The Thanksgiving Test: Could Your Business Run Without You for a Week?
Take Thanksgiving week off and watch what happens. Five questions that show whether your business can run without you, and what to fix in the first quarter.
Take Thanksgiving week off and watch what happens. Five questions that show whether your business can run without you, and what to fix in the first quarter.
I got sick in the middle of our busiest quarter about ten year ago. Nothing dramatic, just the kind of sick where you’re down for four or five days and genuinely cannot function. I handed off what I could, sent a few messages, and told myself the team had it. When I came back, I…
By the time March arrived, something had shifted. Not in a dramatic, everything is solved way. More in the quiet sense that comes when you stop forcing answers and let them surface on their own. That feeling was new for me, and it made this year’s approach to personal annual planning feel fundamentally different from…
In January, I wrote about why I stopped planning my year at the start of the calendar. I shared how listening to a short video from Verne Harnish reframed my thinking around timing, seasons, and the pressure to lock in personal annual planning before the coffee is even cold on January 2nd. That post resonated…
Every January, I used to sit down with my notebook, a strong coffee, and a stack of goals waiting to be written. It felt like what leaders are supposed to do. You wrap one year, reflect for a day or two, and jump straight into planning the next one before the ball has even hit…
For most of my career, growth was the goal. More revenue. More clients. More responsibility. More opportunity. Growth was the scoreboard, and if the numbers were moving in the right direction, everything else felt justified. At least that is what I told myself. It took me years to realize that growth is never free. It…
THE HOLIDAY I LOOK FORWARD TO MOST Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. Not because of the turkey. I actually do not like turkey all that much. I have tried to convince myself otherwise over the years, but I would take ribs over turkey ten times out of ten. What I do…
There was a point in my career when I was running at full speed—late-night strategy calls, early morning meetings, and constant travel. I told myself I’d ‘get back on track’ with my health when things slowed down. They never did. What I needed wasn’t a new workout plan or some massive lifestyle overhaul—it was small,…
One of the hardest truths I’ve faced as an entrepreneur? Friendships change when you’re building a business. It’s not that I didn’t care about my friends—it’s that I was wired differently. While they talked about weekend plans, I was thinking about scaling strategies. While they binged Netflix, I was reading business books. Over time, I…
Building a business is hard. Maintaining a strong marriage while building a business? That’s next-level difficult. I know because I’ve lived it. I’ve been married for over 22 years, and during that time, I’ve scaled companies, made tough calls, and chased big dreams. I’ve also neglected date nights, brought stress home, and mistakenly assumed my…
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I started reflecting on the most important relationships in my life—my family. I’ve spent decades refining leadership skills for my business, but what if we applied those same principles at home? What ‘Parenting as a Startup’ Looks Like Set a Family Vision & Core Values – Every great company…
January always feels like a fresh start, a time when we set big goals—both for our businesses and our personal lives. For years, I chased the perfect work-life balance—trying to divide my time between work and family equally. But I always felt like I was failing at both. That’s when I realized: Balance isn’t the…