I’ve made some spectacularly bad decisions in business. Strangely, they’re not the ones I regret most. The decisions I made gave me something to work with. A result. A lesson. A chance to do better next time. The decisions I didn’t make left me with only my

10 years ago I met a monk named Dandapani at a conference for entrepreneurs. At first, I wondered what he could possibly teach me about business. It turned out to be quite a lot because his specialty was focusing the mind. He said

I thought I was fearless. Pitch the client, hire the team, build the product. But inside I was afraid. With clients, I was afraid they wouldn’t stay, or that they’d find out we were figuring things out on the fly. With employees, I

For years, I thought I had to choose: work all the time, or have a life I love. Say yes to the client, or lose the contract.  Do it myself, or it won’t be done right. My brain was trying to reduce complexity

I used to think if a little was good, more was better.  That was my philosophy for everything: pizza, wine, ice cream. But also customers, services, opportunities, and ideas. The most expensive word in my business was “yes.” If someone wanted to pay

For most of my life freedom was the most important thing to me.  But the way I defined it cost me everything else. I was lonely, tired, and frustrated with almost everything in my life. At the time, I didn’t understand why. Hidden

Action used to be my middle name. If there was a problem in my business, I wanted to do something about it right away.  Fix the system. Call the client. Talk to the employee. Change the process. Hire the consultant.  And action does

For years, I gave my team War and Peace instructions in fortune-cookie form. A whole novel of context got reduced to something like, “Let’s use the same approach as the LAMCO project, but simplify the client meetings and don’t let the scope creep.” Then I’d

Last week I was frustrated with my tomatoes. Ten weeks of nurturing and only a few tiny green tomatoes to show for it. I thought I did everything right: good soil, plenty of sun, water and fertilizer. But the leaves at the bottom