I signed up to an email list of a brilliant and famous author over a year ago and hadn’t hear anything since. No blog posts. No regular email. Nothing interesting or relevant to me. Nothing to look forward to. No connection to each other.

The author had my permission but it wasn’t much of a two way street. Two weeks out from the release of the next book I got an email offering me incentives to pre-order. I began to wonder if the author was excited about the impact the book might have on my life and work, or if I was just making up the numbers on the road to a New York Times Bestseller. I haven’t ordered the book yet.

So the third secret is….generosity first last and always.

If you can’t afford to be generous you can’t afford to be selfish either.

Image by acb.