt was quickly displaced by a certainty that I just needed to learn the skill. This process has become natural, to the point where I almost take it for granted. I never say, “I’m terrible at…” I just think, “What skill do I need that I’ve never learned?”

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was one of the experiences that inspired me to write Get That Book Out of Your Head! in 2009. I found that most people who struggled with writing had bought into the idea that writing is an inborn talent gifted to only a select few. While I do believe that the desire to write seems to have evaded some people, the gift of creative writing is open to anyone willing to learn some basic skills and practice them regularly. I thought back to Edwards’ course and decided that helping people explore the world of writing was part of my greater purpose.

If you’re struggling with an art form of any kind, I would recommend this course. Even if you have no interest in drawing particularly, the experience of learning to see the world like an artist will prove invaluable for your artistic development.

Your Turn:
Please comment here if you have read the book and would like to share your experience!

About Dave:
Dave Baldwin is a writer who has lived and worked in Raleigh, NC since 2007. He has self-published two books: Pied Piper Entrepreneurship (2009) and Get That Book Out of Your Head! (2009).

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