How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

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How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

Conflict is inevitable. Everyone is different—different backgrounds, different scripts, different personalities, and different goals. Difference creates conflict. If we’ve learned anything from the last few months of civil unrest, it’s that embracing differences in our lives and in our organizations is critical. Workplace conflict will happen. By treating it as an opportunity for growth, we’ll help ourselves, our organizations, and our employees.

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Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

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Your Growth Strategy Stopped Working. Now What?

Any successful business that’s been around for more than a few years has found themselves on that plateau, trying to figure out why their growth stalled or why they feel stuck. The plateau itself isn’t a problem. In fact, it may create an opportunity to look at your business, your product, or your market through new eyes.

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Isolation Will Kill Your Business Faster than a Pandemic or an Economic Collapse

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Isolation Will Kill Your Business Faster than a Pandemic or an Economic Collapse

Uncertainty is frightening to anyone. But many business owners — especially the introvert entrepreneurs out there — go deeper inside themselves during times like this. They isolate — because stepping out of their comfort zone and into this vast uncertainty threatens things many of us believe we need, including to be in control, to be safe, to be right. What if by reaching out, we expose ourselves as not knowing the answer, as being vulnerable and afraid?

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Four Top Challenges of Leadership and Business Growth

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Four Top Challenges of Leadership and Business Growth

As a business grows, its leaders face new challenges, often in strategy, organizational development, and values and culture. They may be faced with complicated decisions regarding capital, partnerships or corporate structure. In November, we hosted our Fall Leadership Retreat where Trajectify coaches were joined by CEOs and business owners from a variety of industries. In focused, mastermind-style discussions, each leader took turns sharing business challenges they are facing. The group got a chance to provide feedback and offer outside-in perspectives to their peers.

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3 Strategies You Should Adopt in Your 2020 Planning

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3 Strategies You Should Adopt in Your 2020 Planning

We don't want to have to be in a position to make passionate decisions, especially in business. Good planning means accounting for all outcomes while we are in our natural state, operating in Quadrant II (one of Strategy), not Quadrant I (Crisis). Here are some strategies to follow to help you do just that.

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What is your Double Doink for 2019?

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What is your Double Doink for 2019?

If you happen to be a football fan, you’ve probably now heard about the Double Doink. Let’s have some fun and create a general purpose definition for a double doink: the accomplishment of an improbable feat or an achievement from an impressive effort that results in failure or negative consequences. I’m not sure if I’ve had a double doink yet this year, but I know I’ve had plenty over the course of my career. I’ve been contemplating some of the things that you should do to recover from a double doink. Here are five things to consider after a mistake or failure.

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All the Videos from Trajectify’s Business Growth Conference

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All the Videos from Trajectify’s Business Growth Conference

2018 brought Trajectify’s inaugural live business growth conference which brought together dozens of leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals. We held Trajectify Live on September 13, 2018 at the Science History Institute in Old City, Philadelphia, featuring four Trajectify coaches plus a line-up of guest speakers and presenters while filled the day with insights, lessons and experiences

If you missed the opportunity to join us in September, we’ve got you covered. Here are videos we took of ten presentations from the conference. If you’re interested to attend the next Trajectify Live, please sign up here to be notified about the next Trajectify Live.

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"Why Didn't I Realize That" Lessons Shared by Growth Stage CEOs

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"Why Didn't I Realize That" Lessons Shared by Growth Stage CEOs

As a CEO, there is an expectation of fearlessness. Does not mean we need to pretend that we have all of the answers? Vulnerability is an important leadership attribute. We welcomed CEOs and Trajectify coaches to the 2018 Trajectify CEO Leadership Retreat a few weeks ago. We discovered and worked on many of the challenges in growing a $1M+ business. Each CEO took the hot seat in a mastermind session, most discussing with their peer struggle they are facing. Everyone gained new insights and perspectives. After a day long event of content and mastermind sessions, we asked each attendee for their biggest takeaway from the event.

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Interview with Sean Darras of LUXTECH, Making Millions with Social Impact

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Interview with Sean Darras of LUXTECH, Making Millions with Social Impact

Sean Darras, a Trajectify client and CEO of LUXTECH, a young, innovative LED lighting company in Old City, sat down for an interview with Mike Krupit during Trajectify Live. Sean founded the company in 2012 and over the last 6 years he has filled the company with people who care about the good of the company, the environment, and each person the products touch. The company has had impressive growth, and each quarter brings a new series of challenges for the team to learn from and conquer. In the Trajectify Live interview, Sean and Mike walked through some of the lessons learned in each phase.

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Fear and Thinking Too Lean

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Fear and Thinking Too Lean

My challenge with “Lean” is that as much as it’s a great philosophy for when you are starting out, you lose the ability to leap when you think about really big things. How do you do things that can’t be done in a one or two week sprint, the things that are too big to put on a little post it and stick to your bathroom mirror? In order to grow, you need to have a mindset of leaping, planning and doing big things, and then to figure out how to land after you take that leap.

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So Much Learning in Trajectify's Five Years

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So Much Learning in Trajectify's Five Years

This month, August 2018, is the 5th anniversary of Trajectify. Words cannot express how grateful and lucky I am to have been able to build this business and accomplish all that we have. HOW A BUSINESS IS BORN. I decided to leave startup #7, Real Food Works, in May 2013. I had turned 50 a few months earlier and found myself wondering, “what do I want to be when I grow up.” I told myself no more startups. So I embarked on what turned out to be a three month discovery mission that led me to create Trajectify in August 2013.

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Clarity, Transparency, Focus: Critical Differentiators Between High Performers and the Rest

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Clarity, Transparency, Focus: Critical Differentiators Between High Performers and the Rest

I’ve had the good fortune of working in a variety of industries, building scale into growing businesses and advising executives on strategic initiatives. Despite the variety of products, services, and customers, I’ve observed certain constants across all businesses that separate the elite performers from the average.

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The Best Growth Strategy is to Make Yourself Dispensable (Lesson #4 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

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The Best Growth Strategy is to Make Yourself Dispensable (Lesson #4 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

It took me three years to go from VP Engineering to CTO to COO to CEO. How does someone grow that quickly? Yes, I worked hard and focused on results. Yes, I was afforded an opportunity being at a good place at a good time. Still, no amount of hustle, talent or luck could have made such a rapid transition successful. What made it possible?

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A NYC Space for Entrepreneurs Who Are Growing Their Business Organically, 7 Tips from April

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A NYC Space for Entrepreneurs Who Are Growing Their Business Organically, 7 Tips from April

The NYC Bootstrappers Breakfast is back… with new mentors to help facilitate serious conversations about starting and growing a business. Thanks to our friend Alex Portera, Co-Founder of Nowhere Men Media, here are a few quick and valuable points from the inaugural NYC Bootstrappers Breakfast comeback.

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Review Your Business Model to Get Better Results

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Review Your Business Model to Get Better Results

Most of us take care of things that are important to us on a regular basis – maintaining our car, going to the dentist for a checkup, and updating software on our computer. But do we take a step back and invest the energy to look at our business model to see if everything is working the way we’d like it to? When you take time to review your business model, you may be surprised by the value you discover by making some tweaks – or perhaps even reinventing what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

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Lessons from Star-Studded Coaching at Grant Cardone's 10XGrowthCon

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Lessons from Star-Studded Coaching at Grant Cardone's 10XGrowthCon

I was planning to be entertained, which I was, but surprised at how many notes I took. Speakers like Ed Mylett, Andy Frisella, Hank Norman, Tim Storey, Micheal Burt, and Lewis Howes were surprisingly moving and informational - hence motivational. I also got to meet Silicon Valley mogul Naveen Jain. We also had speakers for sales training and marketing education, one who sold $3M in product right after his presentation. Who needed training when you could watch the masters sell right in front of you?

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Don't Do What I Do, Just Do What I Say. Grow LOUDLY!

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Don't Do What I Do, Just Do What I Say. Grow LOUDLY!

I was at a crossroads. Trajectify had grown to keeping me busy nearly full-time. I was organizing the Philly New Technology Meetup (PNTM). And I had my tech startup, IntroNet. For Trajectify, I was working with private clients, small groups, and doing a lot of speaking and business development. For PNTM, we were growing without bounds (nearly 3,000 members in less than two years), gaining sponsors, doingbigger events. merged with Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic. As for IntroNet, things got very exciting as we saw a pivot from our introductions systems to doing something bigger and bolder with groups sharing their collective connections, expertise and information. I raised $1M for IntroNet.

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Passion and Emotion May Be Destroying Your Business

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Passion and Emotion May Be Destroying Your Business

I do think it’s important to be able to feel passion. I have a lot in my life for which I am passionate. I just don’t let passion run my business. That’s a revelation that has come to me over the past couple of years, mostly as I’ve been building Trajectify and able to look at many companies from the outside-in and work with dozens of entrepreneurs. Two years ago, I was likely quoted as saying that passion is the first thing I look at when evaluating an entrepreneur’s business. I was wrong. The way to grow a business is through being practical, measurable, and grounded, not by being “barely controllable.”

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