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 […]
How We Use Compensation and Benefits to Keep Our Team Happy, Healthy, and Productive
The goal of compensation and benefits is to recruit the very best people onto your team, keep them happy for as long as possible, and unlock their full potential in the process. Many organizations look at this as an opportunity to do the least amount necessary to keep people from leaving. I believe every organization […]
The Communication Tools We Use to Run a 50-Person Remote Team at ConvertKit
We have nearly 50 teammates spread across 39 cities in 7 countries. Our team is 100% remote with no office. This is awesome because it means we can recruit incredible people from all over the world (and we actively do that). This is not awesome because, like any company, it comes with its unique challenges. […]