I was an All-American in wrestling in high school, was National Champion in Chinese kickboxing in 1999 and have spent a lot of time around professional athletes, which includes my eight-plus years as CEO of a sports nutrition company.

The downstream effects are unknown. Do your best and hope for the best. If you're improving the world-however you define that-consider your job well done.

People who avoid all criticism fail. It's destructive criticism we need to avoid, not criticism in all forms.

By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: 'John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run!

Are you better off than you were one year ago, one month ago, or one week ago? If not, things will not improve by themselves.

The golden years become lower-middle-class life revisited. That's a bittersweet ending.

There are certain things I will automate, but when it comes to quality control, I want to keep a very close eye.