The Days That Do Not Go Your Way Some days it feels like nothing clicks. The sales call goes flat. The proposal sits unanswered. The inbox piles up. The people you rely on disappoint you. The scoreboard looks like a loss no matter how you read it. When you are in a stretch like this, the temptation is strong to slip into ruminating or coping. You replay conversations, dwell on failures, and numb yourself with habits that do nothing but make tomorrow...
The Rent You Cannot Avoid Every business leader understands rent. If you stop paying it, the doors close. Your storefront goes dark, people walk by without stopping, and competitors take your place. Marketing works the same way. Good marketing is the rent you pay to keep your business visible. It is the cost of showing up. Without it, you disappear. The problem is that most companies think that paying rent is enough. Many SMBs don't pay it at all or do very little....
In 1964, Bill Lear delivered his first jet to a client. It was an instant success. Shortly after, two of his planes crashed under mysterious circumstances. Lear could have looked the other way, blamed the pilots, or let the issue slide to protect sales momentum. Instead, he took a terrifying risk. He personally recreated the problem in the air to find the cause and nearly lost his life doing it. When he confirmed the defect, he grounded every plane, built a new...
When Clients Say “It’s Fine” The most dangerous gap in business relationships isn’t price or quality. It’s expectation(s). Most client breakdowns, whether it’s disappointment, churn, or a slow slide into resentment, come down to mismatched expectations. It's almost never malice. It's rarely incompetence. It's usually two parties assuming they were on the same page… when they weren’t even reading the same book. And the worst part? Clients rarely tell you what’s wrong. They hint. They withhold. They cancel and disappear. The Problem: Expectations Are...
A midsize healthcare network had a good problem: Patient demand was rising. They were opening new locations. Appointment slots were filling faster than expected. Word-of-mouth referrals were climbing. But instead of celebrating, the CEO was cautious. She wanted to see “how the numbers looked” before committing to more staff, new equipment, or a tech upgrade. “Let’s wait another quarter before we invest.” Three months later, the wait times had doubled. The call center was swamped. Patients started leaving for providers who could see them...
In the late 19th century, the vast Texas Panhandle, where I grew up, bore witness to a true story of ranching resilience. The XIT Ranch sprawling across over three million acres, was born from a land deal to fund the Texas Capitol, managed by Chicago investors and local hands. Ranchers drove thousands of cattle onto the open range, each seeking to maximize their herds. For decades, the land supported this growth, but by the 1880s, overgrazing took its toll. The grass dwindled,...
Today? Outthinking escalation and how to only play the games you can win. What if your competitor (or spouse or whoever) isn’t the problem? What if it's the system you've allowed yourself to participate in? In a mid-size city in Texas, two of the city’s most recognized firms were locked in an aggressive rivalry for the business of a massive company that would be moving into the area. Let’s call them Firm A and Firm B. Firm A ran a massive billboard campaign:...
In the early 2000s, NVIDIA made chips for gamers. Fast graphics, smoother frame rates...solid tech, but not revolutionary. They weren’t trying to change the world. But then researchers realized something: those same chips were perfect for training neural networks. By the time the rest of the world noticed, NVIDIA had already earned the most important advantage: developer loyalty. Developers built tools on NVIDIA. Those tools drove adoption. Adoption generated revenue. Revenue fueled R&D. Better products won more developers. That loop never stopped. NVIDIA didn’t...
The Lockheed L-1011 and the $0 Fix That Almost Killed 176 People In 1972, Eastern Airlines Flight 401 was on final approach to Miami when the crew noticed a landing gear light wasn’t on. They circled; checked manuals. They pulled the light out of its panel and replaced it. Nothing. They became so focused on fixing the indicator that no one noticed the autopilot had disconnected. The plane descended unnoticed… and crashed into the Florida Everglades. 101 people died. Later investigations revealed: the landing...
I first discovered Peter Senge (Professor at MIT) while in graduate school, studying management and leadership. The book was The Fifth Discipline, and it quickly became one of those rare books that permanently changes how you see the world. Senge writes about systems thinking—how business problems are rarely isolated, how cause and effect are often separated by time and space, and how the same patterns show up again and again. Just think about your golf swing, trying to convince a friend to make...
