Today’s Precept Nine I also learned from IU Track Coach Ron Helmer: You don’t have to feel your best to do your best. Don’t build in excuses to fail. Succeed even in the face of perceived adversities.

Take care.
​--Fred

Today's story involves soaring to success in pole vaulting. Precept Eight is: Prepare intensely and methodically, but when the moment to perform comes, trust your preparation and just let go.

Take care.
​--Fred

Precept Seven is deceptively simple but essential: Always do the right thing, even when no one knows and appreciates that you are and even when the right thing looks to some like the wrong thing.

Take care.
​--Fred

Today's precept pairs well with last week's precept and story: Choose what you judge to be better opportunities over higher salaries.

Take care.
​--Fred

We go back to my third year of law school in the story for Precept Five: When choosing among opportunities, always choose the one that will open the most additional opportunities for the future.

​Click the image below to view the video:

​Take care,
​--Fred

Seize every opportunity to the fullest. Own it. Exceed expectations. Confirm the confidence that has been placed in you and show that you are capable of even more. Learn more about my fourth precept in this week's video:

​Click below to view.

​Take care.
​--Fred

Today's three minute video is on Precept Three: Accept opportunities presented to you even if you’re not sure you are ready, or even capable, because all that matters is that the person offering you the opportunity believes you are.

​Click here to view:
​

​Take care.
​--Fred

In today's video, I cover Precept Two from Making Your Own Luck: From a Skid Row Bar to Rebuilding IU Athletics, which is: Our greatest disappointments can create our greatest opportunities if we don’t let them deter us.

Click the image below to view this week's three-minute video: 

Take care. 
-- Fred

In the book, I include ten "precepts" on how you can make your own luck by recognizing and seizing opportunities. Each week for the next ten weeks, I'm going to share the outline of one of these precepts with you.

In this week's two-and-a-half-minute video, I touch on Precept One: Opportunities often come at inconvenient times. Don’t let that prevent you from seizing them. Find a way.

Take care,
​
--Fred

A major goal of mine for rolling out the book is to involve to the greatest extent possible local, independent bookstores. You may notice that I have listed multiple such bookstores from which you can preorder the book to help support those bookstores. Please let me know if you have a favorite local, independent bookstore you’d like me to ask to be added to the preorder list, carry the book, and/or otherwise get involved.
 
I’m having a ball getting to know these bookstores. Tiffany Phillips, the owner of the wonderful Wild Geese Bookshop in Franklin, has been a godsend. She has already agreed to host a book launch (COVID precautions willing) at her shop on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Tiffany is a real pro who expertly and generously opened my eyes to some of the things I should be thinking about with regard to book launches.
 
I also really enjoyed meeting and corresponding with Elysia Smith, the owner of the very fun Irvington Vinyl and Books. I bought two terrific books from Elysia herself for my grandchildren and shamelessly asked her to carry my book, which she has agreed to do.
 
On a recent trip to Bloomington, I dropped in the Book Corner. It is an iconic, independent, local bookstore that has been family-owned by the Spannuths since 1964!  I have been enjoying visiting there since I was a student at IU.  After buying a summer-read novel for my wife Barbara and The Essential New York Times Book of Cocktails to replace my Old Mr. Boston Bartender’s Guide (which I ruined in a tragic booze-spilling accident), the very engaging clerk agreed to carry my book.
 
Indy Reads is not only a tremendous program with a vision of 100% literacy for all, it traditionally has operated an outstanding bookstore in Indianapolis’s Fountain Square neighborhood. While the store is currently closed for remodeling, its marking director, Sam Ferrante, is working with us in a variety of ways, including allowing the book to be preordered through the virtual Indy Reads Bookstore.
 
Please support these and the many other, local, independent bookstores all around Indiana. I hope that Making Your Own Luck becomes one of the most local/independent bookstore-friendly books to be published in a very long time. 

Take care. 
-- Fred