Regret is a choice. We choose it too often.

Self-help has come to mean you asking for help from someone else. Then, typically, someone else and someone else…

It’s time to get real about those missions statements that sound great but do nothing for your business.

Your competition is not the problem, YOU are the problem.

What if your year was 36 months long? How would it change your strategy, patience and decision-making?

Allow me to tell you a story about how a medium-sized business used getting paid faster to grow into a public company.

Maybe it is not traditionally the coach’s job to step in and fight alongside their clients, but every experience I have had and every honest conversation I have had with CEOs and business owners over decades is proving that it absolutely should be.

Almost every time they ask a mountain climber, or similarly devoted adventure seeker, why they climb the mountain they answer with the same non-answer: "Because it’s there."

If I am honest with myself, I have missed opportunities because I was worried about trying and failing. Of having an outcome that would have hurt my pride. Of seeming foolish or convincing myself it would be a big waste of time.

We, humans, despite (or maybe because of) our bigger brains, habitually choose known pain over unknown change.

Over 25 years ago I was sitting in the office of the CEO of one of my clients and behind him was an embroidered pillow that simply said “He who pays, says.”

I think there are more than enough business interview podcasts where the host asks the guest for all of their secrets to their incredible success.

This is not that.

What is the sculpture that WAS once your business? What have you added that is suffocating it (And likely choking you along with it)?

I wish I could remember where I first heard the above quote but it is one that I remind myself of and have shared with countless friends and clients over the years.

This was the question asked, 20+ years ago in the YPO group I used to belong to, by a member who founded a hedge fund/finance business. I have never forgotten it.