I was sitting in a cafe last week when I noticed Every Breath You Take come on the background music. I’m not a big Sting fan, but it got me thinking. Sting wrote this song in 1982, and he’s still making money on it today! From Wikipedia: The song is considered to be both the Police's and Sting's  signature song, and in 2010 was estimated to generate between a quarter and a third of Sting's music publishing income. In May 2019, “Every Breath You Take” was recognized by BMI as being the most played song in radio history with nearly 15 million radio plays. All of a sudden, my mind is blown. As an “expertise business,” I work hard every day to make my client’s businesses better. I write a … [Read more...]

Bosses don't get the same feedback as other people because it’s costly for people to call you out. When you embarrass someone, or get angry for no reason, or say something inappropriate, there may be an awkward silence, but there’s rarely someone getting up in your grill about it. So if you’ve been a “boss” for a while, and especially if you’ve always worked for yourself, you may have poor self-awareness. What does it look like to have poor self-awareness? Do people feel safe walking in your office with bad news, or do they hide it until the last possible moment? Does your team invite you to their brainstorm meetings looking forward to the energy and ideas you'll bring, or do they … [Read more...]

A week or so ago, I wrote about The vulnerability of the business owner, and that post generated a lot of responses! There are a couple that I’d like to lean into over the next few emails.  One business owner replied to that email by saying: Thank you for acknowledging that feeling vulnerable is inherent to entrepreneurship. It’s risky, and risk means you’re vulnerable. It feels more powerful to start from that point and figure out how to manage that experience than to avoid it. This response struck me because it highlights one of the critical emotional intelligence skills that I see in successful business owners. The ability to be with what is.  When we face risk, … [Read more...]

One of the challenges of owning your own business is that you are both the CEO, responsible for the day-to-day decisions and direction of the company AND you are also the principal investor responsible for the long-term health of the business and interested in improving the equity value of the firm. To use a sports analogy, you are both the owner and the coach. That’s not a structure that has a positive track record in professional sports! From time-to-time, I recommend that you stop and take off your CEO hat, and put on your owner hat for a few minutes and see what kind of job your CEO is doing…  (This is something I do with clients — helping them to have a performance review.) Since … [Read more...]

If I stop at the end of a busy day and think, "Did I do a good job today?" I tend to think about 3 things -- did I crush my to-do list? Did I win the email battle? And, did I put money in the bank? But if I stop to think about it, these aren't great ways for me to measure my performance. What does my to-do list measure? If my to-do list is backed up, that’s bad. I’m not keeping the commitments that I’ve made to my team, my clients, and myself. I start to feel overwhelmed and discouraged and like I’m no good at my job.  But realistically, the chaos on my to-do list is usually a reflection of my overly optimistic self assuming that I can get everything done. It’s certainly not a … [Read more...]

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. ~Brene Brown Business owners are often indistinguishable from their businesses. Our self-worth and our identity are all tied up in our business performance. When the business performs well, we’re champions; when it doesn’t, we can feel worthless. Each of our decisions, good, or bad, nudge our business one way or another. Luck, fortune, and the global economy also get their licks in — shaping our success, or failure, in ways we don’t want to admit. And all of that, or a good amount at least, is out there for our employees, our clients, even our family and friends, to see. So ✅ uncertainty, ✅ risk, and ✅ emotional … [Read more...]

Last week I was talking to two different business owners, both were in similar circumstances, but they told me very different stories. Business Owner 1 This business owner runs a marketing firm that focuses on urban real estate companies. They had some terrible years in 2008 - 2012 — but the owner told a very positive story about that time. He told me about how the adversity of those times made him stronger as a leader. The agency was forced to branch out slightly from its prior target market. They started working with some for-profit student housing companies and found some REITs who were “flipping” apartment buildings that needed their help. Both of those sectors are going strong right … [Read more...]

I just got back from a family trip two weeks ago, and then a conference last week, so my to-do list is bursting at the seams as I try to get caught up. This is the kind of situation where I need to be 100% focused and productive, but my brain is all, "We need to do all the things! No, not that thing, some other thing! I don’t want to do that thing it’s messy and scary…AAARGhhh." So, yeah, when I need to be the most productive, my brain has a hard time focusing and wants to clear my inbox instead. So here are some things I’m doing this week to try to get things done when my brain’s not cooperating. If you can relate, read on. 1. Set a timer When I want to start something that my mind … [Read more...]