The
Archives:

2024

• 11/29/2024 - 2025 Annual Reflection Template

• 11/15/2024 - On direct vs indirect communication

• 11/1/2024 - How I’m attempting to “solve” the metacrisis

• 10/18/2024 - I bricked my phone for two months: Here’s what I learned.

• 10/08/2024 - You are allowed to heal

• 9/20/2024 - How to vet your CEO coach

• 9/06/2024 - Integrating your worst

• 8/23/2024 - How to hire well

• 8/9/2024 - Being "the best" creates a sparkly kind of lemmings

• 8/26/2024 - IKIGAI will not help you find your vocation

• 7/12/2024 - The evolution of YOLO

• 6/28/2024 - FAQ about coaching

• 6/10/2024 - On Men’s Groups

• 5/31/2024 - Client Stories: Chris Fredericks, CEO @ Empowered Ventures

• 5/17/2024 - Anxiety: A user’s guide

• 5/3/2024 - Managing your board of directors

• 4/19/2024 - My friend, Ryan

• 4/5/2024 - Guide to conducting your own 360° review

• 3/22/2024 - Taking off the ring of power

• 3/8/2024 - Michigan’s culture doesn’t do our startups any favors

• 2/23/2024 - How To Delegate

• 2/9/2024 - Why (and when) you should enmesh your identity with your startup

• 1/26/2024 - Welcome, Micah

• 1/12/2024 - Embrace emotions in decision making

2023

• 12/15/2023 - The 2024 annual reflection template

• 12/1/23 - 2023 top 10 book recommendations

• 11/17/23 - Why wearable tech is so popular, and why I have stopped using it

• 11/3/23 - When a part of you isn’t helping your cause

• 10/20/23 - On shame

• 10/6/23 - My best work is better than work I do to be the best

• 9/22/23 - The CEO’s Personal Management System

• 9/8/23 - How to run a vc fundraising process

• 8/25/23 - Pitches don’t tell investors what they really want to know

• 8/11/23 - Are founders allowed to lie? Is it vital that they do?

• 7/28/23 - Thoughts on casual-sobriety after 16 years sober

• 7/14/23 - A gift: The I-O Semi-Annual Reflection Course

• 7/7/23 - The conscious shift that separates competence from genius

• 6/23/23 - Activity: How do you naturally respond to discomfort

• 6/9/23 - Audience capture

• 5/26/23 - How to shift your consciousness to suit the results you want

• 5/12/23 - The role of grace in transitions

• 4/28/23 - Welcome, Santi

• 4/14/23 - The midlife reorientation - A users guide

• 3/31/23 - How to build unshakeable confidence

• 3/17/23 - Client Stories: Martin Berg, CEO @ DX

• 3/3/23 - How good leaders become great

• 2/19/23 - The true purpose of culture

• 2/03/23 - The path to genius

• 1/20/23 - How to do vocation honestly

• 1/6/23 - Why I’m not going to be the best this year

2022

• 12/9/22 - 2022-23 Annual Reflection Template

• 11/25/22 - The stories top performers tell themselves

• 11/11/22 - Good luck, bad luck, we'll see

• 10/28/22 - The simplest way to change something important

• 10/14/22 - The Fallacy of the "Strong Leader"

• 9/30/22 - The secret to leadership

• 9/16/22 - How to fix your cofounder relationship in 3 simple, difficult steps

• 9/2/22 - Perceptual Control Theory

• 8/26/22 - The Art of Taking Breaks and Letting Go to Find Flow as a CEO

• 8/19/22 - Six tips on sitting position

• 8/5/22 - You must be able to do the math

• 7/22/22 - If you believe the saints

• 7/8/22 - Welcome, Jason

• 6/24/22 - Technical vs Adaptive Problems

• 6/10/22 - Effortless Leadership

• 5/31/22 - Entrepreneurship, Meditation, and Living a Meaningful Life

• 5/27/22 - I almost wrote about something else

• 5/13/22 - Intelligently letting go of functional areas

• 4/29/22 - Five practices to transform from a founder to a CEO

• 4/15/22 - How Our Masks Create Our Lives

• 4/1/22 - Excel questions vs Powerpoint questions

• 3/18/22 - Playing to win

• 3/4/22 - How to Dilute Your Equity as Quickly as Possible

• 2/18/22 - My experience with Transformational-NLP

• 2/4/22 - "Why do you work?"

• 1/21/22 - On Dying (before I die)

• 1/7/22 - How to change your mind

2021

• 12/17/21 - On creating a productive CEO / Investor relationship

• 12/3/21 - 2022 Reflection Template

• 11/12/21 - The Juggling Act of a Creative Life

• 10/29/21 - Why it's so hard to hire people better than you

• 10/15/21 - How to pitch a big vision without setting yourself up to let people down

• 10/1/21 - Tell me about the time you felt most alive

• 9/17/21 - Learnings from an aimless bike ride

• 9/3/21 - What's your word worth? (and how do you know?)

• 8/20/21 - When to say "No" to a prospective investor

• 8/6/21 - Founders are embracing executive coaching like never before (but not everywhere)

• 7/23/21 - How leadership growth maps to the six types of decisions

• 7/9/21 - Why top founders can struggle to build innovative teams

• 6/25/21 - How to scale a company the hard way

• 6/11/21 - Unwinding the trauma of a failed fundraise

• 5/28/21 - How to free yourself from fear-based decisions

• 5/14/21 - How to decrease the cost of "purpose"

• 4/30/21 - Where the best mission statements come from

• 4/16/21 - Blinders

• 4/9/21 - What my pet coral can teach us about how we do our best work

• 4/2/21 - How to meditate (a brief guide for founders & leaders)

• 3/26/21 - What we talk about when we talk about money

• 3/19/21 - Why it was a great idea to rebuild a talk the night before presenting to 30+ intimidatingly successful founders

• 3/12/21 - How to save yourself from technology suicide

• 3/5/21 - The surrender experiment (year-1 results)

• 2/26/21 - Finding purpose after exiting your company

• 2/19/21 - On practices

• 2/12/21 - On how timing always seems to be shit in startups, as in fatherhood

• 2/5/21 - The four barriers to self-awareness in leadership

• 1/29/21 - The hard way is the fastest way to growth

• 1/22/21 - Vulnerability will make you an effective leader, but it won't get you promoted

• 1/20/21 - Why we struggle to make the leap

• 1/15/21 - Full heart , clear eyes, can't lose

• 1/8/21 - Why top entrepreneurs (and VCs) invest in executive coaching - Part 1

2020

• 12/23/20 - Top-5 posts of 2020

• 12/18/20 - Somewhere, Over the Rainbow

• 12/11/20 - 2020 Annual Reflection framework

• 12/4/20 - Why most "culture work" actually hurts your company

• 11/25/20 - When you're acting like a spoiled three-year old

• 11/20/20 - How to use creative tension to get more of what you want

• 11/13/20 - Pretending to be Superman

• 11/6/20 - Books that changed my business

• 10/30/20 - Results are often the least important thing

• 10/23/20 - The power of a Vulnerable & Committed leader

• 10/16/20 - The fallacy of the Successful & Certain leader

• 10/9/20 - The Goldilocks zone between productivity and creativity

• 10/2/20 - The Coinbase decision: When a bad choice is your best choice

• 9/25/20 - The beliefs that define us

• 9/18/20 - The many names of fear

• 9/11/20 - Goal setting for momentum

• 9/4/20 - The Second Mountain Startup

• 8/28/20 - Integrity systems: the theme behind sustainable success

• 8/21/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 8/18/20 - Meditation is a team sport

• 8/14/20 - Friday Sabbatical: On gender norms in leadership, Inner conversations, and more than one definition of success

• 8/11/20 - Winning a $500k pitch competition

• 8/7/20 - On Vulnerability-level Trust, Poetry, Bad behaviors, Napkin-ideas, and Mythbusters

• 8/4/20 - How Leaders Evolve (Unconscious => Conscious => Transcendent)

• 8/3/20 - DWYSYWD (Or: How being unreasonable with my word changed my life)

• 8/2/20 - How to create something meaningful

• 8/1/20 - When to stop "crushing it"

• 7/31/20 - Don't settle for success, prioritize purpose over giving the people what they want

• 7/31/20 - Friday Sabbatical: Downward spirals, Level 5 leaders, and the Universal practices of top artists

• 7/30/20 - When quitting is the logical decision

• 7/28/20 - Recall a time when you felt most alive. Why?

• 7/25/20 - The forgotten half of leadership

• 7/24/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 7/21/20 - Failure makes for great leaders, if it's shared

• 7/17/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 7/14/20 - What can white people do? Be willing to risk Thanksgiving

• 7/10/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 7/3/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 6/30/20 - Ryan Vaughn: 100 Ideas Demo Day talk

• 6/26/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 6/23/20 - Insight Meditation-as-goggles, for the water we're all swimming in

• 6/19/20 - Uncovering white fragility is uncomfortable, and that's ok. We white people can handle it.

• 6/12/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 6/9/20 - Being racist hurts, and what NOT to do about it

• 6/5/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 6/4/20 - Discussion on business, kabuki, meditation & life with SURGE

• 6/2/20 - I am racist. I am part of the problem.

• 5/29/20 - Being sad about racism is not enough.

• 5/26/20 - My first 120-min meditation (Or: the most painful two hours imaginable)

• 5/22/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 5/19/20 - Recognizing I live in augmented reality

• 5/15/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 5/12/20 - Transformed Relationships through language

• 5/8/20 - Friday sabbatical

• 5/5/20 - The indivisible grayness of COVID (or: how can we go back to work without going back to the way things were?)

• 5/1/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 4/30/20 - For leaders, meditation is more useful than business school

• 4/28/20 - Meditation Groups for Business Leaders

• 4/24/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 4/23/20 - A meditative vision -- April, 2020

• 4/21/20 - Agreement

• 4/17/20 - Sabbatical

• 4/14/20 - For a Leader -- a tool for right-brained leadership

• 4/10/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 4/9/20 - The duality of COVID, Politics and Twix

• 4/7/20 - Why and how to Do Nothing

• 4/3/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 3/31/20 - Supporting Local Restaurants during COVID-19

• 3/27/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 3/24/20 - I see how you got there, Billy McFarland

• 3/20/20 - Corona Newswire

• 3/19/20 - I finally grew up enough to read "Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better" by Pema Chodron

• 3/17/20 - Day 3 of COVID-19 quarantine

• 3/13/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 3/12/20 - Clothespin - or - When I took the red pill

• 3/10/20 - How leaning in to my greatest fear enabled me to make better decisions

• 3/6/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 3/5/20 - Sit with the question

• 3/3/20 - The search vs the grind

• 2/28/20 - Friday Sabbatical

• 2/27/20 - How to build a sandcastle (or anything)

• 2/25/20 - Every rose has its thorns

• 2/21/20 - A few ways I'm living more sustainably

• 2/20/20 - Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth

• 2/19/20 - The Enneagram's true purpose

• 2/18/20 - Focus on the road, not the wall

• 2/14/20 - Czeslaw Milosz, on Love

• 2/14/20 - My favorite hot spot I thought I'd never go to: The Hermitage

• 2/13/20 - The (not so) new leadership: Context > Control

• 2/12/20 - The mistranslation of Dukkha

• 2/11/20 - We live in echo chambers

• 2/10/20 - How to cure the grumps

• 2/7/20 - "Camp"

• 2/6/20 - A love letter to Reboot, by Jerry Colonna

• 2/5/20 - Sales teams are more than that

• 2/4/20 - One of the most important lessons I've learned in business

• 2/3/20 - Do you give when asked?

• 2/2/20 - My mechanical thinking machine

• 2/1/20 - Which type of team are you? Football or basketball?

• 1/31/20 - Reflection on temporality and purpose

• 1/30/20 - Do Less, Better

• 1/29/20 - How I learned to feel again

• 1/28/20 - Scaling value while also scaling variability

• 1/27/20 - RIP Black Mamba. More than that, RIP Kobe Bryant

• 1/26/20 - Why I quit Twitter, and why I'm back after 2.5 years

• 1/25/20 - The case for the startup psychologist

• 1/23/20 - If you want to help people, start a business, not a nonprofit

• 1/22/20 - Seeing the wave

• 1/21/20 - Paying attention

• 1/20/20 - Risk vs Fear, Ryan Vaughn on Creative Mornings

• 1/19/20 - Innovation in the fight game

• 1/18/20 - Paddling

• 1/17/20 - First Post