Chalk Board Speech BubblesSmall business whisperer Charlie Gilkey of ProductiveFlourishing.com—whom I am lucky to count as a friend, client, and colleague—has been hosting a month-long Core Conversations blog series on the theme of “Great Connections Lead to Great Ideas.”

Given how important conversations and trusted readers are to the life of writers and thought leaders, I highly recommend you dive into the riffs, everyday lessons, and deep wisdom you’ll find at Charlie’s blog from the likes of Seth Godin, Andrea J. Lee, Danielle LaPorte, Mark Silver, and other favorite writers and entrepreneurs.

This is especially personal today, as my post on Getting to the Truth of Our Work is being published as part of the series!  If you’ve heard me talk or write about the importance of going public with your work—sooner rather than later—this article will resonate.  And I hope it will inspire you to use deep conversations (with yourself and others) to stretch, test, develop, and ground your ideas and best work.

“The biggest challenge we often face isn’t the start of an idea, it’s the discovery of a missing element—what I think of as a missing truth. It’s the missing idea that keeps the whole from making sense. So often, we begin to work on a business idea, a theory, or what I call our core ‘idea sets’ but there’s a gap…”  Read more