What inspires you? I’m inspired by my son’s All-Star team. They are a group of guys that I see growing into men right before my very eyes. My respect for these players is growing each time they play.

Here’s another example of inspiration:

When he was a student at Oberlin College, he was inspired by a chemistry professor’s remark that if “anyone should invent a process by which aluminum could be produced on a commercial scale, he could build a large fortune.”

At the time, aluminum was extremely difficult and costly to liberate from its oxide-bound form in nature.

In 1866, working with simple chemicals, the young student invented a smelting process that remains the basis for producing aluminum to this day.

Demand had to be cultivated as much as the technology.  Few industrialists saw a need for aluminum.

This didn’t stop the student from founding Alcoa, and in a few years aluminum was being used for electric cable, kitchen utensils explosives and automobile manufacturing.

At the time of his death, Charles Martin Hall was history’s wealthiest inventor.

May 2003 Good Stuff

What good things can come from a fiasco?

The word fiasco comes from the Italian name for a common bottle.  Ancient Venetian glassblowers would discard an article if they noticed the slightest flaw and convert it into a common bottle.  A beautiful Venetian vase could become a fiasco. 

But you learn more from your failures than you do your successes.  Salvage something from the fiascos in your life.  You will learn good judgment from the experience that a fiasco can provide.  You gain experience by making a mistake that may result in failure...and you will improve your skills. 

The next time you look at a fiasco, take the time to learn from the experience.