Writings

“Everyone knows that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer. Few realize that it took three years, 22,000 volunteers, and 188,000 study participants to prove it.” That’s a quote by Meghan Murphy about one of the first large, long-term studies every undertaken by The American Cancer Society. It blew my mind when I first heard these numbers. Smoking causes lung cancer. This we know. But it’s an amazing reminder of the massive effort it takes to establish connections that we now take for granted.

It’s why clinical studies can be so difficult to execute. You need a large-scale, diverse population and the ability to collect data over an extended timeframe. But where would we be without those 22,000 volunteers and 188,000 participants?

Well, we’d still be staring at ads like this every time we’d flip open our magazines.

But not only would we be staring at them. We’d believe them. We’d buy into what they were selling. “More doctors smoke camels than any other cigarette.” Well then I should too! Smoking Lucky Strike will help me keep my slender figure? Yes, please! Read More →

Dr. Ivan Jirak was an Explorer at a time when that title truly meant something. He traveled the world studying indigenous tribes and head shrinking natives; making first ascents on mountains; and charting previously uncharted territories. All without the aid of a GPS or the latest GoreTex gear. On a 1966 expedition to scale El Sangay volcano in Ecuador, he found that the four “official” maps he had all showed the Macas River flowing in four different directions. Not to be deterred, he threw the maps aside, persuaded some locals who spoke no English to join him and went on to lead a two-team assault of the summit.

He was the father of one of my best friends from childhood and although I learned a number of lessons from my time with Dr. Jirak, the greatest one came after his death. At his funeral, a young man who he had mentored got up and said, “Ivan taught me how to climb a mountain. The thing about climbing a mountain is that, inevitably, there comes a point when you’re done. You’ve gone as far as you can go. You’re tired and you don’t think that you can go any further. Ivan always used to say Read More →

It was the World Series. Philadelphia versus Kansas City. Tug McGraw of the Phillies was pitching. It was the fifth game of the series, the bottom of the ninth, with the Kansas City Royals behind four to three. The Royals had the bases loaded with two out. Kansas City had just won two straight games to tie the series, and now they had a chance to win a third and go ahead of Philadelphia three games to two. The game was being played in Kansas City. The ball park was packed. The crowd of over fifty thousand frantic Kansas City fans were on their feet, yelling their heads off. It was bedlam. In the middle of all that commotion, Bob Boone, the Phillies’ catcher, asked the umpire for a time out and walked to the pitcher’s mound. He said something to McGraw, turned, and walked back to home plate. You know what he said? He said, “Isn’t this exciting?”

What a wonderful thing to be able to say.

— Chuck Barris, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Just one simple question: isn’t this exciting? What I love about this quote is that not once is the outcome of the game ever mentioned. There’s nothing about the fame or endorsement deals that would follow if they won. Like the old adage about the journey and not the destination, this question asks you to be fully present and to focus on the moment. It’s a mindfulness that can be easily forgotten amidst all of your day-to-day responsibilities and stress.

But even in the best of situations, it can be easy to get caught up. Days, weeks and months can go by and you might never stop to really appreciate what is in front of you. If it’s that easy to get off track when things are good, what do you do when things take a turn for the worse? Where do you find the excitement and the appreciation when you’re in the midst of a life-threatening illness?

In my mother’s case, it began with a rash that lead to a doctors visit that lead to a cancer diagnosis. Even with her great attitude, the poor prognosis that she received made those first few weeks especially difficult. The bright spot that she was aiming for was a trip to Hawaii with her best friend that she had been planning for months. But due to some complications from her first round of treatment, she developed an infection and was advised by her doctors to cancel the trip.

The change in my mother was my first real introduction to the emotional toll cancer takes. Read More →

It was early February – a few years ago – and I was driving to visit my mother who was in the hospital for another round of chemotherapy. The roads were still a bit icy from a snowstorm earlier that day as my girlfriend and I sat waiting at an intersection. As the light turned green and I made a left hand turn, I saw that the car to our right had gone through the red light and was sliding directly towards us. We were about to be side-swiped.

I was 22 years old at the time. My father was out of the picture; my brother lived hundreds of miles away; my mother and grandmother had both been recently diagnosed with aggressive cancers; and I had just moved home to be the primary caregiver. In short, I was in way over my head.

As their diseases progressed, we navigated through a handful of hospital systems, dozens of chemotherapy regiments, bone marrow biopsies, and stem cell transplants. Some of these treatments were over a thousand miles away. And with each day, each trip and each new treatment, the stress continued to build.

I was having a difficult time adjusting to my increasingly demanding role as a new caregiver. The anxiety and stress caused me to see problems everywhere I looked. Hours of my day would disappear helping my mother with routine tasks or sitting in a hospital room waiting for a scheduled appointment that had been pushed back three, sometimes four, hours. The negativity had slowly begun to creep in.

It wasn’t until I was introduced to the writings of Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill and Jeffrey Gitomer that I began to realize that the problem wasn’t all these outside factors. No – the problem was me. I had a bad attitude. Read More →

I don’t know where or how it all began, but the Chumbawamba song that this title refers to became the rallying anthem at The American Entrepreneur as our primary host and founder, Ron Morris, entered the last few months of his life.

And boy did he get knocked down.

He got knocked down when he declared both business and personal bankruptcy at the age of 33. But he got up again.

He got knocked down when he owed $1.5 million dollars to the IRS, his bookies, and to several casinos. But he got up again (and he paid back every single penny along the way).

He got knocked down and was living out of his car with his dog (both of which the IRS attempted to take). But he got up again.

He was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer that affected his neuroendocrine cells. Over the 8 years that he battled this cancer, he got knocked down three separate times when he was told to “get his affairs in order” since he had less than 30 days to live. Read More →

The presence of the entrepreneurial spirit in the Pittsburgh region has dimmed with the June 6 passing of Ron Morris, a life-long entrepreneur, host of The American Entrepreneur Radio Program and Founding Director of Duquesne’s Entrepreneurial Studies Program.

“Sometimes people listen to you and they succeed,” said Morris in a 2011 interview when he received the first ever Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award for western Pennsylvania. “That is just as important as me succeeding. I don’t know how you get a better reward unless you’re saving lives or discovering cures for diseases; it’s very exciting.”

Morris, who grew up in Beechview, started a door-to-door egg sales route at age 10. He developed a dozen startups, including Information and Systems Research Inc., a software company that made him a multi-millionaire before the age of 30. Unfortunately, it didn’t take him very long to realize that luck, and not skill, had probably played a big part in those early successes.

Morris began gambling heavily and, in less than three years, had gone through all of the money he had made and then some. He persisted through some lean years (owing the IRS three-quarters-of-a-million dollars and probably just about the same amount to the casinos and bookies).

In his own words, “I just plain stopped doing the things that had made me successful. In truth, I lost my discipline and probably some part of my initiative.” Read More →

Playbill has announced the acquisition of the online professional theatre index Boffo Box (www.boffobox.com), which will serve as the foundation for a new subscription-based service aimed at theatre professionals known as Playbill Professional (www.playbillpro.com).

Boffo Box’s wealth of information, including up-to-date and accurate information about thousands of productions, producers, directors, casting agents, press agents, advertising agency executives and others working in the theatre industry around the country, will provide the anchor for Playbill Professional.

“Playbill has spent the last two years building and improving upon our digital properties which started with our online flagship Playbill.com (then known as Playbill Online) over 17 years ago. Playbill Professional is one piece of that puzzle which will help us better serve the professional theatre community,” said Philip S. Birsh, President and Publisher of Playbill, Inc.

“My primary goal when creating Boffo Box was to build a tool that would make the lives of those working in the theatre easier,” said Brian McMahon, Founder of Boffo Box. “With our technology and Playbill’s resources, we now have the most trusted resource for theatre professionals around the world.”

Playbill recently unveiled Playbill Vault (www.playbillvault.com), the most comprehensive searchable database of Broadway history on the web. It currently includes information on over 10,000 shows and 120,000 actors, creative teams and crew members who have worked or are currently working on Broadway, with content being added on a daily basis. Playbill’s suite of digital properties currently includes Playbill.com, PlaybillVault.com, PlaybillStore.com, PlaybillArts.com and Playbill Mobile with several new sites poised to launch in 2012.

For the full release, please visit Playbill.com.