Improbable Mentors & Happy Tangents: How firefighters and poets, truckers and nurses, soldiers and singers, and other improbable individuals can show you the way in business and creativity

New York Times bestselling author, humorist, and speaker Michael Perry delivers real-world lessons on leadership, creativity, resilience, and entrepreneurship.

Entertaining and fundamentally useful no matter the form of art or business you pursue, Improbable Mentors & Happy Tangents is a masterclass in identifying unexpected opportunities and concludes with a chapter titled, “The Most Improbable Mentor Move of All.”

This witty and insightful book details how unlikely encounters can shape creativity, business, and life. Brief, punchy, humorous, and packed with memorable characters, it is a powerful read filled with practical wisdom and warm storytelling for readers, entrepreneurs, and dreamers alike.

Raised among farmers, loggers, and cowboys, Michael Perry worked as a registered nurse and emergency medical technician before building a career as a New York Times bestselling author, humorist, and in-demand speaker with over 20 books to his name—all the while navigating the dynamic crossroads of creativity and commerce.

Author’s note:

For three decades now I’ve been my own boss, meeting, working with, advising, and writing about successful, insightful, tenacious, quirky, famous, unknown, and inspirational people of all stripes and stations.

This book grew out of a corporate speech I was asked to prepare describing my unlikeliest mentors and the lessons they taught me about how to thrive and survive where the worlds of art and business overlap.

This life never would have happened without my mentors.

My improbable mentors.

The ones who showed me the way.

The way. Not the path.

The path you gotta make on your own. But when you accumulate advice from a broad range of folks beyond and outside your area of so-called expertise, those folks are showing you the ways things can be done—no matter what you choose to do.