by Nathan Coumbe

Impresarios make softball happen

The MLB is investing in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, a long-overdue organization for the United States’ outstanding softball players.

I’m sharing this article here, not because the MLB is investing in it, but for a different reason entirely.

As I read this, all I could think was, “A group of impresarios made this happen.”

Impresario: someone who organizes something, who brings the right people together to connect and make things happen that need to happen.

A group of people (mostly strong, driven women) said, “Why isn’t there a professional softball league? Why aren’t softball players making a career of this after dominating in college like all the men in MLB get to do?”

So what did they do? They made it happen themselves. Eventually, other groups, such as ESPN and MLB, took notice and decided to invest. But that isn’t the impressive part.

What’s impressive is that a small group of people decided that something that didn’t exist should exist. And they made it happen, without permission, by bringing the best and the brightest softballers together to build something great.

This is the work of an impresario.

This is leadership.

by Nathan Coumbe

What to do when you’re breaking down

Someone asked Dr. Karl Menninger what he would recommend if someone told him they felt a nervous breakdown coming. He replied:

“Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something to help that person.”

It’s a good reminder for me when I need to get out of my head.

by Nathan Coumbe

Start with one

One person. Just help one person with whatever skill you have, whatever problem she has.

This one act doesn’t have to dictate the entire course of your life, business, career, or whatever else you’re worried about.

Nor do you have to plan everything perfectly from the start. No need to create a business plan, figure out all the courses and certifications you need to take, or get an accountant on retainer. At least not right now.

The important thing is to start. Help this one person in front of you.

If it goes well, then you can decide whether to help another in the same way. Or not.

One decision doesn’t have to dictate every other decision that follows.

by Nathan Coumbe

Leadership = Applied History

There’s a line on the History Major page at the US Naval Academy:

Effective leadership is applied history.

Leadership, more than anything, is decision-making—specifically decision-making that affects other people, not only you.

By studying history, you can examine the minds of other leaders and understand their actions and the resulting outcomes (good and bad).

You can learn lessons from other people’s experiences rather than from your own failures and setbacks. This will not only save you time, money, and emotional labor—in some cases, it might save lives.

As General James Mattis said:

“If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.”

Learn lessons from others by studying history. Don’t repeat their mistakes when you can simply read a book.

by Nathan Coumbe

The teaching experience got worse after COVID

When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, it sent all the children home for an extended period of virtual schooling. This showed parents what it was like to deal with lots of kids all day long.

Not just “deal” with them either, but also hopefully have them learn something.

Multiply parents’ experience with their handful of children by 10, and that was what the average schoolteacher dealt with on a daily basis for years before 2020.

What fascinates me about this, however, is that the experience didn’t lead to an outpouring of support. It didn’t lead to calls for higher pay, better working conditions, and more classroom assistance for teachers.

Instead, COVID-19 made schooling much, much worse for teachers as, inexplicably, it led to a focus on culture war issues and concerns over what was being taught in the classrooms.

by Nathan Coumbe

How do values appear in your life?

What do you value? And how do you structure your life so that the things you value are apparent?

If you say you value thinking, how do you engage with that value on a daily basis?

  • No social media?
  • Embracing boredom?
  • Avoiding mindless TV binging?
  • Walking in silence?
  • Writing when ideas strike you?
  • Writing or thinking in public? (Publishing something)

If you say you value your health, how does that show up in your day?

  • Eating lots of fruits and vegetables?
  • Cooking more meals at home?
  • Intentional movement?
  • Finding ways to build more movement into your day so you don’t have to think about it?

Values are developed through action. They requires practice to become part of who you are.

by Nathan Coumbe

You are the one you’ve been waiting for

At the end of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (spoiler alert), Harry stands near the lake waiting for his father to appear and ward off the dementors attacking Sirius’s, Hermione’s, and his past selves.

After waiting for an agonizing amount of time, he realizes that he was the person who conjured the Patronus and drove the creatures away, not his father. He was the person he’d been waiting for all along.

Even without time travel, this is a relevant lesson to us. We often sit around waiting for someone to swoop in and save the day. We wait for someone else to act.

The problem is that everyone else is doing the same thing—they are all waiting around for someone else to rescue them from whatever the problem may be.

At some point, you must wake up and realize you are the hero of your story. You are the person everyone else is waiting for to act.

Someone eventually has to take a stand, so it might need to be you.

by Nathan Coumbe

You don’t get time, you make it

You don’t get time—to read, eat well, love your spouse, exercise, or whatever.

You have to make time. This applies to anything important to you. If it matters, you must carve out time in your day to ensure it happens.

Otherwise, life will ensure it doesn’t.

by Nathan Coumbe

Who decides?

The person who experiences the consequences should make the decision.” —James Clear

How different would society be if this were true?

Which wars would be fought if the soldiers who did the fighting made the decision whether or not to fight, rather than the politicians and generals thousands of miles away from the battlefield?

Which social policies would be enacted (or cut) if the decision were up to the people reliant on those policies rather than the lawmakers who have only an academic understanding of what they’re implementing?

The visceral reality of a decision changes when you are the person affected.

by Nathan Coumbe

25 free business ideas you can steal

As a follow-up to yesterday’s post, I challenged myself to come up with as many business ideas as I could in 10 minutes that met the criteria I laid out. Here’s what I came up with. Feel free to steal any of them and start your own business.

  1. Offer training content creation services to businesses with a small (or non-existent) L&D department.
  2. Become a health coach and offer sessions in-person or online.
  3. Lead in-home personal training sessions for clients (a concierge training offering). As a bonus, help them set up a minimum viable home gym to meet their health goals.
  4. If you’re a clear and persuasive writer, offer your writing services to small businesses or the marketing departments of larger organizations.
  5. Help other people land new jobs, negotiate raises, or change careers by offering your services as a career coach. This one, you could offer as a no-fee upfront service and take a small percentage of their new salary as payment (like a talent agent).
  6. Become a health and wellness consultant for large companies and design wellness coaching packages for their employees as part of their HR offerings.
  7. Start a green lawn care service, using only electric tools to keep people’s yards looking nice while lowering the carbon footprint of that work (I’m sure you’ve seen all the e-lawn tools if you have a Costco membership).
  8. Become a piano tuner. You can learn how for less than $1,500 bucks, and you’ll have almost no competition as it’s a dying trade.
  9. Become a drum tech for churches. Have you ever seen how beat up and terrible-sounding those drum sets are?
  10. Here’s an easy one: teach music lessons. Specialize in helping students prepare for, and win, auditions. There’s a lot of scholarship money to be had for musicians in college (and the military).
  11. Become a tutor in whatever field you know best. Take the summers off or offer “preparatory” tutoring when school is out.
  12. Become a writing coach for K-12 students. This may be the most important skill students will learn today as AI proliferates and the skill that makes us human is supplanted by garbage.
  13. Create and sell a really helpful e-book that teaches someone how to do a very specific task or skill.
  14. Create an online course on a topic or skill you know well. You can put it up on an e-learning site like Teachable, or you can offer it as an “email correspondence” course like Ryan Holiday does with his excellent Stoic challenges.
  15. Shuttle seniors to doctor’s appointments. You could charge them a low price by the mile or see if senior care homes might pay you for the service.
  16. Start a “walking school bus” for the children in your neighborhood. Children need more movement in their days, and parents might be willing to have a responsible adult or two get their kids to school in the morning while also working off some of that kiddo energy.
  17. Here’s one I’ve been thinking about: create a membership group to organize people around citizenship and political activism.
  18. Offer pet grooming services in your town.
  19. Along the same lines, wash and detail cars.
  20. Here’s another: buy a sponge, bucket, squeegee, and cleaning solution, then sell your services as a window washer to businesses and restaurants in your city.
  21. This one is big where I live: powerwash houses and driveways.
  22. One more handyman idea: paint houses.
  23. Know how to promote the work of others? Become a marketing consultant for small businesses. Trust me, they all need help getting the word out.
  24. Are you a decent cook? Deliver home-cooked meals to customers who don’t have time to cook for themselves every night.
  25. Speaking of cooking, why not offer healthy cooking classes to small groups looking to improve their health and that of their families?

10 minutes, 25 business ideas. I don’t know that I could pull all of them off, but some of them seem promising.

The hard part is picking one and being brave enough to face rejection. Regardless of what you choose, you’ll get a lot of no’s.

But if you’re starting your own thing, that comes with the territory. Don’t let it deter you!