In this edition:
- Thursday Thoughts – Practicing My Patience
- Weekly Top 5 – Lessons from Poppi’s Founders, Supply & Demand, Single-Family vs. Multi-Family Offices, Finance Staff, & Small Biz Credit
- Reading Recommendations – Built for a Better World, Buy Back Your Time, & The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
THURSDAY THOUGHTS
Last week, I stopped at my favorite local coffee shop for an iced cinnamon latte and a strawberry lemon oat square. The usual.
But as I stood there waiting for my order, I found myself getting impatient. Like, really impatient. The place was packed. Staff was hustling. Yet, as I watched the barista carefully pull the espresso shots, I was convinced my impatience was radiating across the room like a heat wave. Surely everyone could feel it!
Spoiler alert: no one noticed. The world kept turning. My coffee arrived. Life went on.
Later, I checked the time. From the moment I got out of my car, placed my order, picked up my coffee, and got back into my car… ten minutes had passed.
Ten minutes!
Yet somehow, it felt like I had been waiting for half my life.
It got me thinking about how out of practice many of us have become with patience. We live in a world where we can order groceries, stream movies, get answers from AI, and have almost anything delivered to our doorstep in record time. Waiting ten minutes for a coffee somehow feels unreasonable.
But most meaningful things still require time…
Building a business. Growing a career. Developing trust. Learning a skill. Becoming the person you’re trying to become.
Patience might be one of the most underrated skills out there!
So, I’m working on it. Consider this my public accountability post. 😎
P.S. Next month we’re diving into customer service and sales! If you have any questions around that theme, let me know!
WEEKLY TOP 5
- Some of the best lessons come from other people’s mistakes. That’s kind of what wisdom is right? Check out this article for some insights from Poppi’s co-founders, Allison and Stephen Ellsworth. They sold their business to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion last year and they share their biggest financial mistake and what they wished they knew sooner, such as how money is a tool and a powerful one if understood and leveraged correctly. If you are one half of a husband/wife team, or work with one, then this will be particularly interesting!
- Have you ever wondered how your company determines pricing for its products or services? It’s an interesting question to ponder! It’s all about supply and demand, baby! But what does that actually mean? How are prices set? Why do they change? And how do shifts in supply and demand affect markets? This simple explanation about supply and demand is worth the 3+ minute watch. Now, dig into your company and ask these questions to increase your business acumen!
- As I mentioned last month, The Wall Street Journal says that family offices are the new power play on Wall Street. Which sounds a lot like an opportunity for Executive Assistants and Chiefs of Staff to me! These firms increasingly need highly trusted right-hand partners to help manage operations, communication, logistics, staffing, and strategic initiatives. If you thrive in high-trust, high-complexity environments, then this is something worth exploring. Start here by understanding the difference between a single-family office and a multi-family office.
- The finance person who gets you to your first $250K in revenue may not be the person who gets you to $5 million. This Forbes article explains how finance teams evolve as businesses scale and why founders and Force Multipliers need to understand the difference between bookkeeping, accounting, and strategic finance to support sustainable growth.
- I don’t know about you, but there were many times where I was reconciling business and personal credit cards at the end of the statement period. It could have been purely administrative work, but by understanding why and how to use a financial tool like credit cards, it moves to strategic impact. This report from Capital One Insights Center tells an interesting story about the future of small business. 75% are confident in their business’s future, which is great news! The in-depth data explains how small business owners are using financial tools (namely credit cards) to manage expenses, improve cash flow visibility, build resilience in the business, and influence hiring decisions. The more you know!
READING RECOMMENDATIONS
- Built for a Better World: How Seventh Generation Pioneered a Movement That Changed the Purpose of Business by Jeffrey Hollender | Can a company stay true to its values while scaling into a massive business? Jeffrey Hollender’s story of building Seventh Generation suggests it can, but not without significant challenges. This book offers a candid look at purpose-driven leadership, board dynamics, company culture, and the difficult decisions required to build a business that serves both profit and people. I love reading books like this that really dive into a business’s story and the decisions a leader made along the way.
- Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire by Dan Martell | Time is every founder’s most valuable resource, and one of the greatest ways a Force Multiplier creates value is by protecting it. In Buy Back Your Time, Dan Martell shares a practical framework for leveraging people, processes, and systems to remove bottlenecks, create more freedom, and accelerate growth. Whether you’re a founder or the person helping them scale, this book offers valuable insight into how leaders think about time, delegation, and where they should be spending their energy.
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness by Eric Jorgenson | This isn’t a business book as much as it’s a book about how to think. Naval’s (entrepreneur, philosopher, and investor) insights on leverage, judgment, wealth creation, and happiness will help founders and Force Multipliers make better decisions, focus on what matters, and play a longer game. If you like this book, also check out The Anthology of Balaji and The Book of Elon.
“You need to know exactly where you stand in a business at all times. Measure everything, because everything that is measured and watched improves.”
Bob Parsons, founder of GoDaddy
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