About

Welcome to Productive Flourishing!

I know, “Productive Flourishing” isn’t the easiest of names to spell or say. Let’s take a look at it real quickly:

Productive

achieving or producing a significant amount or result

Flourishing

1 – to grow vigorously; succeed; thrive; prosper

2 – From Aristotle, to be at our peak human functioning, thriving physically, emotionally, socially, mentally, and spiritually

Our meaning: we thrive through principled action. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about life or business.

Productive Flourishing focuses on how to convert ideas into action and results that enable thriving in life and business. It’s for those “crazy” changemakers – the creatives, the entrepreneurs, the possibilitarians, and the weirdos – who see how the world can be better and are willing to use their heads, hearts, and hands to actually do something rather than sit on the sidelines. The business focus is on startups, small/micro businesses, and small teams in larger organizations that have the ability to make change happen.

Why is an academically-trained ethicist and former Army logistics officer – that’s me, Charlie – interested so much in business? Take a look around you. Business is the vehicle for social change in the 21st Century. If you’re in a hurry to make a difference in the world, you’ll probably figure out that a business outlet is the best way to do it.

Some of our conversations will be about how to come up with, capture, and cultivate great ideas and innovations – what we’ll just reference as creativity – whereas other parts will focus on the implementation and action on those ideas. Let’s call that productivity.

There will be a lot about business in here, too. Rather than just talk about all the particular methods you might get into – I know we all love how-tos – we’ll also talk about the why-fors that come with strategy. Most of my spin will be around effectiveness rather than efficiency. I follow Drucker’s line on this one: “Efficiency is doing the thing right; effectiveness is doing the right thing.” But there’s no reason we can’t do the right things right.

Lastly – but most importantly – you’ll see posts geared just towards human flourishing. The end of all human action is flourishing, and so much of the world of business literature overlooks the human element. Inside the machines are humans, and, if we want better machines, we’ll need to get to the humans inside them.

Yes, this can get a bit complex, deep, and interlinked, but no more than life and business is. As Einstein said, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

If you’re new here and want to dive right in, the best place to start is on the New Here? page.

If you don’t read anything else, please read this: what can you do to have a more productive, prosperous, and wholesome day? Go do that.

About Team PF

Our mission is to help creative people thrive in life and business. We serve creative professionals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses around the world. We do this by sharing valuable content, speaking, coaching, consulting, leading workshops, writing books, and developing instructional materials. If there’s a way of getting you the information, motivation, and mojo you need to unleash your creative force on the world, we do it.

Our work is routinely cited, showcased, and shared in places like Inc.com, BNET, Project Domino, Lifehacker, Copyblogger, Problogger, Zenhabits, and others. Though we do a lot of playing, we don’t mess around about what we do. Helping people thrive is our business and business is thriving.

That’s what we do and how we do it. And here’s who does it…

Charlie Gilkey | Writer – Speaker – Business Advisor
In addition to being the chief writer, coach, consultant, speaker, and program developer, Charlie is the principal and captain of this small team of awesome people. He’s currently writing a book that people move beyond bootstrapping and become better small business executives. If you’d like to learn more about Charlie, check out his longer bio.


Angela Wheeler | Operations Manager
Angela is our operations manager. She coordinates with the rest of the team, makes sure our projects stay moving and on schedule, and handles the financial management of the business. Her most challenging job is keeping Charlie in check, but being married to him helps out with that. She’s co-founder and co-owner of the business and served in an advisory role until she started working full time as the operations manager in 2010.


Marissa Bracke | Ops & Customer Care Specialist
Marissa is our operations expert and customer care specialist – she calls herself a Can-Do-Ologist, which is apt because, just about whatever it is, she can do it. There are few things that happen in the business without her direct involvement, input, and execution. She’s been working with us since 2009 and lives in Ossian, Indiana. If you’d like to learn more about her Can-Do Fu, check out her services.


Megan Elizabeth Morris | Community Catalyst
Megan is our community catalyst. She’s responsible for hitting the streets and engaging with people about what we’re up to and seeing where and how we can help reach the people we serve. Megan’s been working with us since 2010 but started her evangelist role in 2011. She lives in Austin, TX and is also the catalyst-in-charge at Ideaschema. Find more right here.


Lisa Wood | Web Fairy
Lisa is our primary web designer and maintainer, but we like to call her our Web Fairy because she works magic on a daily basis. She’s responsible for the design you see here and keeps the site running smoothly. She also gracefully deals with all the messes Charlie makes when he touches the backend of the blog. She’s been with us since 2009 and lives in Stowe, Vermont. If you’d like Lisa to be your Web Fairy, too, check out Sprout New Media.