Ideapress Publishing

OMgosh! I am super excited to share that my book, The Non-Obvious Guide to Drawing Your Future, won the Independent Press award in the How-To category! Yippee! I couldn't be more excited, and I'm a little weepy ?? . This is incredible! We started last year by setting a Guinness Book of Records record, and now, what a start to 2025—shining a bright light when we need it the most. I share this honor with my longtime collaborator, Scott Ward, who drew the clever illustrations in the book. Also, kudos and thank you to the Ideapress Publishing team; this might have been a dream without their editing and support. If you haven't received your copy, please order one from my website or your local independent bookstore. Let's do this!

It has been ten years since the last time I was fired. Yesterday I was in front of an assembly of several hundred high school students talking about my career. One of them asked me about my biggest success at work and my first thought wasn't about the books I've published or the talks I've given. Back in the final days of 2014, Chhavi Arya Bhargava and I started a company called Ideapress Publishing. Last month this little hybrid publishing house we only imagined as a way for me to publish my own books just hit our tenth anniversary. In that time, we've worked with more than 100 authors, won over 350 book awards, launched several bestsellers, sold hundreds of thousands of books and had two authors featured on Good Morning America this month alone. Our authors are powerhouse voices and legendary speakers. They are even better humans. Our team we have built are the same. Today is also my 50th birthday and so I'm getting a lot of heartfelt messages about my last fifty years and my next fifty too. That's the fun part of milestone birthdays. But this morning I'm celebrating more than the things I've done. Of course I'm proud of my achievements and I'm not afraid to say so. I'm even more proud of being behind the scenes as a supporter, cheerleader and mentor of so many other amazing authors and friends. Back in high school, I had a favorite quote. Thirty years later it's still one that I love ... “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” ― Mark Twain Today I feel surrounded by greatness - and I'm thankful for it. CC: Marnie McMahon, Megan Wheeler, Allison Griffith, Lynnette McCurdy, Athena Potkovic, Jessica Angerstein, Kameron Bryant, Maddie Grant, Jamie Notter, Aaron Edelheit, Alana Karen, Andrea Driessen, Barry Moltz, Behnam Tabrizi, Bill Troy, Cameron Mitchell Restaurants, Charlene Li, Curt Schwab, Dan Slagen, David J. Miller, Ph.D., David Novak, Jason Goldsmith, Douglas Ferguson, John Fitch, Aneesh Singla, MD, MPH, James Stellar, Elliott Parker, Emmanuel Probst, Greg Besner, Henna Pryor, PCC, Dr. Hesham Hafez, Jack Quarles, Jacqueline Farrington, Jason Silver, Jeff Fromm, Jenny Blake, Jim Kaveney, MS, John Asher, Dr. John Marshall, Liza Marshall, Jonathan Cronstedt + more authors in comments!

Many thanks to Dr. Jessie Voigts and Wandering Educators for this awesome review - and to the team at Ideapress Publishing who suggested a mad-lib cookbook of AI recipes.