Building a Business With Partners: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

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Building a Business With Partners: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

We recently facilitated a panel of four pairs of co-founders/partners. They shared their experiences in building a business together - exploring benefits and challenges, offering advice and personal perspectives. Putting business partners on stage - including friends, siblings, and spouses - also made for great entertainment (watch the video). If you’re going to make partnership successful, have a good sense of humor :-) Here are some of the lessons learned and insights:

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3 Strategies You Should Adopt in Your 2020 Planning

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3 Strategies You Should Adopt in Your 2020 Planning

We don't want to have to be in a position to make passionate decisions, especially in business. Good planning means accounting for all outcomes while we are in our natural state, operating in Quadrant II (one of Strategy), not Quadrant I (Crisis). Here are some strategies to follow to help you do just that.

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Leadership Lessons from My Mother's Death

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Leadership Lessons from My Mother's Death

My mother died earlier this month. It wasn't something we were expecting. She had been successfully fighting breast cancer. Complications from treatment led to a series of cascading medical issues over several weeks until her heart was no longer able to take it.  I woke up early the day after her death and my mind was racing, so I grabbed a pen and paper to slow down my thoughts. Some of what I wrote ended up being about observations and feelings that I could connect to leadership.

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Three Pillars of Effective Leadership: Insights From Experienced CEOs

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Three Pillars of Effective Leadership: Insights From Experienced CEOs

Being a leader means always having your fingers on the pulse of your business. It means juggling responsibilities, putting out fires, and claiming responsibility. You are responsible for the vision, agenda, and strategy of your entire team. While sitting in the driver's seat can be exhilarating, it can also be exhausting and lonely. But what if it doesn’t have to be? Learn some of the basic pillars of leadership: strategic planning, building a healthy you and a healthy team, and getting outside-in perspectives.

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2019 Trajectify Summer Reading List

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2019 Trajectify Summer Reading List

Here’s that world famous list that thousands have been awaiting. Each year, Trajectify coaches and clients put together recommendations for books that they've been reading. We encourage you to use some of your vacation time and your days away from the office to invest in growth through reading. Wherever your adventures take you, even if it's just in your backyard hammock), use this out-of-office time to learn, reflect, and challenge yourself.

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Four Tools To Improve Your Time Management

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Four Tools To Improve Your Time Management

Time management is the process of organizing and planning how to divide your time between specific activities. Successful time management allows you to work smarter, not harder, getting more done in less time but this is not always an easy process.

Time management, including work-life balance, prioritization and decision making, are elements of the most common struggles for entrepreneurs. It is difficult to make time for the important things when it is even hard to decide what is actually important.

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What If You’re the Problem with Your Team?

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What If You’re the Problem with Your Team?

“Sometimes I’m trying to finish the project you gave me earlier in the week, and I’m nearly done. But you tell me to drop it, that it’s not as important as some new thing you want the team to start on. I like your ideas – and you have a lot of them – but I wish you would let us finish what we start before you tell us to do the new thing. It gets kind of frustrating because I feel like you don’t appreciate that we’re trying to do the things you want, but it’s always changing.” Have you been there before with a team like this? No matter what you might put in your strategic business plan, you will not succeed unless people can learn to work together effectively.

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What is your Double Doink for 2019?

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What is your Double Doink for 2019?

If you happen to be a football fan, you’ve probably now heard about the Double Doink. Let’s have some fun and create a general purpose definition for a double doink: the accomplishment of an improbable feat or an achievement from an impressive effort that results in failure or negative consequences. I’m not sure if I’ve had a double doink yet this year, but I know I’ve had plenty over the course of my career. I’ve been contemplating some of the things that you should do to recover from a double doink. Here are five things to consider after a mistake or failure.

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All the Videos from Trajectify’s Business Growth Conference

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All the Videos from Trajectify’s Business Growth Conference

2018 brought Trajectify’s inaugural live business growth conference which brought together dozens of leaders, entrepreneurs, and professionals. We held Trajectify Live on September 13, 2018 at the Science History Institute in Old City, Philadelphia, featuring four Trajectify coaches plus a line-up of guest speakers and presenters while filled the day with insights, lessons and experiences

If you missed the opportunity to join us in September, we’ve got you covered. Here are videos we took of ten presentations from the conference. If you’re interested to attend the next Trajectify Live, please sign up here to be notified about the next Trajectify Live.

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Four Lessons Learned in 2018: A success and failure retrospective

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Four Lessons Learned in 2018: A success and failure retrospective

2018 was an incredible year. I know it’s not over yet, but I’m not going to send an email next week, so let’s get it out there before we’re swooped into 2019. I took bigger risks with Trajectify this year and accomplished a lot, including some big ones. Some of these met our goals or are beginning to perform. Others missed expectations because of invalid assumptions, or bad execution, or unforeseen externals influences. I almost always practice what I preach. Almost. There’s a lot I learn about myself while coaching and working with other business owners and leaders. In all that I’ve accomplished this year, here are some lessons I’d like to share.

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Our Annual CEO Gift Guide

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Our Annual CEO Gift Guide

Amidst the closing of 2018 and the planning of 2019, we wanted to have a little fun. That's not an extravagant holiday party for the Trajectify team. It means some new content! We asked each of Trajectify team to share an idea of what holiday gift to get that successful person who might already have everything they want. Maybe you’re a business owner or CEO and you’re wondering what put on your gift wish list? Or maybe you need to buy something for that special business leader at your company or in you life. From $50K to $50M, there’s something for everyone.

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Leadership and Lure of Email

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Leadership and Lure of Email

How often do you spend in your email each day, sifting through your inbox, reading, reviewing and responding, attempting to reach that glorified empty inbox by the end of the day?

The fact is - the majority of CEO and leadership work does not happen on email - it happens face-to-face. According to a Harvard Business Review study, only about 15% of a CEO’s time is spent on email. How do you compare?

At the 2018 Trajectify Leadership Retreat, we heard that dealing with the time-consuming and dreaded sea of emails was a common complaint regarding the stresses of a leader.

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"Why Didn't I Realize That" Lessons Shared by Growth Stage CEOs

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"Why Didn't I Realize That" Lessons Shared by Growth Stage CEOs

As a CEO, there is an expectation of fearlessness. Does not mean we need to pretend that we have all of the answers? Vulnerability is an important leadership attribute. We welcomed CEOs and Trajectify coaches to the 2018 Trajectify CEO Leadership Retreat a few weeks ago. We discovered and worked on many of the challenges in growing a $1M+ business. Each CEO took the hot seat in a mastermind session, most discussing with their peer struggle they are facing. Everyone gained new insights and perspectives. After a day long event of content and mastermind sessions, we asked each attendee for their biggest takeaway from the event.

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You Seriously Don't Have an Annual Plan?

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You Seriously Don't Have an Annual Plan?

This time of the year, I find myself in a lot of intense conversations with founders and leaders about their plans for the coming year. I am always disappointed to discover that many do not have a plan. They often have next year's goals and financial forecasts, usually required if they have a Board of Directors, but they don’t know the details of how those goals will be met. It’s all good and well to declare what you are going to do, but how much thought have you given to how you’re going to get it done?

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10 Tips from Leaders to Increase Effectiveness

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10 Tips from Leaders to Increase Effectiveness

Owning or leading a business comes with a lot of responsibilities and stress that even the most prepared can struggle to handle. Leaders set the vision, agenda and strategy, often while juggling accountabilities for major initiatives and decisions that affect performance for both finances and people. They have to serve many constituencies. No one takes on the role of CEO with the idea of it being low-stress. Learning to maintain structure and balance could help alleviate pressure and lead to great effectiveness.

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Six Practices of Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

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Six Practices of Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

Starting or building a business is exciting, though comes with challenges and roadblocks that can even scare veteran entrepreneurs. You're not alone. It is rare that the difficult challenges that an entrepreneur may face have not been previously encountered by others. That’s where the Bootstrappers Breakfasts step in - to facilitate entrepreneurs working together to exchange learning and information that grow the skills and confidence it takes to build a successful business.

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Interview with Sean Darras of LUXTECH, Making Millions with Social Impact

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Interview with Sean Darras of LUXTECH, Making Millions with Social Impact

Sean Darras, a Trajectify client and CEO of LUXTECH, a young, innovative LED lighting company in Old City, sat down for an interview with Mike Krupit during Trajectify Live. Sean founded the company in 2012 and over the last 6 years he has filled the company with people who care about the good of the company, the environment, and each person the products touch. The company has had impressive growth, and each quarter brings a new series of challenges for the team to learn from and conquer. In the Trajectify Live interview, Sean and Mike walked through some of the lessons learned in each phase.

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Fear and Thinking Too Lean

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Fear and Thinking Too Lean

My challenge with “Lean” is that as much as it’s a great philosophy for when you are starting out, you lose the ability to leap when you think about really big things. How do you do things that can’t be done in a one or two week sprint, the things that are too big to put on a little post it and stick to your bathroom mirror? In order to grow, you need to have a mindset of leaping, planning and doing big things, and then to figure out how to land after you take that leap.

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Overcoming Challenges to create 100+ Jobs and a Multi-Million Dollar Business

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Overcoming Challenges to create 100+ Jobs and a Multi-Million Dollar Business

Growing a multi-million dollar company rarely comes easy. The path to success is certainly different for each hungry entrepreneur. Lisa Robinson was one of the keynote speakers with a heart-warming story that opened our eyes to a new perspectives. Her story to success was unconventional. She didn’t start out as the leader that we see today taking over the stage or the owner that the U.S. SBA recently named Eastern Pennsylvania District Minority-Owned Small Business of the Year.

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