In Every Good Endeavor, Timothy Keller introduces the book by referencing back to Robert Bellah’s Habits of the Heart, starting with a passage on the perils of individualism at the expense of all else: “We are moving to an ever greater validation of the sacredness of the individual person, [but] our capacity to imagine a social fabric that […]
What are you optimizing for? (Or, why I want more moments of joy)
I get in bed and pull the covers up around me. I roll over to tell my wife good night. She’s already fast asleep and cuddling our younger dog like it’s our child. I take a moment to simply watch them sleep peacefully before turning the light out. We invite ourselves over to our close […]
Am I Enough?
When things are going well, it’s easy to wait on the other shoe to drop. “See, I knew I wasn’t doing enough,” I expect to say some day in the future when it all falls apart. I don’t have what it takes. I’m a fraud. When things are going poorly, it’s easy to ride the […]
Define Your Flywheel to Fuel Faster Business Growth
In his classic management book, Good to Great, Jim Collins shares an idea called a flywheel. That concept can help you and your company define what drives growth and then do more of those things over time. It’s a powerful tool for strategic clarity. Collins recently expanded on the concept in a recent manifesto called […]
A Simple System for Creating Community Based on Dunbar’s Number
My wife was busy on that Saturday afternoon in 2014, so I pulled out my list of my friends in Atlanta and sent a flurry of texts inviting 10-15 of them to grab dinner with me in Virginia Highland. Five or six of them said yes and we ended up grabbing wings and beer at […]
How to Plan a Team Retreat for Your Remote Company
19% of remote workers say that loneliness is their #1 struggle with working remotely according to Buffer and company’s 2019 State of Remote Work report. I can relate. While there are so many strategic advantages to running a remote team, there are also some parts of working remotely that really suck from a personal standpoint. […]
How to Recover from a Mistake as a Leader
March 1, 2018. I won’t forget that date any time soon because it was the day I made my first major mistake as COO… and it had taken less than 6 hours in the role to happen. “We can’t keep letting this happen. We just lost one of our largest customers to a completely avoidable […]
How We Structure the 50-Person Team at ConvertKit
As a team grows from the early stages when everything feels fun and crazy into a more mature phase of predictable growth, team structure has to change to support that growth. When I joined the ConvertKit team in 2016, we had about 20 teammates and $3.5M in annual recurring revenue. Today we have almost 50 […]
How to Introduce a Friend or Colleague
“My name is Barrett Brooks. I live in Portland, Oregon with my wife and two dogs. I work at a software company. Really happy to be here.” That’s my standard “humble” self-introduction when I’m not familiar with the people I’m being introduced to. It doesn’t do my work justice. It doesn’t make me more connected […]
If You Want to Succeed in Teams, Learn to Understand the Immoveable Constraints
“What is your biggest concern or fear about working together?” I asked my mentor as we were having a conversation about the possibility of working together. “Well, you have a tendency to find the immoveable constraints and then push on those. I’ve been at this long enough that I know my constraints and I need […]