The emptiness that shows up after a big exit doesn’t always wait for the exit. Sometimes it arrives while someone is still deciding whether to go through with it.I was on a call last week with a founder who built a home goods chain from a single storefront into fifty locations across six states. She couldn’t tell whether she wanted
A client of mine runs an ad agency, built almost entirely on his own name. Three days out from the biggest campaign launch his agency had ever landed, half his team was scrambling, and the account lead who normally held the whole client relationship in his head started unraveling. He stopped answering direct questions. He’d get partway through a sentence
You don’t actually need help thinking big.You’re already doing that.At this level, imagining upside isn’t hard. New markets. New products. Faster growth. Bigger bets. Most senior leaders I know have no shortage of ambition. If anything, they’ve learned to think several moves ahead without trying.What’s heavier is something else.You know how much it took to get here. Not just the
You don’t actually have a shortage of ideas.You have a shortage of space.At this level, the list of things that should be done already exceeds the amount of time you have to do them. That’s not a productivity failure. It’s the reality of operating in a highly leveraged role.Most senior leaders I talk to don’t feel behind because they’re disorganized
You’re not worried about the risks you can see.You’re more concerned about the ones you can’t see yet.At this level, you’ve learned how to manage visible problems. There are dashboards, advisors, frameworks, and meetings for those. When something shows up clearly, you know how to respond.What’s harder is the sense that something important might not be showing up at all.Most
I recently began working with a founder who’s built a 100 million dollar company from scratch.No outside money. No shortcuts. Almost a decade of grit, intuition, and operational excellence.He leads from experience and straight talk. His people trust him.Yet he’s been wrestling with something most executives would never admit out loud.He feels strong with his
If you’re a Founder/CEO or senior exec at a growth-stage company, you’ve probably felt this tension. You know your business can’t grow unless your senior team grows. But you’re busy, you’re not a trainer, and part of you wonders if you’re even qualified to coach a C-suite peer.It’s pretty common. Lots
I was talking with a client recently—a newly promoted senior executive who’d just inherited 20 direct reports and a double digit million dollar budget challenge. “I’m trying to get the signal through the noise – there’s so much inbound right now coming from both directions.” Sound familiar?Most of us have been there. The
You may think that head-of-the-table communication is primarily about being polished, eloquent, and having all the answers when you speak in high-level meetings.But really, executive communication is less about performance and perfect delivery and more about creating clarity and impact through connection, authentic presence, and engagement.If you focus on a few key principles like decision-first communication, confident uncertainty, and reading
I’m not a career coach but I have been fortunate to support c-level executives in doing this kind of work and then either reinventing themselves in their current roles, landing new incredible “first and second mountain” jobs, or avoiding what would have been some very unfortunate choices. Recently, a couple of clients and I