Installing an Operating System in Your Business: Lessons from Real EOS Implementations

My Guest Over the past handful of years, there has been substantial growth in the number of companies who have decided to implement formal “operating systems” to govern certain strategic and operational decisions within their businesses. I implemented EOS (or “the Entrepreneurial Operating System”) in my own company beginning in 2015, and we continued toContinue reading “Installing an Operating System in Your Business: Lessons from Real EOS Implementations”

A Playbook for Growing People-Intensive Service Companies

My Guest John Ratliff started Appletree Answers, a telephone answering service, from his apartment in 1995. After growing the company to 24 US-based locations and more than 600 employees, he sold the company to a strategic buyer in 2012. Since selling his company, John has served as CEO of Scaling Up Coaches (2018-25), worked asContinue reading “A Playbook for Growing People-Intensive Service Companies”

Five Ideas That Every CEO Should Know

Listen to this Blog Post What follows are five unrelated thoughts on how to lead and grow a healthy and vibrant company. None of them are long enough to justify a stand-alone blog post, but all of them are important enough to highlight for current and aspiring CEOs. (1) Crafting an Effective Company-Wide Bonus PlanContinue reading “Five Ideas That Every CEO Should Know”

The Link Between Money, Meaning, and Happiness

My Guest Today I am thrilled to welcome Carl Richards to the podcast. Carl has spent decades as a Certified Financial Planner, is the creator of the Sketch Guy column (which appeared weekly for a decade in The New York Times), is a best selling author (most notably of The Behavior Gap: Simple Ways toContinue reading “The Link Between Money, Meaning, and Happiness”

Evaluating Stock Options as Attraction, Retention, and Incentive Alignment Tools

Listen to this Blog Post In my second year as a CEO, it became clear to me that our business could benefit from formalizing and codifying our company’s core values. Though I was originally fearful that they might quickly devolve into tired, clichéd, and mostly hollow platitudes, I eventually came to appreciate that if theyContinue reading “Evaluating Stock Options as Attraction, Retention, and Incentive Alignment Tools”

A Deep Dive on Compensation

Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Verne Harnish: Crafting Company-Wide Compensation Plans (3:06) Verne Harnish is the founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (“EO” for short), a global network of entrepreneurs and CEOs that boasts over 16,000 members worldwide. He is the author of multiple global bestselling books including Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and Scaling Up,Continue reading “A Deep Dive on Compensation”

A Deep Dive on Hiring

Listen in Your Browser Questions Asked Randy Street (3:30) Many of you will know Randy Street as co-author of the book Who: The A Method for Hiring, which introduced the now widely used Topgrading hiring method to the world. The book went on to become a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, USA Today,Continue reading “A Deep Dive on Hiring”

A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator

My Guest My guest today is A.J. Wasserstein, the Eugene F. Williams, Jr. Lecturer in the Practice of Management at the Yale School of Management. His research, writing, and teaching concentrates on search funds, entrepreneurship, programmatic acquisitions, and small businesses. In addition to his role as an educator, A.J. is also a private investor inContinue reading “A.J. Wasserstein: Reflections of a Founder, CEO, Investor and Educator”

Should You Become an Entrepreneur?

Listen to This Blog Post Within your first-degree network alone, I suspect you know a large number of people who, at one time or another, have expressed a desire to pursue an entrepreneurial career path. Yet I also suspect that, of those people, only a small percentage of them have actually elected to take theContinue reading “Should You Become an Entrepreneur?”

The Entrepreneur and the Spousal Relationship

Listen to This Blog Post It’s no secret that meaningful and fulfilling relationships require deliberate work, often require trade-offs to be made between partners, and possess more than their fair share of peaks and valleys. Though these realities are true of substantially all long-term relationships, they seem to be especially true in instances where oneContinue reading “The Entrepreneur and the Spousal Relationship”