You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow stories from my career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

As a leader, parent, or friend, it’s really hard to watch someone in your life fail at a project they initiated.

It’s even harder to watch when you told them failure was likely to happen based on your experience.

But both parties have a growth opportunity when we share our thoughts, get out of their way, and learn from whatever happens.

Failure is the greatest teacher. As business leaders (and parents and friends), we have an opportunity—maybe even a responsibility—to allow the people we work with and love to set themselves up for failure. Here’s why and how…

UTAH: Welcome to Adventure

It’s a Monday morning in February 2017, and I’m CEO of our fast-growing influencer marketing company. After years of startup ups and downs, we’ve found footing by carving out a niche in the CPG and Retail marketing space. It’s a big, wonderful, high-growth, high-upside corner of the marketing world that loves our unique approach.

So I’m a bit surprised when I Zoom into a weekly check-in with one of our top sales leaders, “Eric,” and he tells me about a new lead he got…with the tourism board of the Great State of Utah. An agency that loves our work on brands like Walmart and Pringles introduced us to a sister agency out West that was looking for an influencer partner for an upcoming campaign. That agency was ready to recommend us to their client based on this endorsement.

Eric’s eyes are alight, and his mouth moves quickly as he explains how incredible this opportunity could be for us: The first campaign in a whole new market for our business! He’s done some additional research and found that these tourism boards are everywhere and have huge dollars to drop on campaigns. We could start small and move quickly to dominate the market before any other player seizes the opportunity.

He’s looking for my feedback—but mostly for support for the campaign. I listen, absorb, and reflect.

I love Eric’s gumption. There is nothing more exciting to me than seeing passion in the eyes of a teammate, not to mention the desire to take initiative and willingness to weather risks. Many people go their entire careers without doing this. There’s a spark of potential sitting across the screen from me, and the last thing I want to do is snuff it out.

Once upon a time I was in Eric’s shoes—eager to act on an insight of my own and make a big dent in the company I worked for, and maybe even an entire industry. So when I see my old spark in someone else, my heart smiles.

But I really want to extinguish his idea…

I’m extremely confident it will end badly, because I’ve committed this mistake multiple times myself.

I will speak, but I have already decided to let him suffer the same fate so he can learn.

I take a deep breath. First, I tell Eric how great it is that we got another client referral, and that this could be a big opportunity for us. Then I describe why I think it will be a mistake to take this on:

• We have no experience in the industry.

• Their budgets are much smaller than our current core customers.

• Travel campaigns are much more complicated—for example, shipping people to remote locations instead of shipping a packaged good to someone’s home.

• Unlike CPG/Retail, we have no way to prove ROI in the travel industry.

• Any time spent on this will come at the opportunity cost of less time with our core customers (and their bigger budgets).

• Finally, I share details of a conversation I had a few months ago with the CEO of an agency in the travel/tourism space. That CEO told me how his clients struggle with influencer marketing.

I can see his energy downshift as I speak. But when I finish, he counters each point and continues pitching me.

I don’t want to argue. I’ve already thought through the worst-case scenarios. Mentally, I’m ready to let him make a go at it. Sometimes you knowingly throw money away for a higher purpose. Go ahead and put a line item in the budget if you need to. Here’s why:

• The likely lost profit from flubbing this campaign is not significant enough to break our bank. Neither is the opportunity cost of spending a little less time on a current account.

• I absolutely hate popping the passion balloon of a wonderful employee. Yeah, maybe part of it is my dislike of confrontation. But mostly I’d rather the marketplace teach Eric than me shutting him down.

• I might be proven wrong! Wouldn’t that be wonderful? My mistakes happened at different times and in different places. The world may have moved on, and Eric might figure out a way to win in this market that I’ve missed. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

So I tell Eric that the call is his. If he wants to take on the extra work and complexity—and can convince the cross-functional team to climb on board—then I’m 100% supportive.

I end by saying, “I won’t say ‘I told you so’ if it doesn’t work out, but I do insist we are honest with each other along the way.”

Passion Meets Reality

Eric flies through the green light I offer. Within hours, he enrolls his team. His excitement is contagious, and they, too, dream of becoming company heroes for opening an exciting new market. They sign a contract with the client and kick off the campaign quickly.

Our weekly 1-on-1s proceed, and this campaign is a frequent discussion point.

And pretty much from the start, this campaign is a clusterf*ck.

It starts with an inexperienced client. This is unusual for us in the CPG/Retail industry, where the rules of the road are pretty established. We get countless questions about budget, process, and timelines. The client doesn’t understand that an influencer shouldn’t be reading marketing copy word-for-word.

And our inexperience in the industry starts to reflect poorly on us. We have to ask countless questions about everything from travel arrangements to getting copyright permissions for photos of public buildings. Friction in our process causes discomfort externally and internally.

Eric shares the latest pain, but keeps it positive. This campaign is “his baby,” and he remains determined to see it through. I offer perspective only if and when he asks. It’s brutal to resist my urge to swoop in, cancel the campaign, and return the client’s money. But the show—and learning—must go on.

A few months later, mercifully, the campaign is complete. It’s over budget, past deadline, and looks wonderful. Despite all the pain, our team delivered consistent, high-quality output.

At the week-ending all-hands, Eric and his team take the stage to walk through their campaign. They share all the surprises and lessons they learned the hard way. Their creative presentation gets Ooohs and Aahhs from the gallery. Eric ends by admitting how too many Ouchs mean we probably won’t be launching a new Travel and Tourism business line after all.

And in our next one-on-one, Eric and I laugh about the whole thing. I congratulate him on taking the risk and initiative. He thanks me for letting him go for it. We’ve built an even closer working relationship through this.

I can imagine how much worse our time together would be if I'd simply made the most profitable short-term business decision and said “no” to his campaign at the start. We’d save a few bucks, but he might have begun looking for a new job—or even worse, quietly quit this one.

Instead, in the long term, Eric went on to exceed his quota again and again and again.

And once again I’m reminded that success as a leader comes from playing the long game with the people we work with.

It’s not always easy in a fast-paced, high-pressure business environment like the one we're in now. But it’s easier to do the right thing when we pause, take a deep breath, and remember to consider the person in front of us. They deserve a chance to lead and learn, too.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

We Should Chat!

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value is helping people strategize and self-examine to find their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from my career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

I’m excited to share the next podcast episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.

Grift Krehnbrink is the CEO of Thoughtium, a human-centered experience design firm that helps organizations bring strategy, leadership, and learning to life through immersive experiences.

A few weeks ago, I appeared on his podcast, The Blank Page. Now it’s my turn to put Grift in the hot seat and ask him about his unique take on leadership consulting as he takes on some of the biggest players on the planet. I also pull out some rules of the road he's developed over a career coaching senior leaders.

Here’s a summary, a teaser, an amuse-bouche to get you to hit the play button above ^^^

Ownership is Everything

I ask Grift how his small leadership consulting company regularly wins business with Fortune 100 firms—and beats the world’s largest strategic players in the process. Their approach is fascinatingly simple and unique: They help client teams come to the right decisions rather than outsourcing expertise.

Grift’s clients are tired of waiting for MBAs to push more slides and hand over recommendations that sit on a shelf instead of driving action. And while companies increasingly embrace technology to find strategic answers, they are learning the hard way that if everyone else is using the same tools and data—built on the same historic industry activity—then they will follow the undifferentiated paths built for a previous era. (For an eye-popping example of this, see how every World Cup shoe company chose to fit their athletes in pink this year).

Grift talks about how ownership is key to both developing and executing a winning strategy. His BigCo clients are smart enough to figure out the right path on their own. But sometimes they need guidance to come together as a team and find it. That’s a different consulting model that helps clients reach a better solution while building their skills, confidence, and camaraderie along the way.

Team Starts with “I”

Another fertile area for new thinking is in team building. Usually teams are thrown together and expected to just figure things out. No successful sports team is built this way! The pressure is only increasing. More tech requires more connective tissue between teams and individuals. And team leaders are feeling lonelier than ever—as relationships are harder to form with direct reports and peers across the company.

Team building has become a fast-growing service line for Thoughtium, and Grift spoke about the value of bringing in outside help to reset teams for success. A big step here is doing individual interviews with team members and listening for ingrained assumptions and surprising things they don’t hear discussed. The result is insights that get to the root causes of dysfunction.

From here, group exercises help get members on the same page. Grift explains a couple that you could deploy in your business today. First, a “From/To” discussion in which members align on where they're going and what they agree to leave behind. Second, a Pre-Mortem discussion that starts with: “Imagine we’re a year from launch, and it has completely failed. What are the reasons we predict that failure happened?” This model creates a safe vessel for collaborative discussions. Good teams take this challenge and attack barriers, rather than each other.

Krenbrinkisms

Over a few months of regular coffee chats, I’ve written down a collection of insights Grift has discovered by working with hundreds of business leaders. I’ll let you listen to hear the details, but tease you with them here:

“The Say vs. Do Ratio”

“People are either sponges or seltzer tablets”

“Professional service businesses always have too many or too few employees”

“What do I want to be proud of in this moment?”

“Extend the time before reacting”

If you have a consulting business or lead a company that brings in outside experts for strategy or organizational design, I know you’ll gain new insights from our conversation.

Listen by hitting the play button above ^^^ or using your favorite podcast app.

Helpful links:

• Grift Krehnbrink on LinkedIn

• Thoughtium

• The Blank Page podcast

• Man’s Search for Meaning

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value is helping people strategize and self-examine to find their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow stories from my career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

I’d bet you’ve got a handful of things in your life that are important but not urgent, and feel like they will drain what little spare energy you have in your busy day.

This especially includes tasks you haven’t mastered yet and aren’t sure will positively impact your business or life.

One good friend is struggling to embrace networking as the key to a career switch.

Another has delayed addressing an employee who is barely cutting it.

I’m sitting on a collaborative creative project that I semi-committed to but haven’t gathered enough gumption to act on.

But last week I was inspired to hear a success story and model for mind-shifting that I can’t wait to bring to such projects—and share with you here:

“Marcia” is an old friend I reconnected with recently. She is in the process of getting a new consulting business off the ground. It taps into her decades of experience, hits a growing pain point in the industry, and she’s proven her model works with a few small beta clients.

Now it’s time to expand, and she’s still struggling with marketing. Who isn’t?

Marcia told me how she thought LinkedIn posts were the most promising avenue to reach her target audience, but she managed to avoid posting on the platform for most of her career. She shied away from the yucky feeling of self-promotion. She worried that her posts wouldn’t be up to par with the social media experts maniacs who’ve been doing it for years.

But the clients weren’t lining up to find her, and dreams of entrepreneurial success were fading. So she sucked it up and posted…

…And she was amazed by how many people in her network engaged with her post. She offered value and brought her personality to the post. The people who knew and trusted her were excited to support her work. Marcia’s imposter syndrome fizzled away.

I was especially excited to hear what she said next:

“I still didn’t think I would enjoy posting regularly—it’s just not my thing. But then I realized that my posts could be educational, which fits with my love of teaching people about technology and organizational behavior. Now I look forward to creating my weekly posts.”

When I heard this, I tried to high-five Marcia through my Zoom screen. Instead, I declared: “You discovered Inner Alchemy!”

When you hear the word “alchemy,” you might think of pre-scientific Renaissance wise men struggling to turn lead into gold.

And they really did try. But alchemy was much bigger and stranger than the footnote in history we learned. Alchemists experimented with metals, medicines, purification, longevity, and the hidden forces they believed animated nature. For some, the transformation of matter was intertwined with spiritual transformation: purifying the substance and purifying the self weren’t entirely separate pursuits.

Centuries later, psychologist Carl Jung became fascinated by this connection. He saw the alchemist’s quest to transform base matter into gold as a powerful metaphor for our own psychological development: taking the messy raw material inside us and transforming it into something more valuable.

If you’ve read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, you've encountered a modern version of this metaphor.1

As my friend, Marcia, shows, each of us can take our base fears and annoyances, mix them with what gives us energy, and turn an awful chore into a wonderful opportunity.

Let’s break down what she did there:

1. Make it meaningful—Find a way to move this into the important AND urgent box. For Marcia, it was the realization that her new business simply wouldn't get off the ground without some marketing juice. LinkedIn posts might work, or they might not. But they definitely wouldn’t work if they sat on a to-do list.

2. Take Action—Our minds constantly resist change and throw up fears. In this case, Marcia’s social anxieties labeled social media as dangerous. I’m a poster child for this, too. You can fight these voices in your mind all day long, or even talk them out with therapists at $200 an hour. But as Thoreau said, “Without action, thought can never ripen into truth.” Action—even one little LinkedIn post—sheds a spotlight on the darkness. You do it and discover that you don’t die or become a social pariah. There are no monsters under the bed. Instead, she found a bunch of people waiting to support her. Taking action also shows your psyche who’s boss—that you'll keep facing fears in the future. This positive habit is a superpower in life.

3. Find a Fit—By taking action and staying open-minded about the results, we can connect more easily to habits we already know and love. Marcia realized that her posts could be educational and fit with her love of learning. This is especially critical in creative work, where quality of the art is directly related to care. I experienced something similar when I added a podcast to this Substack. I was intrigued for years but hesitant. After all, “no one needs another podcast” is a phrase society has drilled into our heads. But then I realized I could reach more people (who preferred to listen rather than read) and speak with my own voice, creating a more personal connection.

This idea of Inner Alchemy starts when we see ourselves as that sage in the secret laboratory of our minds. Our ideas, thoughts, and habits—good, bad, and ugly—are like the minerals, spirits, and test tubes laid out before us. They are separate tools we can combine for productive use.

With practice, we can transform “Have To” into “Get To”.

And the "Get To" brings much more than the immediate gold waiting behind whatever task we set out on—it is a formula to endlessly create value in our work and lives.

So, what task will you choose to transform this week?

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

We Should Chat!

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value is helping people strategize and self-examine to find their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

I’m excited to share the next podcast episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.

Linnea Butler is a psychotherapist and trainer who has operated a clinical practice for 15 years. She provides individual and group therapy services to adults and couples with complex mental health needs.

She is the founder of Bay Area Mental Health, a private practice that offers cutting-edge treatments such as ketamine psychotherapy for trauma and PTSD. Linnea also writes frequently on Substack under the title "How Healing Happens."

We met through a wisdom group that we’ve been part of, and both frequently write about our career perspectives on Substack. One topic comes through a lot for each of us…Entrepreneurship tears down your ego and builds up character.

Here’s a summary, a teaser, an amuse-bouche to get you to hit the play button above ^^^

Therapy Meets Entrepreneurship

Linnea went into the therapy business to help people overcome their challenges, then learned she had to become a multi-skilled entrepreneur in order to get there. And she chose the most difficult, least-traveled path by building an entire practice from the ground up.

We explore some aspects of building a therapy business. Including hiring and managing a group of other high-powered therapists, picking a differentiated positioning, and deciding to become an early adopter of new approaches such as psychedelic-assisted therapy.

Linnea takes us through the process of building her business, then explains her recent decision to sell it. We learn how she got burned out and failed to find a replacement CEO. But she was able to find a strategic buyer and continues to maintain an individual practice under the new leadership.

Entrepreneurship and the Ego

Linnea has helped many clients realize that challenge can become the key to improvement. Her business taught her that the toughest times can lead to the biggest steps in personal growth. As many of us know, the entrepreneurial path is Hard Mode, but it can accelerate our results in work and life.

We’ve both written before about the idea that entrepreneurship can burn your ego. But this conversation hit on a new insight: A key to personal growth is being able to step outside of yourself and “see” your thoughts and behaviors. The company we create is a product of us, so when we “work on the business,” we can see how our egos and other patterns of behavior are helping or hurting the business. It’s self-work, too.

For example, Type-A, achievement-oriented leaders may discover that we are micromanagers when we begin leading people. We think we’re the best at doing the work and expect others to do things our way. But being a micromanager is a fear-based life strategy—we fear giving others power. If we see this as limiting our business's performance, it leads to behavior change that helps the business grow and helps us grow as people. If we don’t, well, we’ll fail until we finally learn the lesson—or don’t.

Linnea also shares a powerful tool in her practice called Internal Family Systems, which I’ve personally found to be a breakthrough model for personal growth.

Selling Leads to New Sprouts

Some people are in careers that can last until retirement, but they may be accepting too much pain or missing opportunities to work on projects that match how they have changed over time.

Linnea learned that she loves the early stage of building, but not the long-term scaling and managing. Remaining the CEO for decades would have rubbed her the wrong way. It was time for her Achiever parts to pass the baton.

We agreed that selling our businesses gave us freedom and “clear land” to spend the chapters of our working lives doing new things that fit with who we are and where we want to grow now.

For Linnea, that means building an audience on Substack, creating a new community, and doubling down on the one-on-one therapy work she has never stopped loving. She doesn’t know what the future will bring, and loves this new state of being present.

Many thanks to Linnea for taking the time to share her story here and for continuing to build businesses that help people in need. Find Linnea on LinkedIn if you’d like to reach out directly.

Listen by hitting the play button above ^^^ or using your favorite podcast app.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

We Should Chat!

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

The other day, I looked back at my journal from a couple of years ago, right in the middle of startup craziness. Highlights of a normal week included:

• The $300k contract a client verbally agreed to was cut.

• We had a great hire on the goal line, but they decided to stay at their current company.

• A client lead I personally pulled in kept ghosting me.

• I poured my heart out into a blog post, and ten people unsubscribed.

Yup, we got our ass kicked that week…

But since you’re reading these words now, I survived. Our company, too, made it through these and much more bad news that came our way.

Back then, I felt a lot of stress about “bad news.” But by the time we finished selling our company, I discovered that labeling events as either “good” or “bad” was distracting and wasteful. Today, I see all news is good.1

Some of this comes from surviving enough ass-kickings that the fear no longer sneaks through. But mostly it’s from choosing to react better—for the good of the business.

This is a superpower that’s yours for the taking once you master these four mindset changes:

1. It Is What It Is

Something bad just happened. It’s not fair, it sucks, they screwed “us”—but mostly “me”, because we take our work and ourselves so seriously. But the sooner we can accept this, the more mature we are.

We parents find ourselves repeating the words we heard as children when the milk was spilled or the toy was broken. There’s no reason to cry. Things happen. Things can be fixed or replaced. And there’s a good chance tomorrow will bring new distractions.

Someone has to be the adult in the room of our minds. It might as well be us.

And it’s completely a mind game—or more like a war within our psyche. We want things to go well, and much of our internal programming is fear-based. So when one thing goes wrong, we start catastrophizing it into a cascade of further worries.

Guy Finley captures this well in his book, The Essential Laws of Fearless Living:

“When expectations get dashed, we don’t see new possibilities unfolding; all we see is the way things should have gone. We don’t see what is with all of its positive possibilities; instead we see only the negative . . . what is not. What these discoveries reveal is as startling as it is promising: the only reason we feel powerless is because we have become the captive of a mind resisting itself, an involuntary prisoner of a mind struggling to escape its own negative images. And there is nothing but powerlessness in this resistance, because by law whatever we resist . . . persists!”

And we can go a few thousand years farther back to the Buddhist parable of the Two Arrows:

"When touched by a painful feeling, the uninstructed person sorrows, grieves, and laments... They are struck by two arrows: the physical one and the mental one."

The first arrow hurts. The second arrow is the one we shoot ourselves with. Job one is to stop nocking the second arrow.

2. It’s Data

So there’s still that first arrow sticking in your business. But it’s not in your chest. You’re not going to die. Your business might suffer a bit, but it’s got you—a smart, clear-headed human—to stop the bleeding and figure out what happened. The last thing you do is say “Serenity Now!” and stick your head in the sand—or a bottle—and hope the whole thing blows over.

“Bad news” is data just sitting there, waiting for you to understand it. The arrow came from somewhere and was fired by someone. It’s a starting point for a trove of information that can lead to insights and improvements.

So you dig in. Was it random bad luck, accidental, or a sign of something deeper? Sometimes you see a simple mistake or wrong turn, declare “Next Play”, and move on. Often, you find a problem or opportunity that would have been missed while playing the whine-and-blame game.

Back to our lost verbal contract from years ago: It opened our minds to improving how we close the verbal yes more quickly and spawned three ideas on how we might rescue that deal from budget cuts.

Over time, you might even seek new and unexpected sources of news to make sure you’re not missing things. Reporters, investment bankers, exiting employees, and even competitors will share the chinks they see in your armor if you ask them nicely. This gives you a chance to dodge them before they deliver discomfort.

3. Bad Things Happen for a Reason

Over time, you start to see that every piece of bad news—each arrow taken—is a gift. The only real tragedy is when we don’t transmute it into something positive. Once we ladder up to look at the bigger picture, we find there is usually a method behind the sadness.

For example, a few weeks ago, a CEO I advise shared a story of a failed hire. Her company is growing quickly, and she has several positions to fill. After rounds of interviews with a promising candidate, the CEO presented him with an offer consistent with both industry norms and other employees’ earnings. He was making a higher salary at his current firm, but in a very different industry, and he said he was willing to take a pay cut to reset his career. But when the offer came, he wouldn’t budge. The CEO decided not to match his demand. When we spoke, she was second-guessing herself.

To me, this was great news: She avoided the pain of hiring someone who wasn’t willing to make the sacrifice he initially suggested. He didn’t think that a short-term pay cut would get him into a much better company culture with career upside. That’s not someone who would fit in with the ethic of everyone else, and might disrupt the strong culture, not to mention screw up existing salary bands.

An offer to this person would be good news, no matter how the candidate responded. A surprising number of business situations can turn out this way if you learn to see the bigger game that’s playing out.

4. Your Audience is Watching

A couple of months into my startup’s pivot to influencer marketing, we began boosting social posts with paid Facebook ads. I vividly recall the morning an entry-level employee made a mistake buying ads over the weekend, causing us to go $20,000 over budget. Ouch.

I had moved into the CEO role a few months earlier—after a round of layoffs. We had only a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank and were not profitable. This was a big arrow to the chest.

And we had an open office environment, so everyone heard this news at the same time when it dropped. Microseconds later, I could sense a few dozen sets of eyes looking at me. It’s what you might call a moment of truth. My thoughts of holding the team together won out over worrying. I let it wash over me. We told the employee it was an honest mistake and put stronger safeguards and training in place.

I’m reminded of a story that Steven Pressfield told a few years ago about the game-changing horse rider, Sue Sally Hale. She described a key to her success as “Sitting Chilly” when charging toward a 6-foot fence at full gallop:

“The horse reads everything from the rider’s ‘seat.’ If the man or woman in the saddle is scared, the horse knows it just from the feel of the rider on its back. The animal may balk at the jump if it feels fear from its rider.”

A leader’s reaction is amplified throughout the business. If we respond with fear or anger, they’ll run from future challenges and stop reporting bad news. You won’t be able to act until it’s too late.

But if we accept the inevitable challenges and dig in to solve them, our teammates will learn and behave similarly. Eventually, they solve the problems on their own. No news gets to you, for a different, very good reason: The problem was taken care of.

Fix Your Business, Fix Yourself

The easiest way to put all this into action is to grab a sticky note, write “All News is Good” on it, and post it next to your laptop. Chances are, something will trigger a peek at this within the next 24 hours, and you can start the process of reprogramming yourself through right action.

You might be surprised how much better you feel, too.

Repeatedly throughout my career, I’ve seen that changing my behavior as a leader gets my company through problems or growing pains. Then I see how this work adjustment brings similar gains to my broader relationships with people and the world. It’s a whole new meaning of “self-work”.

Increasingly, I see the real job of a leader—or a human—is to learn to manage the team within us. Ancient wisdom and modern psychology are aligning to show us that our minds are not static egos, but rather a swirling ecosystem of voices, parts, systems, influences, and shadows. Each of us is the CEO of a company within…

I see this in my dreams now, as the “me” character is often a company or team leader, and I’m treating the characters that pop up with a servant-leader approach I developed in my waking career. Dreams are often visions of our psyche and its parts sorting out new approaches to life. This is a form of self-rehearsal and new response formation—i.e., reprogramming.

And it’s almost hilarious how often I wake up remembering a scene in which a problem occurred, and I find myself coaching the characters on how to get past it.

It’s been over six years since I led a big team in the waking world. But this internal model keeps running and evolving for my benefit. Today, when life's challenges arise, my mental “team” handles them with far less reactive panic and much more relaxed, creative thinking.

Maybe life is a dream, too. And it’s all practice for a higher purpose.

I think everything happens for our benefit—if we let it.

Every obstacle is the way.

Our leadership work can help us master the art of living.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

We Should Chat!

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

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It’s Episode One, Season One of The Blank Page, hosted by my friend, Grift Krehnbrink. He’s the CEO of Thoughtium, a human-centered experience design firm that helps organizations bring strategy, leadership, and learning to life through immersive experiences.

Here are a few highlights:

• Does everyone have creativity in them?—I argue the answer is “yes", while acknowledging the limits we put on ourselves. One of the biggest: Missing that creativity means much more than producing artwork or ideas.

• The real purpose of business—What if we saw our work as something more than a career or paycheck—and as a way to test ourselves, notice our progress, and make meaningful changes in our lives?

• Curiosity is the ego killer—The ego aims to protect us by forming beliefs and preconceptions. Yet these can be blinders that prevent us from seeing fresh paths and explanations. If we lean into curiosity, we loosen fears, let go of outdated ideas, and learn that the world is much more interesting and fertile than we imagined.

• “You’ve got to see people as asteroids, not stars”—People are not stable points fixed in the sky. They have a history—“a tail”—and they are going in a certain direction. Know this and better know people. It’s one of many lines Grift shares with his team to help them better understand clients and partners.

• What do we do when everything is the same?—We finish by discussing how creativity in product design has declined over time, and we seem awash in a sea of sameness. The solution? Be different. Be Yourself.

Many thanks to Grift for setting up a fun conversation and for his creative spark to put something new into the world.

Click the play button below to listen, and don’t forget to subscribe to enjoy many similar conversations in the months to come! 👇

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

Have you ever discovered that something you thought was a key to your success was actually wrong?

Something that worked out in the end, but it took years to see how it created so much suffering along the way?

An idea that you taught to many others, and maybe caused them pain and suffering?

Well, I awoke to something like this in my own life last week.

I realized a core “shortcut to success” I had promoted in this very Substack had created years of pain for myself and others. It worked…but at great cost.

Now I see the truth, and a better way to work.

Productive Paranoia

Three years ago, I wrote a post titled, “Have You Been Productively Paranoid Lately?” I’ll summarize briefly:

In 2004, my fellow business partners at our digital agency and I realized that most agencies struggle because they lose about 20% of their clients each year. Being new to the industry, we didn’t want to fail this way.

We saw that if we held onto our clients, we’d grow our agency at a world-class pace. Further, we had just signed a deal to be acquired by a global holding company, with the majority of the final purchase price coming at the end of five years based on aggressive revenue and profit targets. If we hit the numbers, a pile of gold awaited at the end of the rainbow. If not, we’d have wasted five years of our lives in pointless struggle.

All we had to do was hang onto our clients…which, if you’ve ever been in the agency business, you know is easier said than done. There are at least 50 ways for clients to leave these relationships. Sometimes they are not happy with the service. Other times, a new CMO brings a roster of favorites to their new gig. And it can happen at the drop of a hat with no warning. Once, we were fired from a long-term client-agency relationship via email.

One of the strategies my fellow execs and I adopted was called Productive Paranoia. It’s a concept that Jim Collins used to describe what Bill Gates practiced at Microsoft. They were on top of the world with monopoly-level dominance of PC operating systems and productivity software, but Gates kept his teams constantly worried about how they might tumble.

“‘Fear should guide you, but it should be latent,’ Gates said in 1994. “I consider failure on a regular basis.” He hung a photograph of Henry Ford in his office to remind himself that even the greatest entrepreneurial successes can be passed by, as Ford had been passed by GM in the early history of the auto industry. He worried constantly about who might be the next Bill Gates, some freaky high school kid toiling away 22 hours a day in some dingy little office coming up with a lethal torpedo to fire at Microsoft.”

Good enough for Gates = Good enough for us, right?

We practiced the shit out of this strategy. We created scorecards, ran surveys, met with clients to gather feedback, and trained everyone in our client-facing teams to look for any subtle signs that we were slipping in our clients' eyes. I moved people around when they didn’t seem to be resonating with our clients.

Our executive team met for half a day every 2 weeks, and most of our conversations revolved around what might be going wrong. We’d pick apart emails and meeting notes, and each of us would leave with a list of people to quiz and clients to touch base with.

And it worked! We held onto the majority of our clients over the years. Many of them added a zero or two to their contracts, allowing us to max our sale price. In those 5 years, we grew revenue from $10 million to $40 million, and headcount went from 100 to over 400.

Seeing that wire hit our account felt good, but there was a cost I felt every one of those 1,826 days: Worry. Stress.

When I think about that time, or consult my old journal entries, I recall being roughly 10% excited, 20% so-so, and 70% burned out or bummed out. Even a new business win brought dozens of new things to worry about to retain this client. As we scaled, so did the worries.

The funny thing about the paranoia strategy is that the mind can invent a bottomless list of things to worry about!

And even the fun times felt performative. A voice in my head reminded me that, “I need to keep a smile on my face or the people around me will be more worried.”

A few times over those years, I added a discussion item to our exec team agenda: Why aren’t we having more fun, guys? I mean, most of our group were good friends before we started working there, and we expected to remain good friends for life. Remembering this helped us for a week or two, but we always went back to worrying about what awfulness might lie around the corner.

Of course, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that all of us left the business soon after that check arrived. Our band broke up quickly. And just like breakup stories of real-life rock bands, there are plenty of untold stories of pent-up emotions that finally got released.

Some of us are still friends today. I’m the only one in the group who did anything close to agency work after we split up.

Repinning History

My next company was a startup in the marketing tech space called Ahalogy. Our company began as a SaaS solution for Pinterest marketing. Without thinking—and probably with some pride—I was eager to put my Productive Paranoid strategy back into our work with clients.

I trained our team to build relationships, carefully onboard clients, monitor how much they used the software, and add features to keep them as active and happy as possible. And we all fretted over the renewals of 3-month pilots and 12-month contracts.

Again, the stress affected my team and me. This time, we also had investors watching over our shoulders, and a lack of progress meant we wouldn’t get another round of investment to keep going.

Despite all of our worrying, the renewals often didn’t happen. I eventually woke up and realized our product wasn’t a fit in the market. In fact, all of the “productive” paranoia just kept me from seeing this reality until it was nearly too late. My fear blinded me.

Mercifully, I finally reached the rock bottom of reality, and we found a pivot into Influencer Marketing. Our approach was novel in this growing niche, and clients loved our product. I found that we no longer had to be paranoid to get the next contract. In fact, our clients kept asking for more and recommending us to their industry friends.

I loved our results… and finally, I loved my job!

I see this even more in the “sequel” to Ahalogy, a company I helped launch called A2 Influence. Its CEO, Rob Reinfeld, simply doesn’t operate from a place of fear—despite even more things to fear in business today: Many forms of competition, constant client re-orgs, and this little thing called Artificial Intelligence that you might have heard about.

Rob and his team are having fun solving clients’ problems and building award-winning solutions. They have confidence without cockiness, excitement about both the present and what’s possible, and operate in a spirit of love for each other. Sure, they lose some deals here and there, but they learn from losses where possible and move on to the next play with more wisdom to work with.

Turns out there are many paths to success. Productive Paranoia is just one way to beat back what ends up biting most companies: Over-confidence and complacency. Many successful companies eventually get lazy. We have to continually observe changes and act where needed. But we don’t have to walk around scaring people all the time!

Here’s a real-life example: Back at my agency, every time a new client contact was hired or promoted into a role that could decide our fate, we went into worry+action mode. We’d discuss internally how this posed a threat to our business. Then we took action, such as scheduling lunch or coffee with this client, and asked probing questions to determine whether they had been told good or bad things about us and whether they had a favorite outside agency. We’d then schedule a 2-hour capabilities presentation to build their confidence in us by showing off our history of great work.

Again, this often worked, but it came with a lot of worry and stress. And I think this stress came through in the first impressions. People can smell fear.

Today, our A2 team sees each client change as an opportunity to meet an interesting person and help them succeed in their new job. The team enters these meetings buttoned up and eager to impress, but their attitude is one of confidence, curiosity, and a love of the products and relationships we’ve built together.

The client is another person we get to play with, rather than a threat to our company’s existence. This positive attitude is read unconsciously by clients, too.

Thankfully, I’ve started to learn an approach that doesn’t have to prey on fear. In fact, it’s more like turning fun into a competitive advantage.

Fear…Itself!?

I’ve been noticing a change in myself as I make progress in letting go of fear. My baseline mood is positive. The highs feel higher and more frequent. Problems seem smaller and easier to solve (or ignore).

I tend to look to sci-fi stories for explanations. Yeah, I’m a nerd…

You might remember the phrase “Fear is the mind killer” in any format of the Dune series.1 The phrase first comes when the hero, Paul, is given a test: Can he keep his hand in a box that makes it seem like the flesh is melting from his hand?

If he cannot control his fear, he will be judged as an animal and will be killed. But if he can master his fears, he is a human worth saving. Paul sees that the animalistic, evolutionary fears within can kill his ability to think. Fear is literally the mind killer. He passes this test and many more. By moving toward and through his fears, Paul changes himself and changes the galaxy.

Fifteen minutes before I started writing this post, a close friend called asking for help on a personal question. Before I offered a word of advice, he mused that his “hypervigilance” strategy of constant worry about client decision-making, which had helped him succeed as a software seller, might be bleeding over into his life outside work, where a new relationship is forming. Fear cannot be the basis of love, and maybe it isn’t really needed to close the next sale, either.

Fear puts blinders on us. It gives us two options—fight or flight—along with a ton of pain and suffering in the process. But when we are not afraid, we are open to more input, and multiple solutions emerge for our benefit.

Some Science Behind Stress

My study of fear recently led me to a book called Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory. It is part of a growing body of evidence showing that our nervous system is key to how we experience life.

The book explains how we often move through daily life in a stressed-out, fight-or-flight position. Our mind creates fear, and the body responds with tension. This helped us when lions were hunting us, but almost nothing is so life-and-death to deserve this fear response today.

Just by learning how our minds and bodies work, we can diffuse the fears and elevate to a state of rest, relaxation, confidence, and openness. Then, by noticing the change for the better, we further instill this positive new habit. For even more effect, jot this down in your journal and tell a friend or significant other about your change. This helps lock it in.

I’ll go first: Recently, I’ve caught myself in the act of tiny but telling things. Like when I got pulled over by a cop in a boat last month…

I’ve been pulled over by police officers probably six or seven times in my life for speeding or suspicion of something that was nothing. Each time those blue lights appeared in my rearview, my heartbeat raced—despite knowing the worst that would come would be a fine I could pay online.

Last month, I was at our place on the lake, driving my little motorboat from its marina storage to our dock for the start of the summer. Around a bend in the narrows, a sheriff boat sat idling, and the officer called out for me to stop. I had no idea what I did and honestly didn’t know how to effectively “pull over” in a boat I’ve driven just a few dozen times. But I noticed my heart wasn’t racing. I was curious about what would happen. Shouldn’t I have been more worried in a boat?2

I knew whatever was wrong would work out, and I’d come back with a story to share. Turns out he saw my expired registration and accepted my explanation that the new one was on my kitchen counter back home.

I think this also explains why I’m feeling much better as a baseline in life lately. By letting go of fear, I’m not in that fight-or-flight state anymore. A tremendous amount of energy that used to be spent on fighting or fleeing from situations in my life is now freed up for curiosity, compassion, gratitude, camaraderie, and just feeling great.

The Story is Never the Same

It’s funny to look back on something I thought was a key to my success and now see it as a reason for my suffering as well. But I’ve been writing long enough to know that our stories change with us. History is rewritten by whoever we are now.

The further we grow, the more perspective and nuance we see in our past. Maybe this is why almost no one says they would go back and change something if given the chance. Those past situations—including especially the suffering—made us who we are today.

Clinging on to what we used to be only prevents us from rising to the vast potential that lies waiting within us.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

We Should Chat!

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

My past two posts have been about big, life-changing insights I had during solo travel earlier this month. This is a short story about a word that touches the lives of millions each day…

While at our event at the Rixios resort in Dubrovnik, Croatia, a friend told me he accidentally took the wrong door while looking for the restroom near the on-campus sports bar. He discovered a staff-only hallway lined with framed photos of employees. At its end was a special poster.

I’m a marketing guy and team culture believer, so I had to “accidentally” take the wrong door, too, and grab a photo of a poster that felt so right in light of the wonderful experience I had with the resort staff all week:

Here’s why I love this—and why we all should create our own version for the companies we lead.

Names Matter

Many of the longest-lasting, most-admired companies have come up with names for their employees.

Google employees are called “Googlers”. Amazon employees are called “Amazonians”. As a Procter & Gamble alum, I still answer to “P&Ger” (or the less common “Proctoid”). One of my most proud moments was when employees at my startup, Ahalogy, started calling themselves “Ahalogists.”

Some companies take on more serious names. At Walmart, everyone is an “Associate,” and at Disney, they’re all “Cast Members.”

Whatever the name is, when employees take this on, it’s a sign of a special company and culture that’s sticking. These are the places where the name badge or ID means you’re part of something bigger and lasting.

Creativity, Art, and Love

But none of these examples communicates as effectively as “Heartist” does. It describes company employees in a novel way, using an invented term that gives pause. This one word communicates two very important messages:

First, artistry.

Art is a creative expression of personal feelings and experiences. Art is about sharing our uniqueness, not mimicking a model. When encouraged in the workplace, practicing art delivers on a core human desire to express ownership (or agency). And the word touches on a desire that the rising generation has fully embraced and demands: To be yourself.

By incorporating art, the company creates a safe place where employees are encouraged to bring their full selves to the work of creating amazing experiences for hotel guests. And it works for any function—from the front desk to room service to grounds maintenance. (See all the cute heart jobs on the poster above?)

Second, heart.

Heart means love, of course. Is there anything we need more of in the world today—both in giving and receiving? Is this not the definition of what a vacation should be about? But you’ll almost never find the “love” in the words on the walls of corporate headquarters or public company annual reports. It scares most leaders.

By using a word underutilized in the business world, this company stands out and attracts employees who enjoy helping, meeting, and serving customers. You know: “People people.”

And defining the employee's role in this way serves as a guideline when the inevitable happens and threatens the guest’s stay. How can we solve this with love? With empathy? With heart? Starting from this place almost always leads to a positive outcome.

The Bigger Picture

Only later, upon searching for “Heartist,” did I discover that this resort, and this word, are part of Accord Hotels.1 It’s a massive, publicly traded company with over 380,000 employees across 120 countries.

And then I found another reason to love this word: I’ve not seen Accor use it in advertising. It’s not even on the company's home page. But you will find it on a site dedicated to attracting employees.

I think pushing Heartist as a tagline in TV advertising or plastering it in the lobbies of thousands of hotels for guests to see would cheapen its meaning. Like Disney’s use of “Cast Members,” some things shouldn’t break the fourth wall.

In a service business, employees are the brand, and they personally craft customers’ experiences. Consistently high quality is an aim, but hard to scale through precise playbooks and processes.

Instead, the truly great companies select people who fit the brand and coach employees to bring out their best through their heart and art. With love, set them free. Then the taking care of guests takes care of itself.

Which brings me to the biggest reason I love Heartists: It is a title we can all adopt for ourselves.

We humans are completely entangled with each other. Nearly everything we do impacts others in big and small ways, today and for years to come.

What if we were more conscious of this? And not through parents’ lectures, courts of law, or fears of punishment in the afterlife. Real caring must come from inside.

We can be more conscious of how we create this world for each other. Then we can bring our unique personalities and ways of being—with love—to every interaction with fellow souls riding this one-way trip on Earth.

I think this is what is meant by “living a life of service.”

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

Note: This is a longish, personal post that you might enjoy more if you hear me talk it through by clicking the play button above. Might be a good one to listen to while walking the dog, doing the dishes, or sitting on the deck…

Sometimes, the best way to find yourself is to get a little lost.

We can choose to let go of what’s comfortable, leave the map of expectations behind, and walk into the darkness—trusting that we can handle this.

Self-exploration mainly happens when we physically detach. It might be a solo hike for weeks in the woods. Retreat centers serve seekers in isolated locations where silence, prayer, or psychedelics can do their work. Whatever the destination, getting there is a conscious choice to let go of comforting surroundings and open up to something new within.

I’ve recently returned from such a trip. Traveling alone across six cities in two weeks, I found parts of me that had been hiding for 50 years. Among many revelations, I gained insights into what really, really drove me to become an entrepreneur, and why selling my startup hit me so hard.

It took joining the company of strangers in a strange land, ego naked and afraid, to uncover and encounter fears that were holding me back.

This post is going beyond my usual business stories. I’m taking a leap of faith that, by sharing who I am and how I’ve changed, I might inspire a few of you to uncover something new about yourself, too.

Preparing for Takeoff

It’s our 30th anniversary, and my wife, Steph, and I are spending a beautiful day doing four hours of yardwork together.

We’re back at our summer lake cabin, clearing a fence and trees that have been overrun with grape vines. It’s grueling work, and my arms are covered with scratches, but there’s something rewarding about working together like this. We even found some blackberry bushes that had been struggling to emerge. And the work has helped distract me from nervousness around my upcoming retreat.

In two days, I’d be heading to a form of spiritual retreat—the first-ever of any form for me. I’ve done plenty of travel around the world in my career, traveling to business meetings and conferences. But I left that game to focus on personal growth. It’s not a mid-life crisis…maybe a mid-life re-evaluation.

Two years ago, I joined a “wisdom group” of 150 similarly seeking peers called Leading Edge. Through this group, an opportunity arose to travel to Glastonbury, UK, for a weekend retreat with a philosopher and spiritual writer named Tim Freke.

I didn’t know what to expect, and I only knew one other participant in the session well. I felt far behind on the spiritual seeker scale, with no workplace accomplishments to help me establish credibility and protect my ego here. But I still felt compelled to make the leap and sign up for this event.

In the meantime, I was invited to join a small group of mostly professional public equity investors in Croatia. It was another event where I only knew a few people and was an industry outsider. But I trusted our host would put on a wonderful event, and I committed to this as well.

With only a week between the two trips, Steph encouraged me to just stay in Europe instead of wasting two more days and a plane ticket on back-and-forth from the U.S. It sounded smart, and I thought I could keep myself busy, so I arranged travel for over two weeks on my own.

Keeping Glastonbury Wyrd

Two days later, I’m sitting in a circle of chairs in the retreat room, wondering what I’m going to say when it’s my turn to answer the question: “What do you wish to get out of this experience?”

My mind went through its usual new-group strategies—and worries: First impressions are key. Try to sound smart. Don’t embarrass yourself. Probably better just build on what others say…

Two people before me, a woman wept as she shared details on the clarity she sought. I think her open, honest expression made me feel safe enough to share what was really on my mind. And this is why I came, right? So I abandoned my comfort zone and shared what was really on my mind:

“I had episodes of very poor sleep in the couple of weeks leading up to this event. This is very unusual for me. I wasn’t consciously feeling the stress and worry about this or anything else in my life. But once again, I found myself wide awake at 2 am. I read a book for a while, then closed my eyes to try to drift off.

“Suddenly, I ‘heard’ a voice from my mind start to form words. It wasn’t the usual ‘thoughts voice’ that reminds and warns me all day. This voice seemed to come from a different region, and instead of suggesting things, it was crying out like a child: ‘I want to play. Why don’t they want to play? Do they not like me? Why won’t they play with me? It’s so fun. We’re here for play.’

“I was reminded of what ‘play’ meant to me as a child. Playing soccer or touch football with friends, a time before forming identities and joining cliques, worrying about grades, or what we’d do when we grew up. That perfect time in childhood when nobody’s judging. You’re just in the moment—present, alive, flowing…riding the bike of life without over-thinking what keeps it from falling down. That precious time when it didn’t matter what you looked like, what you were doing, who you were, and whether you were good at the game or not. You’re just in the moment, playing as one team.

This is what I want in life now, and what I’m hoping for in this retreat.”

Whew! I got that out, and didn’t melt down. But I was on the verge of tears as I expressed this to the group. Then we moved on to the person on my left.

With this circle of trust established, the following 48 hours were a blur of group bonding and self-discoveries. Through retreat sessions, long meals, and exploring Glastonbury’s mystic surroundings in small and large groups, I felt layers of social defense screens melt off me. With these weights lifted, I felt more alive.

A highlight was when a smaller group of us hired a driver to take us to the ancient Avebury stones—a collection of Neolithic monuments older than Stonehenge, scattered among fields of gold. We frolicked among them as the sun set. I found my heart full of love for these new friends and this ancient place.

My head hit the pillow around midnight, and as I closed my eyes, I saw a series of images in my mind. I’d never experienced something like this before. They were high-definition photos of vines climbing up and around various fences—from old stone walls to tennis court chain links.

I thought about a vine analogy that has come to mind often in my past few years of self-work. I’ve felt my Ego—in the form of fears, attachments, projections, and identities—is like that grape vine continuing to crawl up my legs and hold me in place. Each time I take a new step, the Ego vines try to hold me in place again, and I have to hack myself free.

But these images felt like vines spreading out from me. Instead of holding me in place, they seek to connect with others. These past few days showed me that a deeper connection was possible.

The Medium and the Message

But my Glastonbury experience was far from over.

The next day, another small group of us spent an afternoon with a highly attuned spiritual person. Some might call him a Medium or a Clairvoyant. Whatever the title, signing up for this experience was something I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago, when I was full of doubt and skepticism.

But now, I saw this invitation as a life experience to be entered with curiosity and openness. There was no reason to fear, and I chose to go in with a willing suspension of disbelief. It’s the same way we read a book or watch a movie, allowing ourselves to relax and absorb the story and its meaning. Relaxing assumptions means our ego defenses come down and we can look at ourselves in a more open, fresh way—without losing discernment or signing up for a cult.

For me, personal experiences with astrology, tarot cards, psychedelics, dream analysis, past-life regression, and other “woo” topics can provide a mirror that lets me see myself from a different perspective. Our unconscious has vast intelligence and wants to communicate with us, and by stepping outside a purely rational, materialist mindset, there is space to discover more within. If something in these experiences grabs your attention, it is the psyche trying to show something through symbolism—the main language it speaks. You don’t have to buy into a new lifestyle; it’s about seeing what resonates with you and then wondering why.

Look, modern society is coming to agree that the body knows the score. Noticing how mental stress activates our breathing and pain receptors is now accepted. But this stuff was labeled Woo, too, just a few years ago.

The next step is mining what our unconscious, or the psyche, knows. Generally, the psyche wants us to grow, flourish, and find a higher baseline of peace and creativity. It knows where the internal bodies are buried—the traumas and bad habits holding us back. But our ego and all of its defenses, projections, attachments, and related fears get in the way of this growth. Turning down the ego's voices by relaxing beliefs allows helpful messages from the psyche to arise. Then we can consciously consider such messages and sometimes rewrite our own programs to improve them.

Back to Glastonbury…In a small room in our rented Airbnb, our Medium guide led us through a multi-hour group meditation. Along the way, he pointed out parts of ourselves that were both unfolding and holding us back. One of the specific things he saw in me was that “I don’t have to pick up the pieces of my broken statue (identity) and can fully go into my new life.” His words resonated with my uncovering of social fears that held me back for so long.

After another sleepless night filled with electric visions and dreams, our group gathered with him the next morning for a debriefing session. I felt like I had been wrenched open with a crowbar. And it felt really good.

Before tidying up to leave the rental house, Isik from our group pulled out a handful of painted stones she bought in town and told us each to pick one. My hand jumped to one with a honeybee, which fit with one of my crazy dreams the night before. She pointed out words on the other side: “Be Yourself.”

Then Jeff suggested a group hug. We came together and intertwined our arms tightly. Ali said his favorite prayer. Being the tallest, I had a view of the entire group. I noticed that our arms were like intertwined vines…so beautiful. No one wanted to break the embrace.

Eating Alone

The next day, I spent several hours on trains to Strasbourg, the first stop in my solo journey to my next event in Croatia. I had picked out this city on the French-German border because it was on the way and a place I had not visited before.

For me, France is about wonderful food, and it doesn’t get more wonderful than a multi-course meal at a Michelin-rated restaurant. So I reserved a spot for one at a place just a short walk from my hotel through the old town.

The message from the restaurant said that they would seat me at a bar in front of the kitchen, which I figured would be something neat to watch since I was eating alone. But when I arrived, they sat me in a charming room with an empty seat in front of me:

After days of intense, loving, wonderful human contact, here I was sitting alone. The surroundings and food were way too nice to pollute with a phone in my hand, so I decided to turn this 3.5-hour meal into a kind of silent meditation. The wine pairings helped.

Between bites, I imagined many people in the chair in front of me. My family members and countless people I’ve known over the course of my life—some still with us and others gone.

I continued a series of very long walks, museum visits, and meals alone from Strasbourg to Munich to Vienna. Often, I asked myself: Why am I feeling so raw? What’s happening to me?

After selling my company, failing at another one, and finally doing some self-work, I had let go of my identity as a Founder, CEO, Business Leader, Marketing Strategist, and more. And now, as I forced myself into situations where those identities could not serve as armor to protect me, I saw the layer of social anxiety lying underneath.

I was naturally introverted as a child, often hiding behind my mother’s legs when around strangers. And across my formative years, I moved schools several times. I was on the smart/nerd side, which put me on the defensive. Each new school situation forced me to create strategies for fitting in, often by hiding my true self and adapting to others.

Most people I’ve met would probably be surprised to read that I’ve got all kinds of social anxiety second-guessing going on in my mind. As we spoke, countless voices barged into my brain: Am I talking too much? Did I just overshare? Are they looking at the clock? Did I tip enough? Is there something in my nose?

Oh, and nearly every morning in the shower, thoughts arose about whether I said something yesterday that offended someone.

I know how these voices formed in me, because I’ve seen the process happen with my children, too. There was that time when my kids’ school had a Daddy-Daughter dance. My younger girl was the life of the party, begging to dance again and again with a giant smile on her face. So I signed us up when the dance rolled around the next year. But this time, I could barely drag her onto the dance floor. Her self-consciousness kicked in, and my heart broke.1

This happens for most of us as our egos form and social pressures take hold. Then it can take a lifetime to hack that away. Most never will.

As I unwound my memories, I realized that one reason I became an entrepreneur was to make friends and reduce my social anxieties! Employees become an automatic friend group. And this is why selling my companies hit so hard. I lost contact with my tribe and had to start something up all over again.

Leadership itself brings additional social pressures. To succeed, you have to become so much more attuned to others: Are they engaged? Am I giving and getting eye contact when speaking? Am I behaving in a way that encourages or discourages them from trusting me?

I saw this in other coaches and therapists who attended our retreat. They spend so much effort holding space for others that they have trouble drawing a line between others and self. Most therapists see their own therapists.

Forcing myself into that retreat allowed me to see how fully dropping social fears can bring me closer to other people—to make new friends instantly and see strangers in an automatically positive light. And to enjoy the presence of others even deeper, while allowing what’s best in me to shine on them.

Now, by letting that go, I had an amazing experience. This is how it can be in my life! I don’t have to be afraid of people anymore! I can PLAY again! Then tears, too, as I realized this is how I could have been all along. Oh, how many opportunities for deep connection did I miss? But now, I know.

Jumping Into Practice

I arrived in Dubrovnik eager—maybe desperate—to connect with people again, but it was still hours before our kick-off. I walked around the cliffside hotel and saw teenagers jumping off the cliff into the deep waters below. I hadn’t jumped off a cliff since my first trip to Europe in 1994, when backpacking with friends in Greece—not too far down this same coast. I knew I’d have to do it again here before I left.

Then, another small group of strangers and another intro session. This time, we were split into one-on-ones to share our stories. I decided to go with the cliff metaphor and be myself, even if it might be shocking to the other person and uncomfortable to me.

I shared a brief overview of my spiritual retreat in Glastonbury. My partner replied that he also went there for meditation retreats about once per quarter. From there, I was off to the races…

Over the course of the three-day event, I kept opening up, cutting through the small talk, and having deep conversations with people eager to share. Perhaps the highlight—and far from unique—was hearing a straight-laced looking 45-year-old manager of billions of dollars in capital describe his participation in weekly meditative dancing classes.

Maybe everybody’s got something they’re trying to figure out and are afraid to share with each other because of the social limits that hold us back. But once again, by putting myself out there, I’m seeing more of them. They’re seeing more of me, and we’re coming out so much better at the end of even a 15-minute conversation.

It was at this event that I realized the best way to open ourselves up is to take action. We can’t beat the thoughts in our heads into submission by using more words against them. When leading ourselves, our system watches what we do, not what we say.

Throwing myself into these challenging situations shows the ego and psyche who’s boss. And on the other side of action, we get real-world information. The fears are proven unfounded. Excitement rises. We learn new lessons. We gain confidence, and our nervous system is more relaxed the next time we take a risk.

And as the last day of my journey abroad dawned, I knew it was time to throw myself off the actual cliff. After a 6 am yoga session, I walked over to the spot those teenagers had been daring each other to launch from. I stood there for a moment, looking down and somewhat worried about picking the deepest spot.

Then I caught movement on my left and saw Priscella from our group holding her phone and motioning me to jump off. So I leaped off with “Woooo!” that must have woken half the hotel. And as I rose to the surface, I felt so much baggage dissolving. I floated, without effort, and wondered if the rest of my life could feel like this now.

Bringing it Back Home

I never knew how much a retreat or solo travel could change a person—especially me.

They say we’re in a “loneliness epidemic,” but maybe a bunch of us have shit to figure out. For thousands of years, men and women have taken time away from others to sort things out for themselves.

My friend, Meghan, from our retreat, wrote about her “Joy Trips,” in which she takes an annual solo break from the real world and all of its work and family responsibilities.2 Sadly, most people she meets can’t imagine doing something similar, yet more social “rules” that keep us stuck in place.

I keep running into other examples of people whose solo journeys lead them to connect deeper with others…

Douglas Rushkoff, a middle-aged guy, shared something similar in his recent post about a retreat with a group of people he didn’t know. For him, the words of another 17th-century philosopher, Spinoza, came to mind:

“The very definition of a person’s power and vitality—their life—is their capacity to affect and be affected by others.”

I also enjoyed Heather Havrilesky’s story of finally learning in mid-life that:

“To grow in this life, you have to know things you don’t want to know. You have to learn things you don’t want to learn. You have to open your eyes to your greatest fears and your deepest wells of sadness. This is where maturity comes from! You blossom into a full, balanced, happy adult when you dare to reckon with yourself as an organism among other organisms, and you dare to attune yourself to how you feel inside and how the world feels around you.”

Travel gets us out of our comfort zones, helping us open up to new information.

But these Trips don’t count unless we integrate them into our everyday lives back in the real world…

I noticed immediate differences upon my return. I started leaning into conversations with strangers on the street, while waiting in lines, and with the guy in the barber chair next to mine. I found myself looking in the eyes of friends and strangers more, and just genuinely happy whenever I meet, well, just about anybody.

I increasingly see each person as holding treasure just below the surface. Sometimes literally.

My prior fears, second-guessing, and judging seem dissolved. I keep asking myself, “Who is this guy?!”

And my time away gave my wife a chance to do some soul-searching, too. Upon my return, we traded journal entries about what we discovered. With more internal barriers dissolved, we shared things we had never shared in 30 years of loving marriage. I never thought our relationship could go further in another couple of decades, much less two weeks. Wow.

Find Your Gold

It took me a few years to stop being stuck playing a role. This trip helped me stop being afraid to be seen without one.

I’m being myself more than ever in my life—and in this process, I’m feeling more connected to everyone I meet. Maybe this is what Oneness is about…?

But this is just my path. Yours will be different because we are all unique. My humble suggestion is that a beautiful part of who you are lies beneath the surface, covered by defenses against perceived dangers in the outside world.

Follow that still small voice of growth that wants to emerge. Take some action on your own to explore who that is. Notice how you feel. That’s You, waiting to crack out of the chrysalis and fly. Waiting for you to Be Yourself.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

I think one of the challenges of building company culture is that it feels so “big”.

It’s not the stuff we’re taught in business school, and not what we practice enough for the muscle memory it takes to feel confident. Consultants must be brought in, and while they can be helpful, culture building mostly happens when they’ve left the building.

But it doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it out to be. Sometimes, just one silly idea, practiced with an open heart, can break the ice that freezes the flow between employees. And it’s the employees who create the culture, mostly when the CEO is not around.

This is the story of one little practice that worked for me, and later revealed something fundamental about human connection in my life.

New Day, New Offsite

It’s May 2017, and I’m planning for my first “stable” offsite as CEO of my startup, Ahalogy.

I had been co-founder and president of the firm I launched with my business partner in 2012. But after years of trials and tribulations, he left the firm, and I took on the CEO role 9 months earlier.

My first focus was just survival. We needed to pivot away from a failing product strategy and get profitable so that we could control our own destiny.

Thankfully, things were starting to click. Our shift to Influencer Marketing was working well, and profitability was clearly in sight. We were growing our team again for the first time in years, and I was excited to bring everyone together at our home office in Cincinnati for a few days.

My priority in offsites is to focus on who and what we are as an organization. It’s where we’d previously made group decisions about our values and vision, as well as the team objectives and strategies that would ladder up into our overall company Objectives, Goals, Strategies, and Measures (OGSM).

So I sat down with a blank agenda and considered where we needed to focus next.

I thought about our killer culture, built through being in the trenches together, trying to survive. But now, new employees were arriving, teams were getting more independent, and my spidey senses told me we were at risk of losing some of the easy cohesion that comes from everyone knowing each other and working shoulder-to-shoulder every day.

I searched for an activity at the offsite to ensure we all knew and trusted each other—within a one-hour window between other high-priority topics.

An idea sprang to mind: What if we took a page from Speed Dating…more like “Speed Meeting” between every employee at the company. It seemed crazy, but doable, and certainly worth a shot in the spirit of fostering connections.

My organizing team and I set up two rows of chairs facing each other and assigned each pair to spend 1.5 minutes asking each other a single question.

There were some quizzical and some anxious looks as people settled into their starting seats. But people generally trusted the process, and we jumped into the pool together.

Once things got started, all of our spirits were lifted. It was intense, fun, loud…and real. There’s no where to hide when you have another person sitting across from you. The trust that permeated the company’s culture expressed itself through 435 unique discussions. The only disappointment was how fast the 1.5-minute bell kept ringing.

I wish someone had taken a video of this event, but at least I still have one accessible in my mind. It shows face after smiling face, tons of eye contact, the pleasure of seeing and being seen, with zero distractions. By bonding one-on-one with each person for just 90 seconds, it felt like we were a single unit.

Please steal this idea for use on whatever team you are part of. Or, take it further, like I did last week…

Gazing in Glastonbury

Flash forward 9 years to May 2026.

I’m one of about a dozen members of a wisdom community called Leading Edge that traveled to Glastonbury, UK, for a weekend retreat. We spent much of the time at the home of Tim Freke, a philosophy and spiritual writer who hosts a group like ours there about every quarter.

I had enjoyed Tim’s writing and was eager to meet my fellow group members in person. His retreats are about his idea of “Soul-Sensing,” which suggests that we can sense with our larger selves, or psyche, in addition to our body’s five senses. You might call it a “intuition on steroids.”

My intent was to have a life experience with fellow seekers, and I believed we would get value from being together, no matter what agenda Tim had in mind. I avoided wondering (or worrying) in part because I no longer want to be the guy who over-prepares or over-analyzes.

The Friday evening, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon sessions were practice in group meditation and in expanding our senses. These were a warm-up for the big event Saturday night: After dinner together at a nearby pub, we walked into Tim’s retreat room…

With low lights and soft music, we sat in chairs facing another person. And, one by one, we were directed to spend 3 minutes silently gazing into the eyes of the person before us, then to continue rotating to pair with every other member of the group, most of whom I had never met until two days earlier.

Before I go on, stop for a moment. What emotions arise in you when reading this?

Can you imagine it? Would you sign up for it?

Going in, I was “thrilled” in all meanings of the word: Excited, nervous, curious, and a bit queasy. Like being next in line at a roller coaster—which, ironically, also lasts about 3 minutes per ride.

There’s nothing to be afraid of (I told myself). This is “just” another human being. No one will hurt you…

…And I spent the next hour smiling ear-to-ear as I poured love into and received love from each person in the room.

At times, I caught a sense of Oneness, as if I were seeing myself and all of humanity in their eyes. With others, I caught a glimpse of their soul’s spark emerging from behind their physical form. With everyone, I felt so much bigger than anything mere words can describe. Receiving such attention and love was utterly warming.

Afterward, we went around the room and shared our feelings, then danced like kids again, followed by pints of beer on picnic tables—reflecting on the awesomeness and thankful for the chance to make magic together.

See You Real Soon

As the long weekend concluded, several of us shared a train back to London, taking over a section of seats to hang on to the feeling of togetherness just a little bit longer. Eventually, our group parted on the platform of Paddington Station.

A funny thing happened as I dragged my bag, alone, through the busy streets to my hotel for the night:

My eyes automatically clicked onto the faces of each person I passed on the busy street.

I had to duck into the back of a restaurant to rest and register this change. What happened to me?

I think I longed for more of that same kind of deep human connection we experienced over the weekend, where we learned to see the beauty and love that lie inside each person, whether we know them or not.

We don’t have to gaze for three minutes straight to capture this feeling—actually, staring out of context will scare people!

But next time you are with another comrade in this human race, look them in the eyes and send positive vibes. Smile into the eyes of the barista who hands you a coffee, the stranger you pass on the sidewalk, the co-worker you’re brainstorming with in the conference room, and your significant other—the love of your life.

By truly seeing who they are, you will give them a rare gift in these times. And by seeing them, we might see ourselves in a new light.

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

This is another round of Bob’s Bites. Every couple of weeks, I serve up a handful of short stories and lessons…

Sell Your Shares

First, I’m not a financial advisor. Second, don’t sell all of your shares—just the ones that your company gave you in an annual allotment. At least consider it. Here’s why:

Years ago, when I was wrapping up my earnout at the public company that bought our startup, I attended my final annual sales conference. On the last night, as we worked our way through the top-shelf cocktail bar, I was cornered by a long-term, senior-level employee of the firm.

“David” asked me whether he should sell his company stock. Its price has been declining gradually, from around $25 when David got an IPO grant seven years ago to around $11 at that point. The conversation went like this:

Me: How much of your investment account is company stock?

David: 100%

Me: If nothing else, you really should diversify by selling.

David: But what if it becomes the next Google?

Me: Dude, this is NOT the next Google.

David: But what if they see that I’m selling and think I’m not loyal?

I then pointed to the company's executive team huddled at the other end of the event and told him to follow me. We refilled our drinks, sat down at a table, and I pulled up a public website to show David how those execs were selling their shares of company stock as fast and as furiously as they could.

David declined to take my advice. He rode the stock down to $3 and was laid off when the company was acquired by a private equity firm. But he got a new job at another public company, and I think he learned his lesson.

My overall advice is: (1) Don’t invent scenarios in your mind around the equity you are granted; and (2) Seriously consider working with a financial advisor, who is there to help you manage your money and your mind.

And if you won’t listen to a financial advisor or me, try the co-founder of Netflix.

“Clients Went Feral After COVID”

This is something my old friend, Catherine, told me when we caught up for coffee a few months ago. She’s been leading client success teams at agency businesses for almost 20 years—and she has never had a harder time working with clients.

Catherine told stories of bad manners, casting blame, and zero interest in relationship building. She is dying to scream, “Didn’t your mother teach you how to treat others well?” It’s becoming hard to keep her team motivated or keep her interested in leading them.

She knows things have changed for the worse on the client side. They are under new pressures and facing fresh fears. The rise of AI and the fall of easy VC money are major causes for the types of companies she serves. It’s definitely natural for people under pressure to project it onto others.

Relationships usually help relieve the pressure. But Catherine says COVID and the shift to mostly remote work prevented relationships from forming and sustaining. Turns out we need to remember that we’re human beings on the other end of the screen, and the only way to fully fill the relationship tank is to get together in person.

Maybe it’s time for some road trips to client offices this summer—even if it’s meeting them at their homes.

What Happens When People Don’t Want More Stuff?

When it comes to content consumption, if I’m not reading a book or a Substack post, you’ll usually find me watching YouTube. I’ve trained a pretty eclectic algorithm that brings me answers to questions I never before wondered about—from why modern lumber is so bad to how Disney World keeps its parks mosquito-free in the middle of swampland.

Recently, I got sucked into Louis Zhao's channel, which provides inside takes on what’s happening in Asian cultures. He grabbed me with a video titled: “Why Japanese People Don’t ‘Want’ Things Anymore.”

Towards the end, he turns an insight into a philosophy—and a potential preview of what’s to come in our near future. As more people are lifted out of poverty, yet economic growth slows along with population, might consumerism fade in its value and meaning in our lives? Will upcoming generations decline to join the game of maxing out their financial footprint and just…exist?

And does “exist” mean lying flat doing nothing, or pursuing creative dreams and personally meaningful goals?

About once a month, I catch myself applying the William Gibson quote: “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.” Perhaps we’re seeing our planet’s broader future unfold in Japan—a country that has been a few decades ahead in tech. See for yourself, and let me know what you think in the comments below!

(Note: I’m going to take a week or two break from writing as I enjoy a work+play trip in Europe. Y’all be well until then!)

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

I’ve got a list of hundreds of “true business stories with a life lesson” from my career. I think now’s a good time to tell a really special one.

After all, it’s our 30th anniversary in a few days.

Maybe it’s out of fashion today, but when I started dating in my teen years, I always had a purpose in mind: To find someone that I could spend the rest of my life with. Yep, I’m a long-term strategic thinker through and through…

So, when a very good friend set me up on a blind date with her very good friend in the summer before my senior year of college, my rational mind saw it as a promising lead.

That rational mind went out the window when I met Stephanie. It was love from the start.

We had a wonderful summer of ‘93, then continued a long-distance relationship through our last year of college and first year of work. Eventually, I convinced her to leave her dream job at Southern Living magazine and move in with me to test if we could survive together for longer than a long weekend. I was confident, though, and bought a ring before she arrived. We got married in May 1996.

Little did I know she would be an invaluable partner in both business and life. Here’s one of the reasons I’m the luckiest guy on the planet.

Florida Man

I returned for my senior year after that wonderful summer with Steph with only one thing on my mind: landing a job, somehow, somewhere.

I went to a good college (Duke) but had a so-so GPA (3.3). The economy was not great at the time. But mostly I sucked at interviewing. I knew nothing and was arrogant about it.

After five fly-in days of interviews with big-finance and consulting companies in major markets like New York and Atlanta—and getting rejected by all five—I thanked my stars for finally getting an offer from a mid-tier commercial bank in Orlando, Florida.

It was not a sexy job or location. I had to take two additional correspondence courses in Accounting after graduation and before starting work because I majored in Economics, not business. I had no real desire to work in banking. But they were hiring, and I needed a start.

The work was interesting for the first year or two, as we rotated through various lending departments. I got the chance to prove my value among a class of new hires. And I got exposed to a wide range of our clients’ businesses and industries—from a pipe factory to car dealerships to the wonderful world of Walt Disney. It was a kind of hands-on business education that I missed in school and summer jobs.

Eventually, I was promoted and placed in a corporate lending position within a group that worked with businesses with over $20 million in revenue. I took over a territory of companies north of Orlando, which included clients such as the Anheuser-Busch beer distributor for the panhandle, an owner of a chain of 20 gas stations, and the University of Florida Athletic Association.

This new position brought some pride and new experiences. But as each month passed, I felt worse about my career.

I spent my days renewing lines of credit and equipment loans, and trying to get current and prospective clients to join me for lunch or a round of golf. I also think I spent half my day signing paperwork. Someone in the department had to approve what felt like every single check written or deposited in our corporate client accounts. What little cursive legibility I had was ruined by this period in my life.

One specific situation left me shell-shocked..and searching…

I got a call from my client at the beer distributor, who I took out to play golf just two weeks earlier in Pensacola. He told me, “I was just at lunch with your competitor at Nationsbank. He said he could renew our line of credit at a 25-basis-point discount. Are you going to match him, or do I have to take my business elsewhere?”

I had to match it or lose it because our money was as green as any other bank's. I wasn’t offering any value, making any decisions, or doing anything that felt meaningful. I saw a lot of businesses, but I wasn’t really practicing any business.

This led me to have more career conversations with my peers and boss. I asked how they thought about their current and future plans. Almost all said something like, “I’m going to put 10-15 years in here, get a few promotions, and then go work as the CFO for one of our clients.”

Some people loved this work and path. But I really didn’t care for Finance, and couldn’t imagine “putting in dues” for so long in hopes of working for someone else’s beer distributorship or chain of gas stations.

Steph joining me and our marriage brought my personal life to a “9,” while my professional life was at a “2.”1

Career-wise, I felt hopelessly stuck.

MBA-scape?

My angst forced me to dig deeper for options.

A few people I respected, including both my direct manager and my father, suggested that I get my MBA at the nearby University of Central Florida in the evenings. They suggested it could accelerate my career options—maybe leading to a faster promotion (fewer years of dues) or serving as a differentiator to help me rise above stacks of resumes.

I wasn’t sure what it would bring, but it was something. It felt like the only path open for me—a junior loan officer at a mid-tier bank with a shitty golf game in the middle of Florida.

I vividly recall going to the evening orientation session for the school’s program.

As I took my seat in the auditorium with fellow new first-years, I looked around and saw what appeared to be mostly college kids in t-shirts and shorts. I sat there in my banker's suit, with a SunTrust pin in my lapel, finding almost no one else who had come from an office. As I listened to and spoke with a few students, I realized that most had just completed their undergraduate business degrees and were moving straight to their MBAs—without the kind of real-world work experience that nearly all programs require. I wouldn’t be learning from my peers at this school.2

Then the school's Dean approached the podium to deliver his welcoming speech. It wasn’t exactly “welcoming.” He spent his fifteen minutes at the lectern lecturing us about how we had better darn well show up for all of our classes and do our homework assignments.

I drove home shell-shocked.

What did I just sign up for? What am I doing with my life?

My Partner, My Believer

When I arrived home, Steph could tell from my face and posture that this orientation didn’t go well.

She invited me for a walk as the late summer sun set over the golf course next to our suburban apartment complex. Not that I saw the sun. My head hung low as I stared at the sidewalk in a world of dejection.

She listened patiently, asked a few questions, and then said words that I’ll never forget:

“You’re better than this job. You should try to get into a top MBA program that will open more doors.”

Suddenly, a dawning realization and a path forward came to me. I lifted my head and stood up straight as something blossomed: Belief. Hope.

I asked, “Really?” and “Are you sure?” Steph smiled, nodded, and gripped my hand tighter.

We walked home discussing how I could apply to schools in big cities like Chicago and New York so we could add that adventure to our young lives.

The next morning, I awoke with Confidence and a Purpose. I withdrew from the evening classes and threw myself into doing whatever it took to get into a top school. Months later, I applied to several and got accepted by one, the NYU/Stern School of Business.

One acceptance was all we needed to make our escape. We moved to a tiny, mouse-infested apartment in Greenwich Village (back when it was barely affordable), and Steph found a job at Time, Inc. (back when there was a publishing industry). We could barely afford the groceries, much less eat out, but we had the time of our lives for those two years in the Big Apple.

And this time in school, I was damn serious. I landed my dream internship at Procter & Gamble and a full-time job in a new career in Marketing. Steph and I packed up again for Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1999, where we’ve been ever since. Not too long after arriving, she traded in her publishing career for the chance to raise our two wonderful daughters. They’re off pursuing their own careers now—one of them in Orlando, which is a lovely place.

Steph has been an amazing ally throughout my career. She believed in me when I needed it, and challenged me when I’ve gotten too bull-headed about things.

She was particularly critical in helping me stand up for myself when negotiating ownership stakes at my two companies, and pushed me to fight for the CEO role at my startup when things got hairy. All had multi-million-dollar swings into the positive column because she saw clearly when I was confused.

It’s not always roses, of course. Sometimes I reacted defensively when she pushed. Our worst fights happened when I accused her of not being on my side, which mostly comes from early-life and early-career situations when someone I trusted dearly ended up betraying me. I am incredibly grateful for her understanding and patience.

I think our work-life story holds important lessons for today’s rising generations—and one I remind our children of as often as they will allow me:

First, this is often the path we go down. You’ve reached the end of Career Level One: The challenge of getting stuck in your first job and/or career direction. It’s natural to hit a dead end in the process of exploring. You’re not a loser, you’ve woken up! Congratulations!

Second, I hope young readers see the value of a close family member, friend, or life partner who is with us for better or worse. When they believe in us, we can borrow their energy to believe in ourselves. They help us see the goodness within that we’ve forgotten exists, and support us in reaching for a reset button.

This last part is just for you, Steph…

I’ve told you many times that any success I’ve had is really our success. Now I’ve written it for the world to see—so you finally have to believe it’s true.

🎼 “Thirty years and counting, baby…we’ve made a love that lasts.”

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

Businesses spend nearly $1 trillion each year on advertising their brands, taglines, and other handfuls of words in hopes that their customers remember something pleasant about them when it’s time to buy.

Words are portable thoughts, after all. And the more memorable the words, the more likely the thoughts are to spread and stick.

While advertising has been a well-known tool for millennia, very few leaders similarly understand the power of their words within their businesses.

By carefully crafting and promoting the words that communicate your strategic choices and areas of focus among employees, you can lead thousands of them to harmonize in ways that drive remarkable success.

A Year Ends…

It’s time for another creative agency story. Since the “product” of agencies is human services, and creatives in particular are a challenging group of cats to herd, I don’t think there’s another type of business where team alignment matters more.

My fellow executive partners and I felt this big time in late 2004 as we experienced the best and worst of agency life…

We were a digital shop working with enterprise brands, so we benefited from the flow of investment into this new segment. Our clients had multi-million-dollar budgets to spend with us. All we needed to do was hang onto them and keep hiring.

Hiring wasn’t too hard. Our hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, had a large market for agency talent, thanks to businesses built to serve companies like Procter & Gamble and Kroger.

Agency employees are also used to moving around in their careers. Business is up at one place, while layoffs are happening elsewhere. People move to the agency that’s growing and convince their friends to follow them.

We were the up-and-coming player in town, so we got a lot of attention in the community. Plus, we offered digital projects that creatives knew were where the future lay.

The problem was that we were hiring people from agencies that didn’t operate the way we did.

My business partners and I didn’t come from the agency world. And we were shocked to see that many agency owners and their employees treated their clients as enemies. It seemed to be a mentality leftover from the old “Mad Men” days when talent was rare, creatives were worshipped, and clients “got in the way of their art.”

Don’t believe me? Here’s an example:

One of the oldest and largest agencies in town, NSL, once held an all-employee offsite in which they towed in an old car, painted “Clients” on its side, and gave everyone the chance to hit it with a sledgehammer.1

The Year Of…

Our business was booming as we reached the end of 2004, but our clients were complaining.

Our biggest single client, which accounted for over $2 million of our $10 million in revenue, put us on probation. Think of it as a 90-day PIP. You know how those usually turn out…

Other clients were signaling their desire to trade up to sexier agencies in New York, San Francisco, or L.A. As they added zeros to the ends of their digital budgets, they wondered if a little fish in Cincinnati was up to the task of taking their business into the great beyond.

Strategically, my partners and I saw a clear business opportunity: if we could just hold onto our current clients, we would grow incredibly fast as the digital waters rose. But how could we get over 100 employees—most of whom joined the firm in the past year—to buy in? How could we break them of the bad habits they developed at their previous employers?

We chose to pull all employees together for an offsite. Our CEO, Jay, laid out the business opportunity and challenge. Then he told that story about the car-smashing agency, where quite a few of our newer employees once worked. He said we were going to do the opposite: We would hug our clients.

He designated 2005 the Year of Hugging Our Clients.

Over the course of that day together, we discussed what this meant, how to get there, and situations where we did and did not practice the kind of care for our clients that would help us retain and grow with them.

And throughout the year, we kept “Hugging the Client” top of mind. We told stories of how people uniquely practiced this, depending on who they were and what the clients needed.

Naming the change and keeping it top of mind got us all on the same page. Over the course of the year, we got out of trouble on key accounts and began a torrid pace of growth, reaching over $40 million in revenue five years later. In the process, we won awards for company culture and creative work, and engineered a successful sale to one of those big holding companies.

Branding Your Change

Take a step back, and you might recognize this leadership tool in other places that have undergone massive changes.

In 1995, Bill Gates sent a now-famous internal memo titled “The Internet Tidal Wave.” He declared the internet “the most important single development” since the PC and reframed Microsoft around it almost overnight.

Mark Zuckerberg has done this a few times at Meta: First in 2012 when he declared “The Year of Mobile” and insisted on mobile-first design in every product discussion. Then, in 2023, he declared “The Year of Efficiency” to pull his organization toward disciplined evolution (after over-hiring)

Scott Belsky shares a few other examples in his book about building, The Messy Middle:

“Pinterest’s “Year of Going Global,‘” pushed every team across the company to reprioritize efforts to internationalize the business, or Uber’s “Year of the Driver,” which they rolled out when they realized they had fallen behind on developing tools and better policies for drivers on their platform. Other times it is a statement or edgy visual that sticks in people’s minds and becomes ammunition against old and stodgy thinking.”

This kind of internal strategic and culture branding can go way beyond “The Year of…” Amazon still uses the phrase “Day 1” as a shorthand for its operating philosophy. If you’ve seen a sales leader talk about their “Big Rocks” for the year, then you’ve seen this approach in action.

Take a further step back, and you’ll see how those who wish to make changes in society more broadly use branding to carve out space in our minds. Take this example about how “Designated Driver” was born and saved lives:

The term designated driver was invented by the Harvard Alcohol Project as a public health initiative and then seeded into popular television shows like Cheers and L.A. Law. Seeing characters put a name to a particular behavior created a new conceptual category in the viewer. If you accepted the term and used it, then it created dissonance with the urge to drink and drive. Why would there be a word for a person who drives his friends around while they drink if it’s perfectly okay to drink and drive? To resolve the dissonance, the existing model had to be updated—people who drink do not drive. According to the Project, after introducing the term to the public in 1988, alcohol-related fatalities dropped by 24 percent in four years, an extremely rapid shift in attitudes. Today, most Americans say they’ve served as the designated driver at least once in their lives.”—How Minds Change

Naming the change you want to make in an organization—or the entire world—is the first step toward actually making it happen.

How to Change Your Mind

This naming model can also help us make changes in the universe between our ears.

We are all working in some respect to improve our minds. We want to worry less, be more present, listen better, and curtail distractions. These are all jumbles of thought. But when we start naming them—like Ego, Voices, Shadows, and Traumas—we gain a little separation and can put them in their place.

Research shows that just receiving a psychological diagnosis can bring relief, even before any treatment through discussion or drugs. When we see everything in our minds as an object or process rather than “me,” we can ladder up and deal with it more easily.

If I break my arm, it doesn’t mean “I” am broken; it just means I need to take steps to heal my arm. If my mind keeps overreacting to bad news, it doesn’t mean “I” am broken; it just means I have a thought pattern that’s off-kilter. We go to the ER for the arm, and perhaps a therapist for the mind.

Or we can name the change we want to make in ourselves. “Overreacting to bad news” is a personal one that I’ve been working on. A few months ago, I learned that the legendary actor Michael Caine was taught to “Use the Difficulty.” It’s all about reframing the problems that arise in life by finding a way to get value from them—say, as a life lesson, an opportunity to develop new skills, or a challenge to step out of our comfort zones.

I took this and made my own version: Use Everything.

“Use Everything” is a mini-mantra that I am training myself to remember when “bad news” arrives. I started with a sticky note with the phrase on my desk, then I got faster and faster at remembering to think of this mantra when problems arose. Today, it’s mostly what I think of before I think of anything negative. It’s become kind of a game now to what positive spin comes forward first.

One of my most common reactions is to think about how to turn my screw-ups into a post that others can learn from. “Oh, great! I’ve got my next post topic!”

Nobody taught us in school that we could reprogram ourselves. But it’s true, and we all can do this! As evidence, here’s a note I got from a friend who read one of my early posts about Ego:2

“You exposed me to the concept that my ego was blocking me. I see that as one of many traps that would have prevented my startup from ever materializing. Thank you for that and for putting a name to it for me. It makes the game easier to play when you know and can name what you are up against.”

Ultimately, the game of business is easy to win once we learn to play the game of reprogramming our minds. The prize? A life well lived.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

~Michael Prince was removed from the team.

Alas, another sign of our times…^^^

Last week brought me two examples of someone leaving an organization and its leader pretending they never existed. No announcement. No clue what happened. Just a Teams message that they were removed.

Of course, we all eventually figured it out by speaking with the person. Truth finds a way.

This is one of the countless little tests—or tells—of how evolved a leader is, both on the outside and on the inside.

I should know, because I failed this test several times.

This is a story about finally passing, by getting past my own fears.

Burning Bridges

Back in 2004, I left my job as a marketing leader at a global CPG company to join my friends as a partner in a small digital advertising agency called Bridge Worldwide.

I loved digital marketing, loved these friends, and loved the chance to be an owner of a fast-growing company at the forefront of change.

On my first Friday afternoon at the new job, I got a “Got a minute?” request from someone on my team. As you may have guessed, they resigned.

This never happened to me in my corporate job. Sure, people quit, but the business was big enough and the talent pool deep enough for any departure to be filled quickly.

Now, this triggered a flurry of activity in figuring out how to fill that role and what to tell the client, who was already worried about us hitting their deadline.

The sudden drop of a new important+urgent task was bad. But this departure felt even worse. This person was a strong performer, teammates trusted them, and they were positive culture contributors. This was like a vote of no confidence against our company…against me. This was my team. My business. This was personal.

They were quitting on me.

I asked my HR leader to call the departing employee over the weekend and tell them not to come in. They were going to a competitor, so we didn’t want them hanging out in the building recruiting other employees or clients. We’d arrange for them to get their desk stuff after hours.

On Monday morning, I walked in with a frown, offhandedly told a few people that the person had quit, and promptly added that person’s name to my little list of people who were Dead to Me.

Over my first year, I added a dozen people to this list…

Affecting Change

Our business continued to grow well, and morale was decent despite the employee turnover. But the stress of having our product (people) going up and down the elevator each day added up.

As I described in detail in a post a few months ago, my co-owners and I holed up in a conference room and decided to make company culture a competitive advantage.

One of the first things we did tactically was to send regular, anonymous culture surveys to our +150 employees. Ideas and insights came pouring in, especially surprises we never thought about. I vividly recall one little thing that was repeated: People hated that we weren’t more transparent when employees left the company.

We dug in further with a handful of unofficial cultural captains—you know, the people who seem to know everyone. They explained that it’s a big thing when a team member leaves, whether it’s their decision or not. It disrupts the work and severs human connections. By obfuscating their departures, we caused confusion on projects.

Even worse, we sparked new fears. Is this the start of a layoff? Was a client in jeopardy? Did he say something that pissed Bob off? When leaders aren’t transparent, people conclude the worst.

Plus, it made us—their leaders—look small. We came off as petty, egotistical, and untrustworthy by hiding the truth and moving departing contributors’ names from award lists to shit lists.

A funny thing happened when my partners and I discussed this in our next executive team session: We all agreed to change. Our business success depended on it.

In fact, we came up with even more reasons to improve our behavior. People gave fewer weeks’ notice when they feared being walked out immediately. They sometimes told co-workers and clients they were treated poorly on the way out. Each one was a source of negative word of mouth in a very small world. And they were less likely to give us needed feedback about our company—they feared that we’d get angry and fire them, too!

We quickly created a process for handling employee departures.

First, we developed a template of talking points that the employee’s manager would email to all hands a day after the individual resigned or was terminated. It included the person’s last day and whether and how we planned to fill this role. The message was short and direct, but allowed the manager to include specific positive points.1

Second, as often as possible, we held a happy hour at the bar next door to celebrate the individual on their last day. Our executive team showed up, covered the beers, and led the cheers for the departing employee. Even people who went to competitors got a nice send-off.

I have to say, those first few beers were particularly bitter. But overall, this playbook helped us turn a negative into a cultural plus every time. The standard messaging was positive, professional, and timely. It dissolved those fears of the unknown.

The happy hour showed that we could be bigger men and women who wouldn’t wilt when someone left. And getting our remaining employees out for a night of bonding helped them remember we still had something great going on together.

This and many other tweaks added up to significant improvements in our culture, helping us build a competitive advantage that propelled our agency from $10 million to $40 million in revenue in five years. Over 400 employees joined and stuck with us.

The Process Inside

It was hard to get past the personal stuff, but realizing this was directly in our business interest diffused it. Am I going to let my business fail because I’m determined to slam a door on someone on the way out? Am I going to be my own worst enemy?

No. I’m going to get past my own bullshit for the greater good.

That’s easy to say a few days or months later, of course. But in the moment when you’re hurting, we tend to fall into defensive habits.

It’s mostly Fear: That others will lose their belief in you and your company. Fear reverts us back to animal instincts. It’s the dog barking at his shadow. Amusing to us, until we see that Friday mystery meeting invite. Fear shuts down the precious rational mind that helped us and our business grab a precarious foothold in the marketplace.

But if we learn to see it arise and walk toward that darkness, we make better decisions in the moment and train our minds to fear less the next time.

That’s what our processes did. Process did the thinking for us when we could have been at our worst. We stopped taking it personally, moved on, and learned whether a given departure could have been prevented. Rinse, repeat, survive, and advance.

Over time, this business process re-wrote the operating system in my own mind. It helped me learn to separate from my thoughts and fears and gain perspective to both make better decisions and experience a happier life.

Instead of grudgingly hosting happy hours and putting on a pretend smile, I came to truly enjoy the moments and honestly thanked the departing employees for their work. I still took my business personally, but was no longer personally hurt when someone decided to take their life in a different direction. And I found I could be happy for them.

I eventually tore up my little Dead to Me list. Remembering to stay angry at someone was a constant drain on my soul and prevented me from growing as a person. Letting go and forgiveness have helped me feel so much lighter.

And once again, I saw that the daily challenges we encounter as business leaders offer opportunities to improve our entire lives.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

See this photo ^^^? It’s what we call art appreciation in the year 2026.

It’s not too late to change your summer travel plans…

Despite wars, inflation, and increasingly scarce jet fuel supplies, there will be another record year of travelers funneling into the world’s most wonderful places.

These travelers are armed with their cell phones and determined to prove that they’ve been there, done that. If you insist on joining them, watch for sharp elbows and stay out of their selfie shot range.

Oh, and expect the actual artwork to be a lot farther away than you imagined.

This intro might sound like an old man revving up to bitch at a cloud. But read on, and you’ll find some real business advice: You have more freedom than you realize when you own a high-demand, limited-supply product. And by sacrificing short-term profit and customer griping, you may make it better for everyone.

In Amsterdam(n)

I’ve been visiting world-renowned museums since backpacking across Europe after graduating from college in 1994. And each time I enter these hollowed homes of our greatest artwork, the viewing experience worsens.

It’s not about the number of visitors—which has obviously increased as more global citizens can afford to travel—but rather the devolution of behavioral norms. Yes, it’s the phones and social media.

Most recently, I spent a week “off-season” in Amsterdam, visiting museums that showcased works from Dutch masters to Van Gogh to Banksy. Each was crowded by visitors taking selfies and photos of Every. Single. F-ing. Painting—and the plaque describing them.

One can no longer stand before and appreciate a work of art without feeling the scurry of people who see a museum as some kind of Pokémon Go! game in which every work must be captured—from multiple angles. Then there are the selfies.

All told, maybe only 20% of visitors are this ferocious in their filming. But their activities make the experience about 80% worse for the rest of us.

The same thing happens in live music now. While concerts rise in price, the hands raised before you are no longer grooving to the music—they are holding cell phones. The extreme is seen in this year’s take on Coachella. Music fans once actively discussed “Who’s going to be there?” in terms of the performers that would show up. Now it’s all about which celebrities influencers will show up and what they’ll be wearing.

As someone who studies and applies business and leadership concepts, I left these museums wondering: who’s in charge here? Shouldn’t these places be passionate about the artwork they present? Can’t they see the problems before their eyes—or hear the Dutch Masters rolling over in their graves?

In researching for this post, I found that at least one museum, the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, changed its policy in 2023 to allow more photography of works such as Picasso’s Guernica. Its Director justified the change by saying, “It only takes a few seconds to take a selfie, and so the pace of the public will flow more.”

When did the goal of a museum become speeding up art appreciation? And are more selfies really the answer?

Alas, another leader falls victim to myopia. Here, the Director forgets that museums themselves are forms of art, and they employ curators whose purpose is to optimize the experience of enjoying the artwork within.

Masters of the Game

While I was wading through extended arms in Amsterdam, thousands of other spectators in Augusta, Georgia, enjoyed a different form of artwork without taking pictures.

They were at the Masters golf tournament.

The Masters is held in a private club that has stuck to a very different set of rules since the tournament’s inception in 1933. One of its biggest: No electronics allowed. The form of electronics has evolved over the years, from radios to cameras to cell phones.

It’s not just signage with “No Phones” and light policing. Bags are checked, and you won’t get in with a phone or camera. Get caught smuggling one in, and you’ll be kicked out—even if you’re a celebrity. Most people leave them in their cars or hotel rooms, and use pay phones (?!) inside if a call is truly required.

Unbelievable, right? No other major sport in the world has a similar phone ban. The price to attend the Masters can go into the 5-figures. You might imagine that fans would be outraged at being deprived of their rights to take and share “harmless” photos of the action and players they paid so much to see.

But nearly every visitor loves this policy.

Without their phones, people pay more attention to the action without distraction. They let their senses soak in the impeccably groomed course. And they end up having meaningful conversations with strangers who share their love of the game and event.

The Masters limits—or curates—the experience for its fans patrons. It places limits that make the event more enjoyable. This really isn’t too different from how its groundskeepers “curate” holes with challenging bunker and pin positions to make the play more wonderful to watch.

Museums and many more businesses should pay attention to this strategy behind the game.

The Economics of Limits

Let’s break this down a little further…

There are surprisingly many markets and businesses where demand exceeds supply, including sporting events, museums, concerts, the streets of Venice, public schools, and popular restaurants.

The supply of such places and events is fixed, but the answer to rising demand is not always to raise prices. If only the wealthiest people can afford something, the greater good suffers.

In these situations, the product or service provider has an opportunity to increase other costs that work to its benefit. For example, the museums I visited in Amsterdam generally required tickets to be purchased in advance, for specific time slots, through their mobile apps. This forced behavior—a cost that limited me in a small way—allows the museum to save money and increase visitor volume.

But other costs can be applied that improve the experience, thus increasing value for the customer.

Allow me to digress with an example near and dear to me: Duke Basketball.

I not only went to the school, but I was an Econ major and camped out regularly for seats to the games. So I was tickled when one of my favorite podcasts, EconTalk, discussed how Duke continually adjusts the non-cash price students must pay for these coveted “free” floor seats.

Back in my day,1 we camped out in tents for weeks outside of the stadium to get in for big games.2 This ensured that only the most true-blue occupied the best seats. We, the most committed, cheered so vigorously that it gave our home team an advantage.

And, like in the Masters, paying this added price led us to enjoy the game experience even more. We were surrounded by fellow extreme fans and felt like part of the team. The sacrifice itself—cold nights in a sleeping bag just steps away from a warm dorm room—added to the pride of walking into Cameron Indoor Stadium first.

Social Costs are the Norm

Policing negative behavior is also par for the course once businesses finally realize a tipping point is at hand, and they have the power to correct us.

Some readers lived this firsthand when the majority of people got sick of secondhand smoke. Smoking was gradually restricted, then eliminated, in public places such as restaurants, offices, buses, and airplanes.

Many products and services depend on how other customers use them. It’s fine when you use your phone with earbuds to listen to a description of art in a museum. But when you elbow me to stick a phone in front of the art I’m looking at, your enjoyment just made my experience worse.

Humans rely on social norms—i.e., rules of behavior and limits to freedom that we all pretty much agree on—to police ourselves. We give up freedom for the greater good. Norms of behavior have historically been taught in school and home, and enforced by group shunning within small, tight-knit communities.

But in this big, global world, where people are raised differently about how to behave, we now often need a government or a business to set and enforce some rules. Otherwise, a few spoil it for the rest, and then we can’t have nice things.

New technologies open fresh realms of use, abuse, complaint, and adjustment. These adjustments might be more common than you realize:

• Schools are banning cellphones in class.

• Retailers are going cashless.3

• Cities are limiting Airbnbs, which drive up housing prices and worsen neighborhoods.4

• FIFA penalizes teams whose football fans chant racial slurs.

• Multiplayer computer games kick out players who use third-party software to cheat.

• Disney World doesn’t allow you to dress like characters or wear clothing in which its characters are depicted inappropriately.5

Augusta Rules

Sometimes it takes a handful of examples and branding the change for more businesses to feel compelled to join the trend.

So this is my suggestion that more businesses adopt “Augusta Rules” in the places we go for public entertainment.6

Tell people to leave the phones at home or check them at the door. Give us all a break from what is increasingly seen as the modern cigarette in its power to addict and annoy—because it’s their addictive power and prevalence that means some outside power is required to pull it from our hands.

I’ll bet we’ll enjoy the events we’re paying for a lot more.

Going back to museums, I think the phone is often a crutch. We’re no longer taught in school how to appreciate art. We go into an intimidating space, surrounded by master works, and don’t really know how to look at them. So we take a photo because that’s…something to do. But we’re not truly seeing the art.

Businesses can teach us and create value in ways that most of us fail to realize or can’t even imagine.

Better curation from our museums, sporting events, movie theaters, and retail stores can give us what we don’t realize we need: Meaningful moments that no digital experience can provide.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

Please Be Kind, Rewind.

It’s one of many phrases that define my Generation X.

For those born after 1990 or so, this was a request printed on rental VHS tapes, everywhere from Blockbuster Video to the Mom & Pop local place next to the nail salon in the strip mall.1

The request to rewind was meant to help the next customer get their returned tape faster and spare the poor worker the mind-numbing job of rewinding tapes all day. Some places charged a fee if you didn't rewind, but mostly we complied as asked. The kindness of strangers helped us secure a copy of Die Hard for the weekend.

These memories came back as I noticed a more recent example of a company making a request.

Today, I want to draw your attention to a key part of the economy that gets little attention. But it might be something that can improve your business by asking customers to help make it better for everyone.

Small Space, Big Message

Those of us who create content regularly know that inspiration for our next piece can strike at any time. You’ve got to stay ready to receive—even when ducking into a bathroom on an international flight.

I don’t usually linger in such tiny spaces. No matter which class of fare you’re in, this seat is about doing business quickly.

But on a recent flight, I couldn’t help but notice this sign above the sink:

“A wipe of the counter goes a long way for the next guest. Thanks for helping keep the sink area clean and dry.”

It’s a simple request, written in a gentle way, with an explanation.2

I swiped a paper towel across the counter and went on my way, with a small smile of satisfaction that I helped the next soul who crammed their way into this space.

As a business, sometimes all it takes to improve is to ask politely.

As a customer, the request to respect others is a way to feel better about the business—and ourselves.

We Serve Each Other Often

“How can our customers help us improve how our product is delivered?”

It’s a question that I don’t think we ask ourselves enough in strategic planning and product development meetings—aside from a “share on social” or “send us your ideas” marketing tactic once in a while.

But when you look for examples, you might see they surround us:

• Casual restaurants ask us to bus our own tables

• Grocery stores provide spaces in parking lots to put our carts away

• Golf courses place sand shakers on carts and ask players to replace their divots and ball marks3

• Campgrounds and hiking trails ask us to pack out our trash and leave only footprints

In each of these cases, the business could—in theory—hire more people to clean up after us. But we’d see more expensive meals and fewer pristine trails or fairways. Delta could ask its flight attendants to spend more time cleaning the bathrooms, but that would mean fewer snacks for us—and do we really want the people handling our snacks to spend more time in the bathroom?

Not everyone pays attention to the please-and-thank-you game. (My neighbors reading this are smiling as they think about my obsession with the guy two streets over who doesn’t believe in picking up his dogs’ poop.) But enough of us do the right thing to make a difference in the economics of a business and our enjoyment of its experience.

It’s harder to see this in the B2B space, but a few examples come to mind from my companies in the digital marketing services space:

• Clients agree to let you use their names and logos in your marketing. This is almost always disallowed in the big MSA agreements that corporates insist you sign. But most individual clients are fine with it (usually as long as you don’t ask!)

• Companies tell you why you didn’t win the business. This should be a common courtesy. Unfortunately, this one is rarer than you might guess—even when you’ve done months of work and gotten to know your prospects personally. But great clients feel a responsibility to help you process the loss and improve in the future.

In both of these examples, great customers helped improve our businesses—just like fixing divots saves a groundskeeper time—but they also made the experience of fellow customers better. Seeing their logos on a slide helps new or prospective customers gain trust in our service. And telling us why we lost a competitive bid might help us identify opportunities to improve in ways that may benefit existing and future customers.

This happens in software, too. Hands-on users of SaaS platforms are asked to give feedback on the features that would make their work more efficient. Product teams then turn these requests into upgrades show how one customer’s suggestion can benefit the rest. But if no one replies to the user satisfaction survey, no one benefits.

The Best of Nudges

Sometimes it just takes a little nudge of the customer. Signs like “Curb our dog” or “Please close the door” remind us to do the right thing when we’re usually lost in the distraction of our thoughts, feeds, and inboxes.

Here on Substack, most writers get little direct feedback on their work. So many of us add a little section like this at the end to encourage people who liked our work to tell us:

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

There’s a growing habit among readers on the Substack app to hit Like or add a comment to any post they get to the bottom of. It’s a form of appreciation that never goes unnoticed. If this becomes more regular, I think readers will see even more high-quality content follow. Many of us are happy to work for applause!

Some Little Things are Big

Remember the original flight that inspired this post? Well, shortly after returning to my seat, a flight attendant came on the intercom and asked any nurses and physicians to hit their call button. It seemed that one of the passengers was having a health issue somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, hours away from any runway.

I heard ding after ding as passengers held their hands up to offer help. Word-of-mouth about what was happening traveled up and down the aisles. The individual was struggling but stable. When we finally landed, 300 passengers dialed down their desires to get off so paramedics could board and help this person off first. Everyone clapped in support when they made it off.

Delta doesn’t have to hire ER doctors to sit on each flight. It doesn’t have to put its flight attendants through full paramedic training, thus further increasing the cost of our fares. The company relies on the kindness of strangers.

And through the small act of wiping down a counter or doing whatever is asked to help a fellow traveler in need, we remember what it means to rely on each other in this crazy journey of life. This makes me more likely to fly with Delta and happier about being part of the human race.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

I’m excited to share the next podcast episode in my series of conversations with interesting people on topics where business and life intersect.

Scott Aaron recently wrapped up a long career focused on market research and strategic insights. He has worked at a combination of BigCo, agency, scaling startup, and his own consultancy.

We bumped into each other randomly for 20 years, then began sitting down for quarterly coffees. We talk business, guitars, and especially our shift away from full-time careers as 50-somethings. Some might even call this “early retirement.”

Scott stepped away from his job last year, and I finally had the chance to drag him in front of a mic to share his story of making the move.

While our conversation will be especially relevant for people nearing the precipice of hanging it up, I think there’s much more value here for those who are earlier in their careers. They have the chance to make small changes today to put themselves in a perfect position far down the line.

Here’s a summary, a teaser, an amuse-bouche to get you to hit the play button above ^^^

Deciding to Punch Out

Scott was in a great position last year: a senior leader respected by his team and the CEO, a nice salary and work-from-home setup, and everything was strong on the home front. He wasn’t 60 yet. So why choose to leave the regular working world?

He takes us through his decision and the strategic and emotional factors behind it, including a lack of new challenges, the departure of trusted friends/colleagues, and coordination with his wife’s decision to sell her consulting business.

Scott spent 18 months planning—getting his mind around this, working with his financial advisor, and making moves within the company so that his departure would be easy on his organization.

It Takes Time to Unwind

Scott and I agreed that leaving a daily job in your 50s takes some time to get used to. You’re in your prime and have known nothing but work for decades. It’s your identity and something to do all day.

So there are a lot of mixed feelings that come up when you wake up without a full-time job, especially guilt.

Scott described how, for so long, his happiness was linked to his work productivity: “You felt good because you got all those things done today.” We have to find new ways to feel satisfied in our days. True to his strategic nature, Scott created four new ways to find happiness.

Self-Work Becomes the Work

One of Scott’s new focus areas is on improving himself. This includes getting in better physical shape to live as active a life as possible in the years ahead.

We discussed the natural aging and maturing process we’re going through, which includes a drop in some energy sources and an increase in perspective and wisdom.

But there’s also an element of using this new free time to discover who we are now—letting the field lie fallow and seeing what seeds shoot up once the former forest of identity is cleared. Some people leave business entirely, while others return to full- or part-time work that fits their lifestyle.

We Need a New Name for this Stage

We agreed early and often that “retirement” is a word that fails to describe how our peers and we are approaching this stage in life. We need a better way to answer the cocktail question, “What do you do?”

So we wrap up by batting around a few alternative words. Refirement? Free Timer? Fun-employed? Available? These and more are rated and debated.

Many thanks to Scott for taking the time and bringing great insight and transparency to a topic that we don’t discuss openly above. If you’d like to get in touch with him directly, you can find him on LinkedIn.

Listen by hitting the play button above ^^^ or using your favorite podcast app.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

There are some pretty obscure superheroes in the Marvel Universe.

ForgetMeNot has the power to make people forget he exists the moment they stop looking at him. He’s been a member of the X-Men for years, but no one remembers.

Gin Genie creates seismic vibrations, but only when drunk.

Bailey Hoskins has the power to explode…once. You might remember him from X-Men: Worst X-Man Ever.

But there is a hero even Marvel forgot to cover: The Sign Avenger.

By day, he’s Bob, a mild-mannered advertising industry executive. But on the weekends, he fights evil-doers by using his powers to spot illegally placed advertisements and remove them.

For years, only his wife, children, and a handful of close friends knew of my alter ego. But now is the time to reveal all.

This is my origin story…and an invitation for you to join my cause.

A New Knight Dawns

It’s Fall 2008, and my family and I have recently moved to Clifton, an old, leafy suburb just five miles north of downtown Cincinnati.

This area was first settled in the mid-1800s as a place where city dwellers could escape the summer heat and cholera. Today, it’s filled with mostly older homes and a diverse range of people. We moved here to get away from the suburban sprawl and be able to walk to restaurants and parks.

The morning after moving in, I take my new commute to our office downtown, where I lead a growing company that makes money by creating digital advertising for large brands and retailers. I take a right out of the neighborhood, another right by the grocery store, and find myself waiting at a last, long light before a turn that will put me onto the interstate.

As I wait for green, I notice a rectangular sign stapled to the telephone pole on my passenger side. It’s in the perfect position for visibility by hundreds of fellow motorists each day. It’s claim: “Make money from home! www.money4u-now.com”.

The light turns, and I make my way, putting the sign and its impression in my rearview.

Until I notice it again the next day, and the next day, and…you get the picture.

And suddenly I’m noticing more signs like this throughout my daily commute and our walks to stores and parks through this leafy old neighborhood. They feature other URLs and other sketchy business opportunity claims. All are stapled or nailed to telephone polls or stuck in the ground with thin metal frames. I’m not talking about a yard sale or political signs, which are usually removed promptly. These are placed by people pursuing a business model.

You probably know what I’m talking about, but here’s an example from a company that will produce such signs for you:

It makes our lovely neighborhood look like trash. And I’m determined to get to the bottom of it…

I know, my house was paid for through advertisements. But we play by the rules and pay for our advertising. I’ve also just published a book titled The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning. My thesis—and obsession—is a belief that we need to shift away from annoying, interruptive marketing and toward advertising that adds value to people’s lives.

First, I do some research to make sure I’m not the asshole here. It’s a self-hack that I’ve found very effective.

I go to the City of Cincinnati government website and discover, as I expected, that it is illegal to place advertising in the public right-of-way, including on telephone poles and along roads.

Then, I pull up a few of those URLs from the signs I pass each day. They direct me to very basic landing pages that are marketing for—believe it or not—a direct marketing business. It’s the dumbest pyramid scheme you can imagine: People who land on these websites are told about how they can buy a class that will teach them how to set up their own sign business. You make money when other people buy your signs and come to buy the class.

And this is when my head explodes—an idea…a purpose unfolds:

I’m going to take these fucking signs down!

The Sign Avenger

It’s now Saturday morning at 7 am. I begin driving my usual path to work. But I have a different job to do.

Instead of pulling onto the interstate, I pull into the BP gas station next to the first sign that spawned this. I park in isolation by the air pump and pop my trunk. It’s go time.

I open my car door, get out, and briskly walk over the curb and through the grass to the offending sign. I gauge the required strength and the angle of attack. I see that it is merely stapled in. I place my hands on the top of the sign, and with a mix of determination, anger, and desire for justice, I yank down hard and am satisfied.

With the deed done, I feel some surprising thoughts and emotions bubble up. There’s the childhood me that played a few pranks on friends and neighbors and felt the mixture of pleasure and guilt. I feel some embarrassment, wondering what the drivers in the cars around me think of seeing a crazy guy pull down a sign.

And a very tiny part of me wonders if one of those drivers is the one who put the sign up and may follow me home. But I foreshadow…

I spend another hour collecting more signs I had noted on recent trips around Clifton. I arrive home with a collection of 25 in my car trunk. The more I pull, the more excited and less fearful I feel. On the way to transferring them to my garbage can, I note the URLs they each advertised, then I go to part two of my plan.

I go to the WHOIS website registration lookup tool and type the first URL. I hit search and am rewarded by seeing the name and email address of its owner. I proceed to craft an email to this person. I write to inform them that I have removed their sign because it is an eyesore in our neighborhood; it was illegally placed (I include the specific ordinance wording and a link to it); and I will file a report with the city if they post any further signs.

No one replies to these emails, but I notice they are not replaced. I’m racking up wins.

However, an ongoing stream of new sign-makers takes their place. Never for long, though! I’ve now got a Saturday morning habit.

There’s a little bit of an arms race over the next few months. Installers place them higher and use nails and screws instead of weak staples. But I’ve got a car full of tools and bottomless determination. I start bringing my extendable tree branch trimmer with me.

One weekend, I call home to my parents and let slip that I spent the morning taking down illegal signs. They tell me they heard about a guy doing something similar in suburban Atlanta. At one point, he used a chainsaw to cut down massive signs advertising new subdivision developments. He was arrested, but later released without charges. The news called him The Sign Avenger.

I adopt the name for myself.

Every few years, I find a similar story of street sign justice. In preparing this post, a Google search pointed me to a man in Maryland who was also dubbed Sign Avenger.

A Home Invasion

One day, a very different sign appears in our area. This one was for an actual business—a tax preparation service downtown that claimed to be a 2010 Best of Cincinnati award winner.

I rip that one down like all the others, and copy/paste my usual warning into an email.

But this is just the start of something else.

It’s Sunday, and I decide to make a run to the bagel store. I back out of my garage, proceed down my driveway, and find a sign for this accounting firm nailed on the telephone pole facing my home.

This guy has figured out where I live—I guess from my email somehow—and my blood is boiling.

I park my car, rip down the sign, and carry it back into my home office. I dial his phone number—helpfully posted on the sign—and have a 30-minute “conversation” with the business owner. Half the time, I’m cursing him in words that my daughters two floors up have never heard me utter. The rest of the time, I try to get through to him that we’re both small business owners, and we both know you can’t advertise this way.

He doesn’t get it, so I eventually hang up. My final step is to register a detailed complaint on the Better Business Bureau website, where he has an accredited profile.

I never saw his company’s signs again. The business still exists, but it seems to have been purchased from him a few years after this dustup.

Hanging Up the Suit

After a couple of years, the sign battles in Clifton taper off.

Get-rich-quick schemes never die, but they tend to fade over time. The marks learn from their mistakes and move on a bit wiser from the trouble. Or there’s just not enough victims around to keep buying work-from-home-today.com courses. Every pyramid scheme ends this way.

We eventually moved away from Clifton to a townhouse in the city. There are more real, legal road signs on the telephone polls down here, and you can’t stick a yard sign into the sidewalk cement.

I still get to do my thing once in a while, though. Last month, I yanked down two “Diabetes test strip” signs on a busy corner nearby. They were replaced a week later, and I trashed those, too. They haven’t tried a third time, but I’m waiting for when they do.

Why did I start this? Why do I continue?

Because someone has to! The line must be drawn here!

Seeing is an invitation to act. I’m an “ad guy,” so I notice ads and what’s behind them more than other people do. That makes me feel responsible for policing my own trade.

We all see signs of decay and devolution in society today. We run across something that gets ruined by a person or company acting selfishly, and we can’t trust or wait for the “authorities” to get them in line. And whining doesn’t work.

I know there’s something you can do.

And give yourself a name while you’re at it…take Sign Avenger…or Flower Planter…or Litter Slayer. Turning this work into an identity—mostly with tongue in cheek—makes it more fun and meaningful, which adds some self-motivation to keep doing what no one will pat you on the back for. The mask and cape are optional.

Maybe you’ll tell someone about your alter ego at a party, or a driver will see you planting flowers or picking up litter and trigger a cascade of their own thoughts about how they might make a difference, too.

If we keep this up, we might make our neighborhood—or the whole world—one we love living in.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

I’m here to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.

Listen by hitting the play button above or using your favorite podcast app.

Subscribe now

There are two topics that routinely trigger my attention and ire:

1. When consultants claim to know things the rest of us don’t.

2. When business leaders still don’t understand how to properly manage humans.

This post by Paul Sweeney hits on both. He reviews McKinsey’s State of Organizations 2026 report, and makes the point that:

“Three decades of management consulting — the restructures, the delayering, the culture programmes, the change models, the performance frameworks — simply haven’t worked.”

In other words, McKinsey has made billions per year advising these kinds of companies—their clients—on how to restructure business units and culture, yet none of this work has delivered meaningful improvement.

What struck me was this data point that McKinsey highlights three times in its study:

Huh?

Does this mean 80% of senior leaders in large organizations around the world think that money is the only way to further motivate people?

I felt a post topic emerging in my mind, so I dug into the report. And what I found surprised me: An insight that McKinsey’s own researchers and analysts missed…

Breaking down the Study

Market research is often a long way from anything “pure”—especially with the bias of a marketing department that needs clicks and clients.

But I’ve been a user, creator, founder, investor, seller, and client of market research in various forms across my 30-year career. I know how the sausage is made and love digging into the grizzly details.1

First, I look at the methodology. In this case, the survey was completed by 10,018 “leaders and managers from organizations with at least 1,000 employees, spanning 16 countries and representing 17 industries” from June to September 2025.

That’s an incredibly huge N= to work with. Anyone who has tried to get even 100 clients to reply to a survey knows the challenge. I guess it’s a testament to McKinsey Consulting's reach and brand. For our purposes, it’s a large enough number to be confident that the responses are not subject to the errors of a small base size.

Then I went directly to the most damning statistic: “Only 20% of today’s leaders believe nonfinancial rewards meaningfully boost performance, leaving most companies underinvested in human motivation.”

Let’s look at the question and answers:

As you can see, this question asked respondents to choose one or more ways to improve performance among knowledge workers. It is broken down by age, which is not worth looking at because the minds at McKinsey haven’t bothered to provide a significance level for any of their data.2

You might think this is pretty straightforward. But one trick to breaking down research is to look at the questions through the lens of a respondent taking the survey. Most generally, do they really understand the question and answers at a glance? This is a critical detail in survey design. People are busy and trying to get through these questions as fast as possible. They do not want to think!

In this case, the question seems pretty clear. Leaders often have to consider how to “improve performance” of their employees, both individually and as a group.

But note: “improve” means “Can I get better performance by doing more of this at my company?” It’s about whether doing more will make an impact.

Now let’s look at the potential responses:

• “Career progression pathways” (43%)—Promotion seems to be the point here.

• “Regular performance dialogues” (42%)—Feedback from your manager.

• “Competitive compensation packages” (40%)—Salary, bonus, etc.

• “Dynamic goal setting” (37%)—Starting to get unclear, but I guess this is about reworking company and team goals, which I assume to be financially-related.

• “Consequence management”3 (20%)—A better Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) system, perhaps? Wonderful.

• “Nonfinancial rewards” (20%)—I’m not sure what people think this is. Vacation days? Free snacks? Swag? A gold star on your desk. We’ll come back to this one below.

• “Other / Non-relevant” (5%)—Who knows what this grab bag is about. Could be anything from some secret sauce to declaring improvement impossible.

Do you see anything odd here?

Look at these numbers. They are scattered across the board, and even the highest are below 50%! And some of the biggest traditional motivators don’t seem likely to move the needle. Barely 40% think adding promotions or paying people more will work.4

If leaders truly believed in a clear model, you’d expect something like +70% on one or two answers, then a drop-off. This is mushy as hell, which suggests there is no clear understanding of how leaders might improve knowledge workers’ performance.

And let’s come back to that Non-financial rewards number at 20%. This description, on its own, is weak. I think it brings confusion at best (“I don’t know what that means, so I’ll skip it”), and a negative bias at worst (“sounds like rooftop Slurpees to me”).

McKinsey flags this as an opportunity three times in its report, yet its question is poorly worded, and it never explains what it means elsewhere in the report.

To me, the real story of this survey is the following:

• Leaders of large organizations worldwide do not know how to improve knowledge workers’ performance.

• The vast majority of leaders do not understand and/or use non-financial motivators.

• McKinsey doesn’t understand either of these points and has been selling the wrong answers for years. They don’t see the issue in their own survey!

As a leader, dear reader, I hope you’re intrigued. Don’t run out and engage McKinsey yet. Just keep reading…

Nonfinancial Intrinsic Motivators

Strategies are ideas. Ideas are thoughts. Thoughts are shared through language. So maybe the right starting point is to align on some common language.

In this survey, McKinsey lumps everything other than money, feedback, goals, promotions, and PIPs into a catch-all “nonfinancial” category. We need a clear category name to work with so it can be better discussed, spread, and measured.

At one point, the report notes: “Leaders are still missing the importance of intrinsic motivators.” I think this word is right, but it needs to be fleshed out and more deeply understood. Let’s refresh:

• Extrinsic Motivation—We do the work to get a reward from someone or to avoid punishment. It’s something external; we hope to receive something from a manager or an employment agreement.

• Intrinsic Motivation—We do the work because it provides enjoyment, meaning, growth, or identity. It is created within our minds; it is something we care about, an activity we do for its own sake.

Intrinsic motivation is where the opportunity lies.

Intrinsic doesn’t cost anything. Intrinsic requires less direct oversight and bureaucracy. Intrinsic inspires more loyalty, trust, innovation, and creative thinking. And the companies that master Intrinsic enjoy higher sales and profits.

If you think extrinsic rewards are the only way to motivate people, then you’re designing a company that attracts and creates mercenaries. They will expect more rewards and leave when they stop coming. They’ll stick to a 9-to-5 schedule and only do work listed in their job description.

We shouldn’t eliminate extrinsic rewards, but they eventually hit a wall. Not everyone can get a promotion every year. There’s only so much money to go around.

Try These for a Change

In my first entrepreneurial venture—a digital advertising agency—I learned quickly that we couldn’t compete solely on extrinsic rewards. We didn’t have the economic model of the bigger companies in the business. We also saw a pattern in which agency employees frequently moved jobs for a few more dollars at a company down the street every few years. And we knew there was more to motivating people than matching the highest salaries in town.

So my partners and I chose to optimize around intrinsic motivators. It was a massive amount of work, with many mistakes along the way. Think of it more like designing a whole society or writing a Constitution. This is much tougher than tweaking a compensation plan, holding a few off-sites, or just calling in a consultant with a fancy process.

But this model became our path to superior profitability and a real competitive advantage. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it.

If you are willing to shift to greater intrinsic motivators, here’s where to start:

• Ownership—People want to be leaders of their part of the business, not robots. And they appreciate being trusted to be accountable for their decisions.

• Mastery—We gain deep satisfaction from getting better at something that matters. We love taking on new challenges.

• Purpose—When our work has a meaningful, positive impact on other people, we bring more of our energy to the job—especially when the going gets tough.

• Recognition—People react incredibly well to accurate, specific acknowledgment of their good work. All it takes is someone on the team to notice and tell them.

• Camaraderie—We want to feel that we’re part of a group that is humming on all cylinders together. This leads to friendship, and people don’t quit their friends.

• Play—If we’re not having fun, what’s the point? Why so serious? We can work our asses off while still laughing together and keeping things in perspective.

Everything here works best when you’re transparent about it. At my agency years ago, in all-hands and individual discussions, we regularly told employees: “We’re not going to pay what X, Y, and Z agencies in town do because we offer value they cannot. They have to pay more because their cultures are weak…But if they offer a tradeoff you prefer, by all means go for it.”

This transparently explained our decision-making and weeded out those who didn’t care about our culture. Plus, those who stayed were, in a sense, buying into the idea. They internalized the point that “I know I could get paid more elsewhere, but this company is so great that I choose to take less. I am someone who cares about more than my paycheck.” Of course, this put pressure on us to keep the cultural values there, which worked well.

This list is also worth considering for your career, too—whether you’re a new hire fresh from college or a senior vice president approaching retirement. Have you been pursuing extrinsic rewards because that’s what everyone else does? Is that fulfilling? Is maximizing financial compensation so important, or are you willing to give some of that up for a role that you can’t wait to start on each morning?

There’s no right answer, of course. Just make sure you know what the answer is—or are in the process of discovering—and design your career accordingly.

Can You See It?

It still troubles me that this survey suggests a majority of people in corporate power—people making decisions that impact the lives of millions of employees—don’t understand the power of intrinsic motivation.

There’s a phrase in the philosophy of human development: “The lower can’t see the higher.” It means that it’s hard for us to understand a new way of looking at something from the outside. People who have never raised children can’t fathom the mix of feelings that comes from being a parent. Children who have never been loved have difficulty experiencing this emotion. The guy who uses a hammer all day can’t compute what a screw is about.

Someone has to show you the way, or the universe kicks you so hard that you’re finally open to new ideas.

Early in my career, I was fortunate to work for a large company with senior leaders who showered me with opportunities to discover my intrinsic motivators. Most of the time, doing the work itself was so exciting, challenging, meaningful, and fun that I couldn’t believe they were paying me.

So when it was my turn to lead, most of my decisions came down to considering what would motivate me if I were in my employees’ shoes. The result is distilled in that list above.

Twice, I sold my businesses to much bigger companies. And both times, I was shocked at our buyers’ weak cultures and lack of understanding of intrinsic rewards. I felt like I could see in color, and they were stuck in black-and-white. For years, I was frustrated by them. Eventually, I felt sorry for them. They were missing the amazing feeling of a high-performing organization.

Maybe this is the real issue: Most senior leaders have never experienced what’s possible. They didn’t have the kind of early-career experience I did. No matter what you call it, they don’t see it. The lower can’t see the higher. This is tragic. It’s probably why so many jobs feel meaningless to so many people.

But at long last, when the usual ways stop working, desperation leads to evolution. As individuals and leaders, we could be on the cusp of realizing a higher level of human potential at work.

The future is here, it’s just waiting for us to wake up and realize it.

If you like my writing, feel free to click the ❤️ or 🔄 button on this post so more people can discover it on Substack 🙏

Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^

You’re in good company with fellow entrepreneurs and innovators who follow my stories from a career in tech startups and corporate innovation.

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There are some things you learn in business that are so utterly basic—such absolute no-brainers—that you figure the whole world understands it by now.

But every few weeks, someone reminds me that there are a lot of simple mistakes being made out there. It’s stuff you shouldn’t have to learn through a $100k MBA or $10k leadership retreat. Common sense is free.

But something bigger and more common gets in the way: Our Egos.

This is the story of a classic business blunder, and a signal for when it’s time to escape.

The Biggest Check

Last week I caught up with my friend “Sharon.” The last time we spoke two years ago, she was a client success manager at a fast-growing, profitable SaaS startup. Since then, her startup has been acquired in a strategic deal.

Sharon continued to do well at the new company and took a jump in Sales in early 2025. She tells me how much she loves the shift and is performing very well…

“Maybe too well…because I got flagged by the CFO.”

She kind of throws that in there, and I couldn’t help but take the bait and ask what that was about.

“The CFO was surprised and frustrated because he had to issue me such a large commission check in October.”

Hearing this, my pulse ramps up, and a red shade of anger falls across my vision. WTF?

I quiz her about everything. It’s obvious that her commission rate is well within industry norms and perfectly reasonable given the company’s financial model. Meanwhile, October is well known as the peak month for client spending in this category, after which spending drops off for the following two months.

She also tells me she's been working her tail off to rack up more bonuses. The financial upside gave her the incentive to check emails and adjust campaigns in the evenings. It helped her afford the down payment on a new home.

Oh, and the giant commission check that month? Less than $10,000.

So why, oh why, would the CFO be frustrated with her?

“He said that it wasn’t good that my total comp for that 2-week pay period was bigger than the CEO’s.”

(pause and let this sink in…)

Sharon went on to tell me how the CFO rolled out a new comp plan for her a few months ago. Her commission rate was cut to less than half its previous level, and there is now a cap on her earnings.

She tried hard to push back, explaining the seasonality and the extra work she put in. Alas, she failed.

“Now I stop working at 5 pm. I’m taking more MBA courses. I’m still hitting my expected quota, but there’s no reason for me to do more than that…

It’s funny, the CFO and my management are asking me if something’s wrong because my numbers aren’t as high.”

Sharon and I spend the next 45 minutes strategizing about what company she should join next.

This leadership mishap, my dear reader, is an egotistical own-goal. It’s hard to fathom how foolish this is. The company is literally turning away potential revenue and profits because its CFO and CEO cannot bear the thought of an employee out-earning them for a moment.

A small mind? More like a big head.

Pay For Performance

As a CEO at my last company, my senior sales leaders regularly made more total annual compensation than I did.

AND I LOVED PAYING THEM!

I was proud of it! I regularly told sellers in the recruiting process that my goal was to pay them more than I made. We even had accelerators, in which reps could earn a higher commission rate on contracts as they reached higher sales levels.

I didn’t do this because I’m some kind of touchy-feely share-the-wealth guy. I did this because it’s a smart an obvious dollars-and-sense business decision. I mean, the more they sell, the more revenue and profit we make. That made me more successful as a CEO, and I benefited in many ways— short- and long-term, financially and beyond.

As long as the P&L formula works, why would you ever cap your money-making machine?1

Not only does a cap cause your best people to slow their roll—it turns them loose to plot their escape. There are plenty of other companies out there that would love to hire a seller who bumps up against their cap.

Like so many business decisions, the key here is being smart enough not to let your selfish, self-sabotaging ego get in the way of doing what’s best. Look at most of the obviously poor decisions in business, and you’ll find ego issues behind nearly every one.

Don’t Sell Yourself Short

This story isn’t really for company leaders. They either get it or they don’t—and if the latter, they will suffer for it.

And this isn’t just a story for salespeople. I think it’s a wake-up call for any employee whose growth—financial and beyond—is capped by weak leadership.

I especially think of people who worked in highly evolved startup cultures where the pressure of marketplace survival often burns out our ego errors. Founders usually learn to grow the pie by sharing the wealth.

But the companies that buy startups—like Sharon’s new employer—tend to be staffed by leaders who have been isolated from the real world. They’ve never made decisions that can spell a company’s life or death. So they can afford to worry over silliness like not having the biggest check that month.

They don’t directly feel the value their people bring, and are afraid that someone who gets a bigger check might be seen as more important than them. This mentality leaks through leaders’ decisions in countless other ways, so the leader—and often their company —is destined to fail.

Their peril arrives gradually. A few key employees depart. That big contract didn’t renew. The product launch is delayed again. The CEO will find a scapegoat. They usually cast blame on the market, and then onto the next senior exec in the firing line.

As an employee experiencing this downgrade, do not stay out of loyalty to what no longer exists. Once that acquisition is closed, it’s like you’re working for a completely different company. It’s worth giving the new job a chance, but once you see that your efforts are no longer respected, it’s time to G.T.F.O.

Or ease back and spend more time plotting your next move.

This strategy always makes me think about a Ross Perot story.2 He was a top seller at IBM in the early 1960s. But IBM capped his annual commission.

Perot decided to work this to his advantage. He shifted his client contracts so that in the first month of 1963, he met his sales expectations for the whole year. He then spent the rest of that year and $1,000 of his savings building his own startup, EDS. Perot would go on to sell the EDS business for $2.4 billion in 1984.

Maybe that growth cap is an opportunity for you to do your own version of this. Go pursue your startup idea or side hustle. Take some classes. Start a new hobby. Get in better shape. Launch a podcast.

And when you eventually hand in your resignation, don’t be shy about mentioning the caps on your growth—commission and otherwise. Everyone makes mistakes; maybe they will learn eventually.

Then pat yourself on the back for believing in yourself. Work is hard enough, and you deserve to work for leaders who don’t put up barriers to success.

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Want to Go Further?

• Anyone can schedule a chat during my open Office Hours to discuss questions, provide feedback, network, or explore any other topic. My primary value lies in helping people strategize and self-examine to discover their best path forward. No charge accepted. You can also reach me on LinkedIn or by email.

• I’m a co-founder of Fleet, a holding company for services businesses. We invest in leaders ready to start their own companies (we also do some M&A). If you’ve ever thought about starting your own professional service business but need financial or other support, hit that schedule link above. ^^^