The most important work you do is not what you get paid for; it’s who you are. When you improve a client’s CTR by 9%, that makes them happy. Listening to their situation and realizing that their team is on the brink of burnout and they desperately need new business makes them feel heard and gives…
Maybe owning a firm hasn’t turned out to be what you thought it was going to be. You’re doing mostly sales, bookkeeping, and administration when you thought you’d be having client strategy meetings and developing breakthrough concepts. The days are long, and the rewards are, so far, thin. The honeymoon is over, and you’re left…
“Focus is a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do” – John Carmack You are on a mission. You wouldn’t be doing this work if you weren’t. There’s something fundamental that you know is broken, that’s intolerable. Some opportunity, that, if you don’t grab it, someone else will. But it’s not going…
“Hi, my name’s Brad, and I’m a doomscroller.” It started with the pandemic. I wasn’t much of a social media consumer before that, but I wanted to stay on top of the news when the virus hit. Things were changing all the time, so I kept checking back. Then it was the protests, then the…
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” — Bruce Lee We all want to be exceptional. If to achieve my goals, I have to be exceptional every day, that’s going to be exhausting! I’m not sure I have it in me to keep that up day after day after day. But the…
Welcome back! I’m hopeful that you’ve gotten a good break at the end of a long year and are back at it, ready to take on 2021 with new vigor and enthusiasm. I had some great downtime this holiday season. My business partner gave us a back yard fire pit! We were grateful for the…
Don’t tell me your priorities. Show me your calendar. ~ Shane Parrish We’ve talked this week about slowing down our pace, to give room for rest and reflection. One of the things I’ve been reflecting on is how I’ve spent my time in 2020. This year was exceptional, but some of the ways I reacted…
When someone says, “She’s a great leader,” here’s what they really mean: She knows where her organization is going and communicates that relentlessly. She knows how to orient team members to success and hold them accountable. She communicates tasks specifically, with timelines and measurements. She roots for her team to succeed; she believes that they…
For me, it started slowly. In the beginning, I reserved Fridays: no client meetings, no commitments. Friday became the day I worked on my business. I was panicked! What would clients say if I told them I couldn’t meet on Friday? No one even noticed. So then I got excited, what if I reserved Mondays…
Running my own business produced some of the best days of my life, and some of the worst. I’ve won big deals and then lost them again. I’ve hired the perfect person who would transform my business only to have them accept a counter-offer. I’ve sent an offer out to my list that got a great response,…