I was in my early 20s when my best friend Matt told me to get a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen. He was right. I tore through the book. And I’ve read or skimmed my highlights at least 100 times since. (Matt's reading advice is always on point.) It’s not hype. It’s practical. And it changed the way I manage nearly everything. One idea from that book still guides me every single day. It’s strange at first, but once it...
Listen to these stories of two smart professionals plugging away to manage and grow their businesses, only to end up suffering the most frustrating response: silence. Sarah runs a sharp boutique law firm in Dallas. Tight team. Great reputation. Her office has that quiet confidence, complete with leather chairs, books she actually reads, the scent of fresh espresso and controlled chaos. Then she launches a sleek new website, spends a chunk on ads… and the phones stop ringing. Not overnight, but...
For years, I held back. Early in my career, I taught, coached, and wrote about leadership. I led college student teams, consulted for organizations, and even wrote a regular business column on leadership and collaborated at USC with Dr. Warren Bennis and the Leadership Institute there. It was real work, not theory. But after launching my own marketing company 15 years ago, I slowly convinced myself I no longer had the right to teach or speak into leadership again. So why did...
I posted this story earlier this week on linkedin as a short post, but it's worth repeating here as an intro to this article. About 15 years ago, I was sitting in my tiny office, staring at numbers that made me feel like a loser. Cash was tight. Stress was high. I was in the early days of building Expio, and it felt like every invoice was a problem, every spreadsheet a judgment. I remember pacing the room, questioning everything— Did I make...
The year is 1940. The British government is losing the war. Nazi U-boats are destroying Allied supply ships. Every plan is being intercepted and decoded by Germany’s “unbreakable” machine: Enigma. So the UK assembles a team of brilliant minds at Bletchley Park to break it. Alan Turing builds a machine that becomes the prototype for modern computing. But the movie (The Imitation Game) doesn’t end there. What most people forget: The machine didn’t win the war alone. A team of people operated...
