The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path There's a Better Way to Get There Than Solo Solopreneurs are becoming their own worst enemy, clinging to the label for the wrong reasons. Ask one why they fly solo and you'll get reasonable answers. 🟢The freedom of making all the choices and doing things your way 🟢 You get to keep all of the reward (profit and recognition) 🟢 You don’t have to manage anyone Nothing wrong with any of those things. But they're just the...
8 days ago • 4 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path "Not Unprepared" Isn't Good Enough You don’t see a founder who runs a great business show up unprepared.They show up locked in and on the ball. Do you think there's a connection between their preparedness and their running a great business? I do. Preparedness and running a great business go together. So does the opposite pair: showing up half-ready and a business that stays stuck at okay. And we're all choosing one path or the...
15 days ago • 2 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path The Importance of Knowing What 'Done' Looks Like For years I've drilled a simple three-point reminder into my staff in each one of my businesses. It's how we stay aligned. Everyone is expected to: 1️⃣ Know the vision2️⃣ Know your priorities3️⃣ Know what done looks like → Direction→ Focus→ Finish line Vision and priorities always get most of the attention. Vision decks, priority-setting, quarterly planning. But the one that...
22 days ago • 3 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path Why Do Founders Get Stuck on Decisions? It's not that they (we) can't make decisions. They make a lot of them all day long, and some of them they make really fast. What they skip is deciding how much a decision is worth before they start pouring effort into it. So the $400 software subscription gets the same amount of consideration as the $200K hire. Each one just gets whatever attention you happened to have that week. From the...
29 days ago • 3 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path tBOJ Season 3 New episode TODAY with Daniel Wakefield! 👇🏻 "Would You Like Me to Sign Those Handcuffs for You?" That’s exactly what I said. Not my finest coaching. But it worked. So maybe it was? I (kindly) threw that out to a client to get him to pause as he was considering jumping back into something that he’d committed to stop doing. The client is a founder, growing his business trying to get out of being the bottleneck....
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path You Don't Have to Be Good at Everything If you're trying to build a business that's going to work for you (instead of you always working for it), being able to produce revenue and being able to take a vacation are two different issues. Revenue capability is your ability to make money happen when you focus on it. Operational durability is whether the business keeps running when you aren't there. Most founders are stronger at one...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path tBOJ Season 3 New episode TODAY with John Barnes! 👇🏻 The Money Advice Your Business Deserves When your business has profit, you're choosing one of these three options: Pay yourself, pay down debt, or reinvest. It's an important question to answer, and you want to be intentional about it. But most of the time, owners make a gut call and then backfill a reason later. How do you know if you should pay yourself with it? How do you...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path You Don't Have to Have All the Answers How do you know when to jump in and when to stay out of it? It's the question that runs through your head twenty times a week. Somebody's about to send something with a wrong number in it. A client request has been sitting for three days. A call is going sideways and you can hear it from the next room. Every time, you've got about four seconds to decide whether you step in or let it play out....
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
The Golden Thread Clear Vision → Clear Priorities → Clear Path tBOJ Season 3 New especial episode TODAY! 👇🏻 You Already Know the Move I've got a piece of content sitting on my drive that's been finished for months. I wish I was making this up. I keep telling myself I'm "refining" it. But if I stop to think about it, it’s more than ready. It should’ve already been shipped. You've probably got your own version. Bigger than a doc, maybe. Maybe it's a hire you keep almost making. Or pricing you...
2 months ago • 3 min read