The People You’ve Been Misreading
Almost two years ago, I was on a call with a business owner, walking him through the finer points of leadership patience, when I heard a soft knock at my office door. I knew that knock. I eventually opened the door, and my grandson Joseph was standing there, looking up at me with those eyes […]
The Ending You Already Wrote
A few years ago I took the most reliable thing I had ever built and tore it down on purpose. For a long time my consulting business ran on a model that worked. I kept a roster of twenty-five to thirty clients, the monthly revenue was significant and steady, and I delivered specific results because […]
The Trade You Were Told You Had to Make
A few years ago my wife, Megin, and I spent months planning what we called the ultimate family adventure. A week and a half at Disneyland with all five of our children, our two daughters-in-law, and our grandson Joseph. We coordinated schedules, reserved dining, and managed the kind of logistics that make a military operation […]
Your Job Changed and Nobody Told You
Somewhere between your fifth hire and your fiftieth, your job changed. There was no announcement. No memo, no new title, no meeting where someone sat you down and told you that the thing you had built your whole identity around was no longer the thing the company needed from you. The work simply became a […]
The Owner Who Stopped Being Needed
There’s a particular thing you’ve probably filed under “not for me.” A company that keeps its quality and its clients and its standards, and does not route every real decision through you to get there. You’ve watched other owners seem to have it. Somewhere along the way you decided they were built differently, or they […]
Why Do Leadership Training When It Never Seems to Stick?
If you searched “why do leadership training”, I suspect you already know the answer everyone gives, and I suspect some quiet part of you does not believe it. The answer everyone gives is that you do it to grow, and to build the kind of leaders a company needs to get to the next thing. […]
Is My Business Too Dependent on Me? Here’s What It Looks Like When It Isn’t
If you searched “is my business too dependent on me”, you did not come here for the answer. You already have the answer. You have had it since the last vacation you spent on the phone in a parking lot, or since the Tuesday you realized the reason a decision had been sitting for three […]
How to Succeed in Business Without Sacrificing Family (You Were Never Supposed to Choose)
I watched my daughter disappear for two years, and I was standing right there the whole time. Grace was in sixth grade when the oversized hoodies started, worn like armor to hide a body she had decided was too much to be seen. Her hair went up into a tight bun and stayed. Then the […]
How to Build a Strong Company Culture (Your Systems Already Decided It For You)
The quarter came in under, and for a while nobody could explain why. This was the quarter that always carried the others, the one we leaned on when the math got tight everywhere else, and for the first time I could remember it landed short. I open with that because it is the most useful […]
How Do I Build a Business That Runs Without Me? Start by Becoming Less Necessary.
“Josh, what should we do?” For most of my career, those five words were the best part of my day. I loved being the answer. I had wired my whole sense of worth to that one moment, the pause where everyone turned and waited for me, and I almost always delivered. These days the same […]