Why I wrote Rules for Renegades

In July 2002 I merged my last company. I say last instead of most recent or current because that’s what it felt like. I was a serial entrepreneur. I’d been building companies since 1981 and I just kind of felt, well, done. So I merged it. 

Oh I still stuck around, transitioned, planned on being involved in some way for years to come, but something inside me had changed. Not only was I really tired from working too hard for too long too alone, but as I looked around my six bedroom home that only two people lived in, as I drove my latest greatest Mercedes Benz, as I wore my Armani suits, as I schmoozed with the players of Silicon Valley, it all just seemed flat, pointless, stupid, life-force-sucking. Sure I was giving tons of money to non-profits, cramming volunteering opportunities into my already over-scheduled life, but it wasn’t satisfying. Something was off.

So I got rid of things.

I learned this when I was a monk. There’s a Tibetan Buddhist practice where one determines what one is not, thus eventually uncovering what one truly is. So I sold my McMansion and my Mercedes. I bundled up my Armani suits and gave them to a welfare-to-work program. And I moved to Napa, to a little house on the edge of a vineyard.

Then two things happened:

1)      phone calls and emails kept flooding in from people saying either that they needed help with their businesses or that they thought I needed to tell my story—the world was undergoing a massive influx of entrepreneurial thinking and I could make a significant contribution.

2)      my father was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. I started thinking about my mortality. If I died tomorrow, what would be left undone? That’s when I KNEW I had to write this book, tell these stories, help people develop a new perspective on power, prosperity, peace.

Over the next 11 months I flew to my parents’ home in L.A. often. Some trips were hopeful. Some trips were devastating. But through it all I felt more alive than I had for years, I felt more raw, more scared, more uncertain, more lost. I’d always seen myself as a survivor, a little scrappy, but a trooper who could control, manage, rescue anyone or any situation. But I couldn’t save my dad. He died on December 24, 2003.

I didn’t want to get out of bed, didn’t want to shower or get dressed or do anything. I felt dead inside, numb, disinterested in everything I’d loved before, and very very tired. I signed up for a writing class to give myself a reason to leave the house. I started writing and I couldn’t stop, memories poured out of me, so I wrote and wrote and wrote. As I reflected on my career and life I realized I wasn’t done yet. I had to tell my story so others would benefit, maybe just from the entertainment of it, maybe from the lessons I’ve learned, maybe from a little of both.

Rules for Renegades is a book that de-mystifies success. We all want more meaning in our lives and careers. We want to make more money, have more fun. This book shows you how, regardless of your education, background, past careers.