I had the capability to make money before I had the capacity to keep it.  Money signified freedom to me, and owning a business made me feel important, so I was willing to do whatever I could to succeed.  I took risks, made

Last week I wrote about how we don’t perceive reality as it is.  Plato took that idea much further 2,400 years ago. In his Allegory of the Cave, he tells the story of people who spend their lives facing a cave wall. The

We all have blind spots. Literally. There’s one in each eye, where the optic nerve connects to the retina. We don’t perceive this hole in our vision because the brain automatically fills in the gaps. It predicts what should be there based on

You’re not doing it on purpose. That’s the thing about automatic patterns. You’re not dumb, lazy, or weak.  You’re doing what we do instinctively under pressure: looking for the fastest exit from an uncomfortable feeling. The problem is the exit has a toll.

A client came to me convinced she was too combative. Her team told her so, her husband told her so, and she’d spent three years trying to fix it.  What she didn’t know was that same quality helped her build a $15M business

Some founders learn to manage teams and end up loving it. Others don’t. I didn’t realize which one I was for years. I just thought something was wrong with me. Most service businesses are started by people with expertise. That was me and

The adrenaline hit me right before the presentation. I walked into the room armed with case studies, results and projections. I had all the answers, I just had to convince them. I launched into a detailed explanation of our process, designed to put

Three times in two weeks, I did the same thing.  I’d get excited telling someone about what I really wanted to do and then immediately explain why I wasn’t doing it.  All the reasons.  Each person listened politely but I could tell they

I rarely write about the spiritual side of business, even though I spend a lot of time thinking about it.  I’ve avoided saying it plainly for years: Business is a spiritual game that’s played by the soul. There’s a voice in my head