Editor’s Note: This is one of those songs that just makes you tap your feet, especially as it’s performed live at Farm Aid concert almost twenty years ago.
Song of the Month - "Yellow Moon” by the Neville Brothers
Dec 6, 2013 10:49:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Book of the Month - "The Billionaire Who Wasn’t” by Conor O’Clery
Dec 6, 2013 10:40:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor’s Note: I’m not much of a biography guy but this one reads like fiction. Through 400 pages, O’Clery does a great job with short punchy chapters about a man I’d never hear of before. Chuck Feeney quietly built a multi-billion dollar empire of Duty Free stores and then even more quietly invested all of his fortune in social change. He patterned his life after Andrew Carnegie’s essay on “Wealth” which dealt with “giving while living.” No matter where your point of view ends up on the man or his works, it’s just a helluva read.
SONG "A Dustland Fairytale" by The Killers
Oct 4, 2013 7:06:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor’s note: Nostalgia. Nothing puts a lump in your throat and a pang in your heart like remembering the past, and this song’s powerful message of
BOOK “Creating Innovators” by Tony Wagner
Oct 4, 2013 6:50:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor's note: Creating Innovators offers an expose on what it takes to foster creative and entrepreneurial skills in students and adults alike. I agreed with Tony Wagner’s general premise that being an 'innovator' is not a destination, but a lifelong learning process. Through a collection of interviews with students, parents, and their teachers, Wagner identifies a few common threads: parenting styles, impact and role of mentors and teachers, and the role of the various educational institutions on their development (listed in order of importance, in my opinion).
BOOK “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries
Aug 31, 2013 12:57:00 PM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor's Note: We have a team in the process of launching a promising start-up social enterprise called America Mentors (dba Cleveland Mentors), designed to significantly increase the size and quality of student mentoring programs. The team is using The Lean Startup to build an innovative business model that, through effective marketing and enabling technology, will match 5M caring and committed citizens across the country to the 5M low-income/first-generation college students to double their graduation rates.
SONG "The Walk" by Meyer Hawthorne
Aug 31, 2013 12:48:00 PM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor’s note: Sometimes I just like to laugh. This song takes an old theme (“beauty is only skin deep”) and an old sound (doo wop) and combines into something catchy and funny to me. Note: R rating for language. Hope you enjoy.
Song of the Month: “The Once and Future Carpenter”, by the Avett Brothers
Jul 29, 2013 1:57:00 PM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor’s Note: I think my Avett Brothers music count is getting high but this one, off their “Carpenter” album is amazing. My son, Timmy, and I have declared this song as our new life “theme”.
Book of Month for August: “Startup Communities” by Brad Feld
Jul 29, 2013 1:50:00 PM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
Editor’s note: Our foundation has enjoyed our work in my little town, Ashtabula, since 2009 that started with loans to five entrepreneurs. We didn’t know we were doing a lot of the stuff Mr. Feld recommends in his book so it’s very rewarding to learn we followed a similar path to the work done in Boulder, CO, one of America’s most famous entrepreneurial ecosystems. We’ll remain a “poor man’s Boulder” but will continue to happily follow their lead, now more specifically having discovered this book and their movement, Startup Revolution. The most important part of this book, good for ANY business venture, is Brad’s down to earth philosophical but very actionable advice, such as: “Leaders of startup communities must be entrepreneurs. Everyone else is a feeder into the startup community.” Thanks to Robert Hatta for recommending (and buying) me this book.
Song of the Month: "Soulshine" by Allman Brothers
Jul 1, 2013 8:56:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites

Book of the Month: “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky
Jul 1, 2013 8:37:00 AM / by Tim McCarthy posted in Creativity & Favorites
