Switching careers – especially if you start your own business mid-career – will leave you short on so many resources: time, money, backup support, and in some cases even energy and hope. You will have only one thing in almost infinite surplus: advice. With the goal of cutting through that clutter instead of adding to it, I’d like to highlight the four books which helped me the most when I left a lucrative consulting job in late 2013 and co-founded Present Tense LLC. The books

Our more diligent followers may recall when I wrote my earlier post extolling the universal virtues of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I therein lamented that my fellow writer Elana had already written a piece on one of my favorite works of literature, Catch-22. Forgiveness is forthcoming. I also mentioned the unlikelihood of being able to write a business-relevant piece based around another of my favorite pieces of literature: the sci-fi epic Dune. Having recently given it my

- Paul Mooney Creative writing is not something reserved only for those dreaming of selling their first literary masterpiece to the world at large. Storytelling is a key element of many things we do in business, from presentations to white papers (to stories at the water cooler, but we are trying to stay in the non-fiction realm here). I'll clear up any mystery right off the bat: the hard part is actually writing something. Not all that mysterious of a revelation, I grant you

Elana Duffy Veteran’s Day, Armistice Day, whatever you call it in your country, the idea is the same in many countries that took part in the First World War: honor and remembrance to those who fought for freedoms, and those who laid down their lives to protect their countrymen. It is a day of peace and respect. Being a veteran, it seemed prudent to address the concept of expanding some timeless leadership techniques from the battlefield to management. Love or loathe the milit

Paul Mooney A screenplay probably looks like a strange piece of work from the perspective of someone unfamiliar with how scripts are written. The text is in widely-spaced blocks of varying widths, some words and lines are in all capital letters, and most of the pages look pretty sparse compared to the average essay or book. But screenplays are actually written with some very simple and specific objectives in mind that are applicable in any form of writing. Every word has purp

- Elana Duffy My favorite book is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Between the sardonic humor, sarcasm, and - however ridiculous the book may seem - truisms of military life, it has captured my attention time and again. It is different; it emulates none of the other stories of its time, and continues to challenge me as a reader to notice something new with each reading. Not to mention its accuracies that apply to other aspects of life, such as business. Having left the military and