However I ended up with my brain, the punchline is that it’s the only one where I’ve got full insider access. I know its informational and creative limits, and I’ve got a rough idea of what I can do before it just shuts down. Here is the neat thing about that: knowing your limits means that you know where you can stretch. Even so, all that stretching can get tiring, and with me being new to firsthand entrepreneuring, my recent mental calisthenics could have worn me out except for one skill. I learned to pick a brain.

This exercise of picking from other people’s brains recently helped on a project from Rich and Ron. They wanted me to write content for a website about cats. Now, I love cats—my ex-girlfriend had several and I never sneezed around them—but deep in my heart, I’ve always been a dog person. That said, it is about seventy-three goldfish, five rabbits, and my ex-girlfriend’s three cats later that I am still dogless. That, and my only firsthand experience with pets was with those to whom the word “personality” applied about as well as Scotch tape applies to wax. (Fish and rabbits are as personable as carpet.)

I worked on the project a while under mere creative willpower. Cats, after all, are just cats—right? That question and others (“Do all kittens sleep all day? Are hairballs indicative or personality or just hygiene? Are black cats naturally more sinister or is that just Hollywood?”) eventually prompted me to do some brain picking. Picking a cat brain might have been pretty effective, but with the inherent communication issues, I settled for a couple of cat lovers.

First up was my lifelong friend Cameron. (We grew up in the same neighborhood.) While I had done some cat sitting for them, his family’s cat experience was even more extensive than mine with goldfish. To me, it seemed like the cats acted differently each time I saw them. Maybe they just knew that I was a dog person. Armed with my concerns, I went to Cameron, making assumptions, hazarding guesses, and drawing conclusions. He agreed with some and discarded others, but what I took in as unformed creative sludge came out with purpose and direction. This taught me two things about brain picking, and the first was the importance of that initial creative willpower. The second realization was simply this: no matter the subject, you probably know someone who can give you a lead.

The experience with Cameron so emboldened me that I went to my ex-girlfriend for her insights. Her responses lined up with Cameron’s. Not only was the cat site approaching authenticity, but I had mastered my brain-picking abilities. I discovered that people will talk if they have a passion for your subject. Their ideas will feed the process you’ve begun and you can keep checking sources until it all falls into place. I started with my idea and got everyone I could to talk to me. Cameron and my ex didn’t grant me full insider access, but that’s okay. I had that in my own brain; their advice just greased my mental gears. It doesn’t really matter, then, that my brain’s the only one I’ve got. There are others out there to be picked.