Blogs
The Business You Have vs The Business You Want
Early in my career, I was conditioned to believe that there was no business problem an increase in sales couldn't solve.
Today, I see things a little differently.
Growth is important. But sustainable growth usually starts with understanding your current reality, aligning your team, and executing against the priorities that matter most.
That's the first step.
How Deep Is Your Bench?
Who is your backup?
More importantly, who is your customer's backup?
The depth of your bench may be the best indicator of your company's ability to grow.
The Best Referrals Share These Five Traits
Most business owners love referrals. I sure do.
Over the years, I've noticed that the best referrals tend to have a few things in common. When they do, good things usually happen for everyone involved.
What If Growth Isn't Your Biggest Opportunity?
For most business owners, that probably sounds like a strange question.
After all, growth is usually the goal. More customers, more projects, more revenue.
The Best Product Development Team Is Often on the Jobsite
Some of the most valuable product development insights don't come from engineers, marketers, or executives. They come from the people installing the product every day.
The jobsite has a way of exposing assumptions, validating ideas, and revealing opportunities that no conference room ever could.
What Entering New Industries Taught Me About Leadership
One of the things I appreciate most about my career is that I have been blessed with the opportunity to work across several different industries and business environments over the years.
Every time I made one of those transitions, I was reminded of something that took me a while to fully appreciate.
The Hidden Risk of Being Too Accessible as a Leader
Why hands-on leadership must eventually evolve into trust, ownership, and empowerment.
For most of my career, I viewed being highly accessible and hands-on as one of my strengths.
And in many situations, it was.
It’s Not Scaling the Way You Think
You’re scaling the business, but not the leadership.
Growth is fun, until it starts to feel like a grind.
Early on, you can get away with a lot.
Loose structure. Quick decisions. Everyone doing a bit of everything.
And it works just fine. Until one day it’s just not working as easily.
To ERP or Not to ERP: That Is the Question
At some point, every growing business feels it.
What used to work… now doesn’t.
Too many spreadsheets and manual processes. Systems that don’t connect, and the team is chasing data instead of utilizing it.
So… When does an ERP actually make sense?
The Better Mousetrap Isn’t Enough
I’ve spent a lot of my career around innovative building systems that were clearly better.
Stronger. More efficient. Better long-term performance.
And yet… they struggle to become the standard.
Patience vs. Accountability Isn’t a Choice
As leaders, we are constantly walking this line:
How long do you give someone to figure it out… before it becomes something you need to address?
When Everyone Is Right… and It’s Still Not Working
I stepped in to run a distribution business that wasn’t performing.
Not because of bad people. Not because of bad tools.
Because things just weren’t lining up.
In my first 30 days, I kept hearing…
Your Bottleneck Isn’t People. It’s Coordination
Most teams aren’t underperforming; they’re constantly compensating for things that don’t quite come together.
Everyone is focused on speeding up the work.
Almost no one is fixing what happens between it.
What If AI Was Another Voice on Your Kaizen Team?
Kaizen has always been about bringing the right people together to solve problems.
But what if the real constraint was never the people,it was the speed of learning?
Are We Missing Great Talent Because We’re Too Specific?
I’ve been thinking lately about how we evaluate candidates right now.
It feels like we’ve gotten better, clearer job descriptions, defined requirements and more detailed “must-haves.”
Are we getting better at hiring, or just getting better at filtering people out?
Waiting for the Market to Tell You What to Do?
It feels like no one has a clean read on the market and current economic conditions.
If we are waiting for things to “settle” before making decisions, it feels like we will be waiting a while.
So the question becomes:
What should we actually pay attention to?
The Plateau We May Overlook.
The goal isn't to know more, it's to learn more.
Early in our careers, learning is the job.
We ask a lot of questions.
We don’t mind not knowing.
There’s no pressure to have it all figured out.
Then something shifts.
The AI-Assisted Project Manager
I had a conversation recently with a business owner who’s struggling to hire a qualified project manager.
It’s a familiar story, too junior, too expensive, or just not qualified.
But it got me thinking:
What if the problem isn’t the talent pool…
What if it’s how we’re defining “qualified”?
How to Evaluate Talent Beyond Industry Experience
In last week’s post, I shared some perspectives being described as “industry agnostic,” and the question it raised:
When does industry experience really matter, and when might the ability to learn matter more?
A few conversations since then pushed the discussion in a more practical direction.
Not whether learning ability matters, but something more specific:
How do you actually evaluate it when you’re hiring?