The Customer is The Compass
Customer Intelligence is often, the most overlooked, undervalued gold mine of any business and not just marketing and product. I’ve seen it over and over. Customers, EXISTING ones, are the starting point, the anchor …. and the first domino for everything you do. For 20 years, I have obsessed over understanding my customers (customer community).…
On Marking 50
This year, April 27, 2026 to be exact, I turned 50 years old. And unlike other birthdays which were just another mile on the odometer to me … this one mattered a lot to me. I’ve told people, I haven’t been this excited about a birthday since I was 16 and got to drive and…
Rules I Lived By
Be so good … they can’t criticize you.Be so good … they can’t judge you.Be so good … they can’t blame or shame you. Be so good …. they won’t leave you.Do so much … they won’t leave you. Work so hard … to keep proving it.Work so hard … no one could accuse you…
Flipping Burnout Into Leadership Practices
Burnout is a thing. It’s a problem. We know that. But if you flip the Burnout Iceberg … you have key Leadership Practices — and a roadmap of ways to help you team give their best at work. A simple word for it is just: CONNECTION. And in work today, we have the HEAD side…
Acknowledging The Tough, Hard, Difficult Seasons
Too often as leaders we want to focus on the positive, the exciting when sharing big, new vision with our teams. We want everyone to be excited about our vision. But one of the most powerful things a leader can do is ACKNOWLEDGE hard times and tough seasons. Especially for teams who’s been through really…
Never waste a crisis
Over time riding the roller coaster of leadership and entrepreneurship, I started repeating a mantra: Never waste a crisis Too often we’d get bogged down in the reality of the crisis at hand, understandably. But every crisis has an opportunity in it. A crisis is something I think we humans sometimes need to actually evolve…
The Missing Ingredient in Vision & Goals
One of the most powerful lessons I learned from my business mentor was this question: What’s in it for them? It’s the missing part of your company vision, strategy and goals … and the overlooked ingredient to unlocking passion … for your team. We know why we as leaders and founders care. We know what’s…
How I Got Started Leading Customer Community
I posted this on LinkedIn and wanted to share it here as it’s part of my core passion in the work I do today …. Here’s how I got started building, running, leading customer communities, which I now do specifically at hosting.com as Chief Evangelist: It was 2009, barely two years into running iThemes &…
On Leadership and People And Care
I’ve been a leader, I am a leader … and love thinking about and practicing leadership. Even if I’m a little anxious acknowledging that here. But my one-word definition of my brand of leadership is this: CARE Care about the humans, first, always and forever. It’s about people. AND that starts with myself …. Caring…
Vision is the Destination. Values Show us the Way.
At hosting.com, we’re working on our first version of our core values, along with our vision and mission. And I’m honored and thankful to be contributing to this work for us. But I put a HUGE emphasis on our values and this work. They aren’t just another checkbox for me and I take them very seriously…