The fear of success doesn't usually announce itself as fear. It sounds like planning. It sounds like due diligence. It sounds like being responsible.
What it actually is: A limiting belief. It’s spending today's energy on problems you'll only face if you win
Read MoreMost founders hit one of two walls. The first is scale. The second wall is the opportunity to exit. Stuck means you can’t grow. And you can’t leave. There are a few ways through. The first is triage. The second is investment. The third is time.
Read MoreFor years, leadership advice was straightforward. Set the vision. Pick a point on the horizon. Steer toward it. Adjust for obstacles, but do not lose sight of where you are going. That advice assumes you can see the horizon. Right now, many leaders cannot.
The long term did not disappear. It accelerated.
Read MoreEmotionally, walking away from a past loss feels worse than risking a future one. Psychologists call this loss aversion. People feel losses more intensely than equivalent gains. A million-dollar loss feels catastrophic in a way a potential million-dollar gain never will. That is why leaders keep pouring resources into failing projects.
Read MoreFounder mode is neither good nor bad. Hustle is neither noble nor toxic. The real question is simpler and harder. Is the urgency coming from the needs of the business, or from the wiring of the founder? I see this constantly. Founders who built successful companies and cannot break through the next level of growth. Not because they stopped working hard, but because they never stopped working the same way.
Read MoreMany leaders do the same thing with every hard decision. If you’re waiting for the right time, you’ll never act. There is no perfect information. There is no risk-free moment. There is no version of this that doesn’t require courage. Make the decision. Or don’t. But stop pretending indecision is neutral.
Read MoreFor a while, businesses may be able to rely on word-of-mouth referrals and lots of networking. In the early days, it’s often necessary. The problem is that it doesn’t scale. What you’re missing when you don’t have a sales strategy…
Read MoreOne of the most frequent struggles I see with entrepreneurs and business owners is this tension between managing the day-to-day operations of the organization and focusing on overarching strategy. Many business owners who seek coaching or peer advisory boards know they’re not spending enough time on strategy, and they can’t figure out how to shift the balance.
Read MoreThe problem is that our comfort zones aren’t particularly conducive to making progress. They’re all about staying where you are, maintaining the status quo. Plus, they’re so cozy and comfortable that we might not even notice how tightly we’re holding to them
Read MoreIf you’re in business long enough, one thing is inevitable. At some point, you’ll need to raise your prices. Business owners are often afraid of making that change, worried their customers will leave and revenues actually decline. The truth is, customers can weather difficult changes when businesses approach the issue with the customers’ needs in mind.
Read MoreSince I began Trajectify, I’ve had the opportunity to coach a number of family-owned businesses, from intergenerational companies to husband-and-wife teams. In some ways, they face the same challenges as any other business. They have to figure out how to maximize their cash flow, hire the right people, and scale their business.
Family-owned businesses also have their own particular set of challenges.
Read MoreYou want to time your capital raise to maximize your valuation. A lot of people say to raise the money when you don’t need the money. It’s important, though, to acknowledge that raising capital isn’t a silver bullet to success.
Read MoreWhat does it take to cross that golden line? We sat down with three long-time Trajectify clients to talk about how they became multimillion dollar businesses and what other entrepreneurs can learn from their success.
Read MoreCompanies need to spend as much energy finding employees as they do finding customers. Recruiting talent is just as important as acquiring customers. Maybe more so? After all, it’s talent that allows you to grow.
Do you want to grow with your company? Or are you hoping to sell? Is there a difference in how you operate depending on your answer? We had a series of conversations with past and current clients about their growth strategies to learn more.
Read MoreCost is the biggest reservation we hear from founders and entrepreneurs who are contemplating their first hire. Affordability is obviously a critical part of the hiring analysis — and there’s a lot more to it. Whether you’re ready to hire and (perhaps the bigger question) who you should hire depends on multiple factors.
Read MoreAs it turns out, determining whether someone will be a good fit for your organization is hard. Outsourcing the hiring process is a smart choice for many organizations. And you’re not limited to recruiting firms.
If you’ve achieved an ounce of success in your life, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced imposter syndrome. It’s that uncomfortable feeling that you’re not as smart or talented or skilled as others believe you to be. At any moment, you’ll be exposed as a fraud.
Read MoreGrowing your business has costs — time costs and money costs. Making sure even the smallest investments pay off is key to growing organically and without big cash infusions you may not have.
Read MoreAt some point, that do-it-all person will have to stop doing and start delegating. Otherwise, they’ll begin to feel like they’re on a hamster wheel — doing what they’ve always done but suddenly getting nowhere. Making that shift is challenging. In fact, it’s one of the most difficult, yet important, transitions founders go through.
Read MoreStartups and Small Businesses sometimes find themselves at the edge of a chasm. With success in developing and growing their business, a stage is reached where they find that the "next step" is a big one! Trajectify partners with the entrepreneur to build momentum and trajectory to be able to cross the chasm.
We offer private and group (Mastermind) coaching and hold frequent events and seminars.
Trajectify is founded my Mike Krupit, veteran of eight startups. Mike has helped dozens of companies grow and mentored and advised hundreds more.
If you're building a company, knowing your role isn't optional. The visionary needs someone who will build what they see without getting in the way of the seeing. The integrator needs someone who will point at the moon and mean it and keep pointing at the same moon long enough for the bridge to get built. The mistake I see most often: trying to be both or hiring someone who mirrors you when you need someone who complements you.
The fear of success doesn't usually announce itself as fear. It sounds like planning. It sounds like due diligence. It sounds like being responsible.
What it actually is: A limiting belief. It’s spending today's energy on problems you'll only face if you win
Right people, right seats doesn't mean everyone eventually moves into a leadership role. It means finding the seat where each person does their best work and building a structure that makes those seats worth staying in. Create a path for people who want to grow as individual contributors. Create a separate path for people who want to lead. Reward both. Respect both. Pay both.
Don't prevent scraped knees; prevent bus crashes. A scraped knee hurts. You might carry the scar for years. That's the point. The pain is proportional to the lesson. A bus crash can lead to catastrophic loss. The project. The company. The relationship. Something that can't be recovered. The leader's job isn't to eliminate mistakes. It's to know the difference between those two things.
The leader's job isn't to have the answer. It's to create conditions where the best answer can emerge. That means encouraging disagreement without punishment. Creating opportunities for information to move across functions. Making it safe for people to challenge assumptions, including your own. The highest-performing teams in these simulations don't succeed because they have the smartest leader. They succeed because nobody in the room is waiting for one person to have all the answers.
The leaders who are consistently good at managing up and across understand something most people miss: influence gets built long before it’s needed. Not through charisma. Not through politics. Through small, deliberate actions repeated consistently over time. Investments. Relationships are like a bank account. You have to make deposits before you can make withdrawals. Most people get this backwards.
The leaders who build something lasting lead differently. They retain great people, create cultures that outlast them, and build organizations that can function without them. They share power. They create it in others. When a team operates out of fear of authority, they do the minimum required to avoid consequences.
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The same restlessness that makes it hard to stay on plan is what made them start the company in the first place. The wandering mind, the refusal to be satisfied with what already exists, the ability to see something before it exists: that's not a disorder. That's the source.