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I have insane anxiety. But I’m not supposed to tell you that.

I’m supposed to create a facade of confidence that says all of the decisions in my life and all of my outcomes materialize with full certainty. My career, résumé, awards and success should be nothing but a shining reflection of confidence and brilliance.

That’s all bullshit.

I wake up in the morning and I freak out. I go to bed at night and I freak out. It doesn’t end. It didn’t end after growing companies, selling companies, making money, or any of the other bazillion “final reasons” why we think it will all disappear someday.

My anxiety is here to stay. So I have to deal with it. And I’m guessing if you’re reading this, you do too.

Let’s Just Admit We’re All Freaked Out

Essent...

I had never heard so many f-bombs in my life. That’s saying a lot, considering I’ve watched my fair share of Martin Scorsese films. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and my 2-year-old and I were walking through the mall. A group of young people followed close behind, not even attempting to censor themselves.

Hey, I get it. I was young once — many years ago. The absence of parental authority allowed these youngsters to enter an uncensored, primal place of freedom. When the cat’s away, the mice play. The same thing happens with the employees in your organization when you’re not around — albeit with fewer f-bombs. Who knows, maybe more.

“Do as I say, not as I do” doesn’t work with my 2-year-old, it didn’t work with me as a teenager, and it doesn’t w...

Lesson 1: Stop writing “can”

Company X can assist you with ___________________.

Does this sound familiar when you’re looking for a product or service? What about this on a cover letter from an applicant looking to get hired:

I can work well in a team or unsupervised.

Stop saying can! “Can” simply means you have the potential ability to. It doesn’t mean you will, it doesn’t mean you excel, and it doesn’t mean you’re better than anyone else.

Uncertainty avoidance is when a cultural group avoids a level of uncertainty. Different cultural groups tolerate different levels of uncertainty or ambiguity, however when it comes to making a pitch — whether that be to make a sale, to set yourself apart as an authority figure, or to be employed — makin...

Mergers and acquisition–commonly referred to as M&A–can be an exciting and even critical part of a company’s growth strategy. When done right, a successful M&A can help two companies gain valuable market share, expand their product portfolios, increase profits and inject more equity into their brands. But when M&As go wrong, it can be quite a different story, involving cultural clashes, litigation, epic losses and even bankruptcy.

Way too many companies rush headlong into these professional marriages without spending the time to first carry out their due diligence. Yet, an M&A is one of the most important decisions you can make for your company’s future and sufficient research needs to be conducted.

What Does M&A Due Diligence Involve?

M&A...

CHAPTER FOUR: Block Out Time Proactively

In This Chapter:

-How to control your calendar
-How to create a schedule that works for you
-Our example Productivity Calendar template

Your calendar shouldn’t be an open season free for all of appointments. Each of us have a special cadence in our day that involves times when we’re most productive, time we want for personal reasons and time when we’re least productive. These are often the same times day in and day out – so why not create a calendar template that aligns your scheduling with your lifestyle?

But wait, I can’t control my Calendar!

It’s true, life throws lots of stuff at us daily. Our client calls for an immediate meeting. Our one co-worker strangely schedules meetings at stupid early t...

Let’s stop work shaming people that like to work hard and using “work/life balance” as an easy expression to do so.

“I work to live, I don’t live to work”

“I really need a work/life balance”

Whenever someone says this or any variation of this as though it is a new idea I can’t help but roll my eyes and think “Duh”. People say it as though there is someone in the room that feels differently or will argue with them…as though someone is going to stand up and challenge them to say “I put work above my family — you should too!”… Please.

The truth? The conversation isn’t about family at all. These conversations tend to come up when someone is feeling like they aren’t doing well at work or aren’t doing well at home, though somehow it get’s twist...

We all dream about it. Cashing out, getting The Big Check™ and going on a shopping spree with “Bentleys and Benjamins”. But, once the fanfare wears off — What actually happens to all of us?

Do we walk away with a perma-smile until the day we die? Or do we just trade one set of problems for another? Are we actually happier?

As a Founder with a few exits of my own, I’ve had this conversation with dozens of Founders post-exit who have had anything from a $1 million exit to a multi billion dollar exit. What’s fascinating is that all of our outcomes tend to tell roughly the same story — and it’s rarely what anyone thinks it is.

Everyone has their own version of their outcome, but if I were to generalize my observations after some very deep ...

If you’ve arrived at a crossroads in your life when you’ve realized that making another buck won’t make you any happier or more fulfilled, you’re not alone. The question is, what can you do about it?

It took being in a morphine-infused, bedridden state in a hospital at age 39 for me to reconsider what business meant to me.

Staring my own mortality in the face, I asked myself the question: “If I died today, did I make difference?” The answer was a resounding no. There was so much more I could be doing. I knew that success is not about what you “get” in life, but about what you give. From that moment I vowed to become a “go-giver” instead of a “go-getter” and to instill a new conscious capitalist mindset into how I approached doing business.

In this age of social media, entrepreneurship is at an all-time high. The time for creating a start-up company has never been more optimal, thanks to recent interest in technology and innovation. Profit valuations of successful start-ups have also skyrocketed in response to a rise in venture capital investors. Creating a start-up also celebrates low-cost entry, making it easier than ever to jump in and play a hand at the game of business. As many as 40 start-ups in 2013 were valued at $1 billion or more, according to a NY Times article.

But as effortless as it is to create a start-up business, the real challenge lies in evolving it. Only 1 out of every 10 start-up companies make it to the 5th year. What are the barriers that prevent the suc...

Crowdfunding at a glance

Crowdfunding is a method of raising capital through the collective effort of friends, family, customers, and individual investors.

This approach taps into the collective efforts of a large pool of individuals — primarily online via social media and crowdfunding platforms — and leverages their networks for greater reach and exposure.

How is crowdfunding different from other types of finance?

Crowdfunding is essentially the opposite of the mainstream approach to business finance. Traditionally, if a person want to raise capital to start a business or launch a new product, they would need to pack up their business plan, market research, and prototypes, and then shop their idea around to a limited pool or wealthy indiv...