At my 60th birthday party a couple of years back, something interesting happened. A number of my friends started talking about retirement—counting down the days, making plans to “slow down,” fantasizing about endless yoga retreats in Mexico and Netflix binges. They looked at me like I had three heads when I said I have zero desire to join them.
If anything? I want to speed up.
Because here’s the thing: 2025 gave me eight reasons why I can’t imagine doing anything else. This year, Summit Press Publishers released eight books, and from each one I learned something that reminded me why this work matters. Not in some abstract, mission-statement kind of way (ew), but in the holy shit, this is exactly why I get out of bed in the morning kind of way.
So let me tell you about these books and what they taught me—not just about writing and publishing, but about what makes humans tick and how we navigate this complicated, messy, beautiful existence.
May Busch: The Art of Strategic Visibility
Let’s start with May Busch’s Visible: How to Advance Your Career Without Playing Politics, Selling Your Soul, or Working Yourself into the Ground.
Here’s what May taught me: showing up and standing out isn’t about being the loudest person in the room or perfecting your power pose in the bathroom mirror. It’s about developing presence—becoming far more self-aware about how you impact your environment and demonstrating genuine people skills.
The goal is to become visible, to be seen as a leader, not to shrink in some corner looking like even you know you don’t belong. (And yes, we’ve all been there, pretending we’re fascinated by the wall art at networking events.)
But here’s what really impressed me about May: watching how she’s marketed and promoted her book post-publication is a thing of beauty. She’s leveraged the opportunity better than most authors I know. She understands that the book is just the beginning—it’s what you do with it that determines whether it becomes a doorstop or a door-opener.
May’s not just visible; she’s strategic about her visibility. There’s a difference.
Cecilia and Jason Hilkey: Parenting Without Losing Your Mind
Cecilia and Jason Hilkey’s The Perfectly Imperfect Family: Real Solutions for Mindful Parents Navigating Today’s Biggest Challenges had nearly 60 authors share their stories about raising kids in today’s world.
The overarching theme that stuck with me? To be an effective parent, you have to connect with yourself first and foremost. You have to be able to express your emotions rather than suppress them—otherwise, you interrupt connection and sew chaos in the household. The parent’s feelings often dominate the landscape if they’re not acknowledged, and those unacknowledged feelings become the weather system everyone else has to navigate.
One more thing I learned from this book: there’s a reason I’m not in the parenting world. Reading 60 different perspectives on raising kids made me examine my own choices (for good and for bad) and deeply respectful of people who are in the trenches every day. Parents are doing the hardest job on the planet, and most of them are doing it while also trying to hold down careers, maintain relationships, and remember to eat something that isn’t directly from a box.
James Twyman: The Power of “I Don’t Know, Maybe”
From James Twyman’s I Don’t Know, Maybe, I Love You: De-Polarize Your Family, Business, Country, and the World…
I learned that people hold an opinion because of personal history. They have a backstory that makes their position perfectly reasonable to them. And if you know this—if you really internalize it—you’re not so quick to take offense because someone dares to disagree with you on an important issue, like the last U.S. election.
I’m going to way oversimplify this so don’t come at me with guns blasting…Our addiction to being right is half the problem. We can’t tolerate any other perspective. We’ve forgotten how to say “I don’t know” or “maybe” without feeling like we’re surrendering something precious.
I also learned something from James from an essay he wrote for The Wisdom Collection, another of this year’s releases. His willingness to take an idea, run it “down the street” as he says, and see if it has legs or should be abandoned is a thing of beauty. He doesn’t take “failure” as a sign of anything other than an idea that didn’t pan out. He doesn’t perceive risk the way I do—and I’m still trying to figure out if that’s genius or insanity or some magical combination of both.
The Wisdom Collection: 19 Ways to Change Your Life
Speaking of The Wisdom Collection—we had 19 contributors, and each had a piece of advice that had changed their lives.
I’m fascinated by the conversations I’ve had around this anthology, who focused on which essay and why. More than a few people mentioned Jennifer Jordan’s piece, “This Life,” because it put words to letting go of the idea that your life should have gone a certain way.
To have a baby, or not. To be timed out of the choice—that’s a bugger for a lot of women, not just Jennifer. So accepting that this life was about a different focus, that the next life could provide a different focus and experience? That’s a pretty heady thought. It’s also incredibly freeing if you can wrap your head around it.
The beauty of an anthology like this is that different essays hit different readers at exactly the moment they need to hear that particular message. It’s like a buffet of wisdom—take what serves you, leave what doesn’t, and come back when you’re hungry for something else.
Roland Cochrun: The Book I Talk About Constantly
I’m going to swing way out to Roland Cochrun’s The High Achievers Guide to Sex Addiction Recovery: A Proven Blueprint for Successful Professionals to Overcome Sex and Porn Addiction.
People often ask me if I have to share the opinions of my authors, and in short, I do not. I want a good clean thesis and a well-put-together argument, which is exactly what Roland provided. I’m not the target reader for this book, but I’ve got to tell you—I talk about this one all the time. I share it with people in my orbit because it’s utterly fascinating.
What makes a high-achieving male so susceptible to porn and sex addiction? What makes a character like Donald Trump tick? What are they thinking when they go after anything in a skirt, particularly when they’re in the public eye and subject to scrutiny? When they have so much to lose?
Well, this book will explain. And holy shit, what an eye-opener.
Here’s the thing that makes this book relevant even if you’re not struggling with sex addiction: if you feel like you’ve got to prove your worth all the time, if you seek validation in one form or another, this book speaks to you too. Because at its core, it’s about the mechanisms we develop to cope with shame and the desperate need to feel worthy.
Roland understands high achievers from the inside out because he is one. And his willingness to be brutally honest about his own struggles makes this book powerful in a way that academic distance never could.
Brick by Brick: The Book That Nearly Killed Me
A book that reflects my opinions in full? My new release, Brick by Brick: The No Bullsh*t Guide to Building Books That Get Read.
I swear to God, I thought the revision of my 2014 book How to Eat the Elephant would be a quick and easy project. I was so wrong.
Because the writing and publishing world has dramatically changed. Social media, AI, the publishing options that have sprung from the pavement like weeds after rain—all of that affects how we write, create interest in our books, and get our books out into the world.
After nearly 20 years in the business, I can tell you some things never change. Doubt, overwhelm, self-sabotage, perfectionism, Imposter Syndrome—we still have to deal with all of that. But the tools we have? The strategies that work? The platform-building that’s now essential rather than optional? That’s all evolved in ways I couldn’t have predicted a decade ago.
Writing this revision taught me that I still have strong opinions about almost everything related to writing and publishing. It also taught me that I’m never, ever doing a “quick and easy” book revision again. There’s no such thing.
Michael Feeley: The Master of Reinvention
Can I tell you how much I love Michael Feeley? Even before I get into his book, The Next Act: A Complete Guide to Career Change, Professional Reinvention, and Finding Work That Matters.
If you ever want to know what separates successful folks from the folks who stay in a job they hate for years on end, read what Michael has to say. Because he’s not just the master of reinvention—he’s a pro when it comes to building relationships that can affect change.
He’s just as willing to give you the shirt off his back as he is to ask you for a professional favor. And that combination is rocket fuel if you want help launching into you next act, as opposed to settling for status quo.
This guy makes shit happen. Not through manipulation or politics or playing games, but through genuine connection and strategic thinking about what he wants to create next. He understands that career change isn’t just about finding a new job—it’s about reinventing yourself while staying true to who you are at your core.
Watching Michael navigate his own transitions while helping others navigate theirs has been an education in itself. He practices what he preaches, which is rarer than you’d think in the self-help world.
Aleksander Sinigoj: From Slovenia to the World
Finally, there’s Aleksander Sinigoj’s Victor Not Victim: How to Create Meaningful and Lasting Change in Your Life.
Aleksander has one hell of a following in his home country of Slovenia, and he has every intention of becoming an international sensation in the self-help world. And you know what? The guy has the gumption to make it happen.
He tells the story of being an “incredibly poor provider” for his family, one who borrows money from his elderly grandmother because he can’t seem to get out of his own way. In other words, he knows what it’s like to hit rock bottom.
After landing in the hospital with heart failure, drowning in debt, and feeling like a loser, he made ONE decision that changed everything. Just one. Not ten, not a complete life overhaul—one decision that created a domino effect.
Today, he lectures on four continents, conducts live and online workshops attended by thousands, and has authored multiple books and audio programs. The transformation is real, and more importantly, it’s sustainable.
Reading Aleksander’s story reminded me that rock bottom can be a foundation if you’re willing to build from there. It’s not pretty, and it’s not comfortable, but it’s possible.
(By the way, I totally want to visit Slovenia. It sounds like a gorgeous place, and now I have a contact who can show me around.)
Why I’m Not Slowing Down
So yeah. Eight books. Eight completely different perspectives on how to live, work, lead, parent, reinvent yourself, and create meaning in a world that often feels like it’s spinning off its axis.
These books taught me about visibility and vulnerability, about the power of admitting “I don’t know,” about the hidden mechanisms that drive our behavior, about the possibility of reinvention at any age, about the importance of connecting with yourself before you can connect with others.
But more than anything, they reminded me why I love this work.
I get to midwife ideas into the world. I get to work with brilliant, complicated, driven people who have something to say and the courage to say it. I get to learn from every single author who trusts me with their expertise and their story.
My friends at that birthday party were talking about winding down. I’m just getting started.
Because when you spend your days helping people transform their knowledge and experience into books that actually help readers—books that land, that resonate, that create real change—why the hell would you ever want to slow down?
I’m 60, and I’m greedy for more of this. More books. More authors. More lessons. More opportunities to help experts and storytellers get their message into the world in ways that matter.
So here’s to 2025 and these eight remarkable books. And here’s to 2026 and whatever comes next.
I’ll be here, doing exactly what I’m meant to do, with zero plans to slow down.
Want to learn more about any of these books or discuss your own book project? Reach out at [email protected].
