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INSIGHTS

INSIGHTS

1 Solution Saturdays

30Mar

Learning to Scale a Business Beyond Yourself

I have run profitable businesses for years. I am just now learning how to actually scale one. The difference between building a business around yourself and building one that grows beyond you requires a different kind of work. For most of my business career, I have been an owner-operator. I have a solid, profitable core business and a few others where I have partial ownership. I'm proud of them. They pay well and provide a good degree of freedom. But they were also...

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24Mar

The Data Delusion: Why We Lie to Ourselves and How to Stop

Let me tell you a story. It was the early 2000s, and I was hustling, running a leadership program at USC. I knew Warren Bennis from his books. He was the guy the popular leadership authors I read quoted, the "Dean of Leadership Gurus," and honestly, meeting him felt like trying to get an audience with a rock star. But I had an idea, and sometimes, you just gotta go for it. Turns out, one of my students was also in...

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16Mar

The Best Work You’ll Ever Do Is the Work Nobody Notices

On New Year's Eve, 1999, a man (who you've probably never heard of) named John Koskinen boarded a plane from Washington, D.C. to New York City. He brought a handful of reporters with him, but here's the crazy detail: He timed the flight to cross midnight at 30,000 feet. This was the man President Clinton had appointed as the country's Y2K "czar" — the person responsible for making sure that when the calendar flipped to January 1, 2000, the world's computer systems...

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09Mar

The Silent Killer of Great Teams: Fake Harmony

This a simple observation but important reminder on healthy team dynamics in business and personal life: Teams or couples that never argue aren't highly functional. They're disconnected. Let that sit for a second... The leadership team where everyone nods and agrees in the meeting, only to complain in the parking lot? Not functional. The project group that rushes to consensus just to get the call over with? Not functional. The family business or marriage where nobody brings up the elephant in the room because "we...

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02Mar

Dealing with High Conflict People

There's a simple observation that changed how I see most difficult interactions in business and in my personal life: People who are truly at peace don't: pick fights, create drama, whine and complain, or excessively worry about what others think of them. Let that sink in for a second... That colleague who keeps stirring up conflict in meetings? Not at peace. The family member who turns every holiday into a referendum on your life choices? Not at peace. The person on your team...

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23Feb

Copy of The One Thing You Need to Know (And Why It’s Never Really Just One Thing)

In 2005, I was deep in grad school. I was the kind of tired that comes from too many late nights, too much bad coffee, and the creeping suspicion that the more you learn, the less you know. I did a lot of reading outside my assigned school reading and I picked up Marcus Buckingham's The One Thing You Need to Know. I recognized Marcus from his work with Gallup and I was a big fan of StrengthsFinders at the time. Marcus...

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16Feb

The High Opportunity Cost of “I Already Know That”

This week I got humbled in the gym in under five minutes. Not by a missed lift. Not by an extreme workout. By an isometric warm up. Even if you are not into working out, stay with me. I have been training for decades. I understand mechanics. Tendon loading. Joint angles. Explosive sequencing. I have read the books. Followed the programs. Logged the sets. I have used different types of dynamic warm ups and understood why they matter. And yet this week, integrating specific...

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09Feb

How Ten Seconds of Thinking Changes Everything

In the early 2000s, just out of college, I read Getting Things Done by David Allen. This was long before “inbox zero” was something anyone seriously believed in. I didn’t know it at the time, but that book quietly rewired how I thought about work, stress, and clarity. There was one idea that stuck with me more than any productivity system or tool. David said his life’s mission was for every discussion and meeting to end with one simple question: What’s the next...

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02Feb

Your Team Isn’t Broken. Your System Is.

Before blaming your team and hiring better people: Try creating better systems, first. If... A client is frustrated or leaving. A team member is confused or stuck. A deadline gets missed or a handoff breaks down. It’s probably not because someone is lazy or bad at their job. It’s probably because the system is outdated or broken. As a leader I’ve lived this. I’ve caused it. And I’ve let it slide too long before finally fixing it. The truth is that friction or loss usually comes from...

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26Jan

Rebellion Looks Different Now

As a kid, rebellion looked like rock music, late nights, middle fingers to the system, and living life on my own terms. It was doing the opposite of what I felt "the system" or my parents or school expected of me. Now? It looks like waking up early, drinking a gallon of water, hitting two workouts, eating clean, taking cold showers, reading and learning, stacking and attacking high priority tasks, and doing it all again the next day, every day. Why? I...

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