I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet since April (I still hate non-competes and while I respect the right of the Chamber of Commerce to sue the FTC, I hope common sense prevails). Between then and now, we switched things up at Bolster, and my co-founder Cathy Hawley is now the CEO. Things are great there, and if you need any executive search help...

I love that the FTC just banned non-competes, as everyone expected they would. Normally, I’m in favor of small government and fewer regulations, but this is one where I think the government has a legitimate interest in setting up guardrails to a free market. We started off at Return Path years ago with a standard and fairly benign non-compete...

Happy Leap Day! One of the better books I’ve read in the last 6 months is James Clear’s Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, which provides a great framework around habits. It’s worth a read, whether you’re talking about business habits/routines or personal ones. This isn’t a book review, but...

Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, by Leidy Klotz is a great read, and in concert with the philosophy of the book, this will be a short blog post. The book’s basic premise is that less is more, addition by subtraction. The author’s examples range from the genius of the Strider Bike (bike without pedals) that allows 2-year olds to ride...

(Post 4 of 4 in the series on Scaling CBDO’s- other posts are, When to hire your first Chief Business Development Officer, What does Great look like in a Chief Business Development Officer and Signs your Chief Business Development Officer isn’t Scaling) Other than the weekly executive meeting, your day as a CEO rarely has an entry of “meet...

Here’s one to keep in mind – we did this a few times at Return Path, and I was just reminded of it when I was coaching another founder who is doing the same thing right now. Sometimes when you’re doing a strategic acquisition and it’s an all-stock deal, you can insist as a term of the acquisition that the target company’s investors invest...