A well-defined backup plan is sabotage waiting to happen. Why push through the dip, why take the risk, why blow it all when there's the comfortable alternative instead? The people who break through usually have nothing to lose, and they almost never have a backup plan.

Fear is the workout we give ourselves imagining what will happen if things don't work out. . . . Worry is our effort to imagine every possible way to avoid the outcome that is causing us fear, and failing that, to survive the thing that we fear if it comes to fruition.

You have to pay the price to be in the right place at the right time often enough that people tend to see you as the regular kind.

People rarely buy what they need. They buy what they want.

There's no map for being an artist.

A tribe is a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea. For millions of years, human beings have been part of one tribe or another. A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.

The good news is that more than ever, value accrues to those that show up, those that make a difference, those that do work that matters.