Editor’s Note: This is the first essay in a series on what I learned as COO of ConvertKit as we grew from $3M to $30M ARR and 20 to 75 teammates while being bootstrapped and fully remote (before it was cool). ConvertKit is a creator economy software startup on a mission to help creators earn […]
The Alchemy of Carbon Removal: How Charm Industrial Plans to Run Oil Wells in Reverse and Turn Corn Into Steel
By 2050, we need to remove 10 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually in order to keep global temperatures from increasing more than 2ºC — the commonly accepted threshold for when the climate would become unbearably hot and unpredictable for humans in much of the world. In 2022, we removed two […]
Coaching Questions to Help You Make Breakthroughs at Work and in Life
I get a version of this question regularly: “What are the 3-4 coaching questions or exercises most likely to produce breakthroughs?” I get where it comes from. What if you could boil coaching down to powerful questions anyone can ask themselves anytime they’re looking for a breakthrough? Coaching doesn’t work like that. Coaching is a […]
How to Reinvent Yourself: Lessons Learned from My Career Transition and How to Find Your Next Great Thing
In August 2021, I resigned from my role as COO at ConvertKit. I sold most of my stock and set aside funds for a sabbatical of undetermined length. In the 18 months following my departure, I transitioned industries; pursued three six-month career experiments; experienced deep anxiety and depression; and came out the other side, more […]
Carbon Direct: The $160 Trillion Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight
There’s an untapped $160 trillion market teeming with potential and on the verge of surging with economic activity — and one company in particular is building a carbon science dream team to take advantage. That market: carbon dioxide. Carbon Direct’s mission is to “combine science, technology, and capital to deliver quality CO2 management at scale.” […]
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 […]
Expertise: Why You Need it & How to Get it
Note: This is a post I originally wrote for Fizzle, where they teach aspiring entrepreneurs how to build small businesses that matter. Although you may not be an entrepreneur, the process of building expertise will still be valuable to you. I hope you enjoy. Andy Perdue stands over his desk, looking at 29-years’ worth of paraphernalia […]