Lessons from 30 years in business.
I started my first business in 1994. I was young, inexperienced, and had no idea just how dramatic the roller coaster of business would be. What I lacked in experience, I made up for with hard work, enthusiasm, grit, and determination. My partners certainly had their hands full because I was also stubborn… perhaps a little hardheaded.
Despite my lack of experience, the business expanded rapidly. In our first eight months we generated $4.6 million in revenue (in 2026 dollars). We were hiring salespeople quickly and building systems almost as fast as we could design them.
As our team grew, we began to notice something important. Talent alone was not enough. Intelligence was not enough. Even enthusiasm was not enough.
A few years ago, I worked with a highly successful CEO. On paper, he had everything… wealth, recognition, family, freedom. Yet in conversation he admitted, “I just can’t enjoy it. I feel guilty when I buy things for myself. I push away compliments. Even when opportunities come my way, I find reasons to say no.”
It wasn’t that he didn’t have things. He couldn’t let himself have them.
This is the hidden barrier many of us face. We say we want love, money, peace, freedom, or recognition. But when it actually shows up… we resist. We downplay the compliment. We reject the gift. We self-sabotage the opportunity.
That invisible force has a name: Havingness.
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Here’s the full text from the Slides:
We Seek Excellence
Our culture focuses on helping us achieve excellence.
Seven Aspects of Our Culture
- Values are what we value
- High performance
- Freedom & responsibility
- Context, not control
- Highly aligned, loosely coupled
- Pay top of market
- Promotions & development
BUILD A BUSINESS THAT LASTS
Since 1992, Jim Collins’ work has guided our development of the Goldzone Organization and OPTIMA Zones.
Save time by reading the best parts in under 10 minutes…
We just released a new summary of Jim Collins and Bill Lazier’s timeless classic:
Beyond Entrepreneurship: Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company.
• What makes companies endure
• Why Reed Hastings (Netflix) memorized the first 86 pages
• How we evolved Level 5 Leadership into our own Level 7 Leadership model
• Practical takeaways you can apply immediately to grow your business
This is required reading for any founder of a high-growth business.
⚜️
Most people underestimate the power of communication — and how it can spiral us up or drag us down.
It’s not just about the words we speak or hear. Communication is the exchange of ideas, knowledge, emotion, attention, and interest.
But here’s the problem:
We start things… and don’t finish them.
These incomplete cycles of action quietly drain our energy, scatter our focus, and keep us from being fully present.
Click on image to enlarge.
By James Anderson.
Based on the work of Carol Dweck.
If you are not selling, you are leaving money on the table.
No, I am not talking about:
→ Promoting yourself.
→ Promoting your products and services.
→ Convincing people how great you or your services/products are.
→ Giving your expert advice.
→ Knowing what to say to people.
The key element in selling is to help people see how you can help them, emotionally not logically.
The “curse of knowledge” is a Cognitive Bias where we learn something and have difficulty remembering what it was like not to know it!
As an engineer, I am used to absorbing technical information and understanding complex problems. Early in my career, I used to assume that everyone could do the same thing.
It was a rude shock to learn that many people struggle to grasp technical and complex information and that we can add value by making it simple.