When I was a young leader, our company followed a rhythm you could set your watch by. We would hold a strategic planning meeting in the spring to review our core purpose and values, progress on our BHAG, and update the five-year plan. Over the summer, we turned that plan into a budget that we’d…
I was heads down developing workshop content for a client’s team meeting. I had the outline open, the cursor was blinking, and I was stuck. I knew what I wanted to do, but the structure wasn’t coming together. The longer I stared at it, the more my mind started to wander, and before I knew…
After a 5-hour flight, we were finally taxiing into the gate. There was a lot of excitement around me. I was headed to LA for training, but a large group of people nearby was headed to Hawaii. They had a tight connection to make the flight to their dream vacation, and they were gathering their…
I spent two hours the other morning struggling to write a single email. I made two different starts. Neither of them felt right. As the deadline for sending it loomed, my frustration and anger rose, further clouding my thinking. My natural instinct in those moments is to bear down. To push harder, forcing the words…
When I was about 11, my parents took my sister and me skiing for the first time. They weren’t skiers, but they wanted us to have the experience. We spent a day in lessons, and by the next afternoon, we were practicing turns on the bunny slope. Right at the bottom of that slope stood…
I’m trying a new experiment that I want to share with you. If you’ve been following along for a while, you know I’ve experienced considerable financial anxiety throughout my entrepreneurial journey. While I’ve made a lot of progress toward equanimity, I still worry about money more than I’d like. A few years ago, I simplified things. I moved…
January’s bleak. It’s cold outside. My news feed is depressing. There are no real holidays until Easter, and no days off until Memorial Day. It makes me want to hibernate. But I have some big goals that I want to accomplish this year. I’m creating, growing, and refining my business. I have a kid who…
I am guessing you have some big plans for 2026. You may be aiming to grow your business, launch a new service, or finally land that next-level role. I have been there. In the past, when I wanted to reach a big milestone, I would set aggressive goals—deadlines, targets, the whole bit. And when I…
You’ve reached a new level. Maybe you just landed the COO role, took over the family business, or finally pushed your own venture past the survival stage. You put in the late nights, mastered the details, and proved you could deliver. You have the title, the team, and the reputation. By all accounts, you’ve arrived….
As I listened, I could feel this business owner’s voice drop into lower and lower energy cadences. She was telling me about the situation in her business—the tangle of team dynamics, family members involved in the operations, and a history of decisions that had layered on top of one another. It was complicated. It was…