Editor’s Note:  I’ve been a Godin fan since “Permission Marketing” which was published many years ago as I was ramping a permission marketing business. Another favorite is “Purple Cow” but anything Seth writes, including his blog is usually very good. In “The Dip,” Seth takes on the idea that it can be smart to power through tough times as you master something, but smart people also choose when to quit on certain things. Cool idea, a little off center and yet lots of common sense which is back to why I admire Seth.

“All empty souls tend to extreme opinion. It is only in those who have built up a rich world of memories and habits of thought that extreme opinions affront the sense of probability.”

Editor’s Note: My talented and beloved son, Kevin, was home for one of my open mic nights and while deciding some songs to do together, he suggested this Dylan classic. I frankly had not heard it or thought of it in 30+ years. When Kevin then said, “I want us to sing this for Rose Alice, his one-year-old daughter,” my heart soared!

Editor’s comment: Warning to my conservative friends: This book can be interpreted as an attack on American capitalism! I realized that only a few pages in, and almost threw the book away. But I remembered one time when my daughter made me go to a Michael Moore movie by saying, “Dad, even if you’re appalled by it, you should open your mind to it.” So onward I pushed and though it’s been a tough read, there are enough nuggets in it to consider. I'm learning that I’m probably a fiscal conservative but a social liberal but in any event, I’m appalled by the growing polarization of wealth in America. Somewhere in between socialism that I fear and the untethered free enterprise that’s not working is the most interesting to me.

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.

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.

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

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).

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.

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.