Resources
Build the Team.
Clarify the Strategy.
Prepare the Exit.
Everything published for founder-CEOs and their leadership teams, in one place. Essays, columns, and book reviews to read, and conversations to watch and listen to. Start with whatever fits the problem in front of you. It all connects.
Field Notes.
Essays on the patterns that hold growing companies back, from leadership teams that avoid conflict to exits that leave value on the table, and what to do about each one.
I Had Spinal Fusion Surgery and It Became the Best Excuse I Ever Had
If the person with the most legitimate-sounding excuse is running a racket, anyone can be.
Strategic Thinking Is Not Strategic Action. The Difference Is Where Most Leadership Teams Quietly Fail.
Most leadership teams have built sophisticated strategic thinking. Few have built the capacity to act strategically together as the field moves.
How to Measure Any Leadership Responsibility (Even the Ones That Feel Unmeasurable)
What gets measured gets managed. Here's how to find a real metric for any responsibility on a role scorecard.
The Inc.com Column.
Columns on strategy, leadership teams, and scaling, written for Inc. readers. Each one takes a single problem founder-CEOs run into and lays out a practical way through it.
3 Common Roles Found in Any Workplace Drama, and How to Rewrite the Script
Team drama takes many forms and rarely helps. The patterns to watch for, and how to flip each one into something useful.
Why the Secret to Fast Growth Is to Sell Fewer Things to Fewer People
Growing quickly takes a focused strategy, not a longer list of offers. Five steps to narrow the business and speed it up.
The Growth Barriers: Scaling From Millions to Tens of Millions
The obstacles that stall growth at each stage of a company, and the strategies that get it past each one.
The Exit Planning Book for Founder-CEOs.
Springboard is a founder's guide to selling your company with purpose, clarity, and a vision for what comes next. Most exit advice starts with the transaction. This one starts with the founder.
"Springboard is one of the most honest and strategically grounded books I've read on exits."
"All founders and business owners should be required to read Springboard. Far too often, they retire without a plan."
"This is not just a book about exiting a business. It is a guide for using an exit as a true springboard into a meaningful next chapter."
From Angel to Exit.
The podcast that goes behind the deal. Founders and advisors on building, scaling, and selling a company, including the parts no one prepares you for.
From Founder Dependence to Freedom: How to Build a Business That Thrives Without You
Why lasting value comes from learning from failure, protecting cash, building systems and the right team, and knowing what you want the business to give you.
Worried About Your Exit? How to Use an ESOP to Create Liquidity, Tax Benefits, and Employee Wealth
How an ESOP lets owners take money off the table without selling the whole company to private equity or a strategic buyer.
Exit Planning Starts Early: Strengthen Financials and Leadership to Maximize Business Valuation
What makes a business valuable to a buyer, and the everyday decisions that quietly make an exit harder.
LinkedIn Live.
Live panel conversations with operators, advisors, and specialists on the questions growing companies run into. The next one is October 23. Every session is archived to watch any time.
Love at Work: Leadership’s Most Underrated Power Move
The panel discussed how leaders can combine care, trust, and accountability to build more human workplaces where people and performance thrive.
Thinking About Selling? You Have More Exit Options Than You Think
Founders have more exit paths than a sale to private equity or a strategic buyer. The panel considered options and ways to protect owners and teams.
Leading Through the Noise: Inner Clarity, Outer Impact, Real Action
A discussion of how leaders can stay grounded, act with purpose, and build momentum amid uncertainty and pressure.
Book Reviews.
The business books worth a founder-CEO's time. Each review covers the big ideas, where the book falls short, and tools to bring to your leadership team. Dozens of books so far, with new reviews added regularly.
Tools of Titans
World-class performance across every field is less a matter of innate talent than a portable, testable stack of tools, routines, and questions that any practitioner can borrow and validate on themselves.
12 Habits of Valuable Employees
Doing your job well is the baseline, and real value comes from habits that improve the system around the job so the whole company grows.
Emotions Revealed
Emotions arrive faster than thought and cannot be switched off, but a person who learns their triggers, the feel of each emotion, and the signals on other faces gains a few seconds of choice over what happens next.
Better, Faster.
The weekly newsletter for founder-CEOs. Every Thursday: one practical essay, questions to take to your team, a book worth reading, and the newest LinkedIn Lives and podcast episodes.
Most Founders Ask Customers What They Want. These 5 Questions Reveal What They Actually Need
Most customers cannot predict what they will buy. Five questions that uncover the behaviors and trade-offs behind real demand.
Your Weekly Meeting Is Probably Measuring the Wrong Thing
Most leadership teams obsess over accountability. One simple question turns the weekly meeting into an engine for learning.
Why So Many Founders Regret Selling, Even After a Big Payday
Research from the Exit Planning Institute finds roughly three in four owners regret selling within a year of closing. Here is why.
Previous Podcasts.
Before From Angel to Exit there were three other shows. They are archived now, but hundreds of episodes are still out there, and most of the conversations hold up. All three are on Apple Podcasts.
Scaling Up Services
Interviews with founders and CEOs of professional services firms on how they grew, built their teams, and scaled.
Thinking Outside The Bud
Conversations with entrepreneurs, investors, and experts building businesses in the cannabis industry.
The Psychedelic Invest Podcast
Founders, investors, and researchers on the business of psychedelic medicine and where the industry is heading.
Get It All Weekly.
Better, Faster is the weekly newsletter for founder-CEOs. One practical essay, questions for your team, a book worth reading, and new LinkedIn Live sessions and podcast episodes as they land.