One of my favorite books of all time is a short little gem by Steven Pressfield called The War of Art. In it, Pressfield outlines what he calls “The Resistance.” The Resistance is a cosmic force that rises to oppose any form of change or any work you do to make yourself, or the world,…
Making significant decisions is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. When you are making decisions outside of your experience base, or when the landscape has changed, and the data isn’t pointing in a definite direction, this gets even more challenging! Maybe there are strong opinions in your team that are leading in different…
As business leaders we have one job, and that’s to make decisions. But how do we make decisions? What process do we use? Do we “go with our gut”? Or look at all the angles and reason it out? The best business decisions are those that are made purposefully, without wasting a lot of time…
In our last email, I asked you what you’d do if one of our best employees quits. The most common reply that I got was to try to win Nadir back, for example: “What can we do to keep you on the team?” ~ Frank McClung “Nadir, are you absolutely sure about this? Is there…
So a few weeks ago I talked about three bad ways to measure your daily progress (that we all fall for) and as I was looking for some better ways to track progress I came across this post by @macsparky about a method he’s been using, it’s simple, effective and I kind of like it…
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”…
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…
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…
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,…
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…