How to Develop Your Core Values (And Implement Them) in Six Steps

How to Develop Your Core Values (And Implement Them) in Six Steps

Every organization has a culture, whether it was created intentionally or not. Developing and implementing your values puts you in control of that culture. Most importantly, it helps you identify who’s aligned with it and who’s not. Here’s how to create your core values — not just some words that you put on a wall or a website — but the actual tenets that underpin your organization’s culture.

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What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

What Does a Good Business Coaching Relationship Look Like?

The concept of a coach used to be reserved for athletes. Now you can hire a coach to help you with everything from weight loss or parenting to public speaking and career transitions. So with all these coaches running around, how do you know what’s a worthwhile investment of your time and money?

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What Is An Organizational Assessment?

What Is An Organizational Assessment?

For many young or small companies, managing processes and meeting goals is pretty straightforward. They have a team of three or four people committed to the mission. They’ve defined roles and responsibilities. There are few barriers to communication. Then they start to grow. Now they’re a team of 15 or 20, and they’re not sure why exactly, but things aren’t going so well. That’s where an organizational assessment can help.

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Results Aren’t Achieved When Values Don’t Align (Lesson #6 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

Results Aren’t Achieved When Values Don’t Align (Lesson #6 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

In 2005, I was working as a consultant, doing some due diligence on software for a startup. The company, founded by two patent attorneys, was attempting to create an online marketplace for swapping books, music, movies, and video games—back when those were all physical objects that needed to be physically traded. The founders had patented their ideas and written hundreds of pages of specs. They’d already hired, fired, and had sued one software development firm. When the second firm they’d hired went past budget on a fixed price contract before completing the software, the founders reached out to me.

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How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

How You Can Harness Workplace Conflict to Help Your Organization Thrive

Conflict is inevitable. Everyone is different—different backgrounds, different scripts, different personalities, and different goals. Difference creates conflict. If we’ve learned anything from the last few months of civil unrest, it’s that embracing differences in our lives and in our organizations is critical. Workplace conflict will happen. By treating it as an opportunity for growth, we’ll help ourselves, our organizations, and our employees.

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Is It Time to Hire a Leadership Coach?

Is It Time to Hire a Leadership Coach?

If it were up to me, everyone in a leadership position, or starting or building a business, would have a coach — not because I want to (or could) coach them all, but because leaders who have coaches are better leaders. At the same time, I recognize that every business leader is balancing dozens of competing priorities, now more than ever. Is it time for you to hire a leadership coach? A better question might be Are you fine staying right where you are?

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Does Your Organization Have a Warning System in Place?

Does Your Organization Have a Warning System in Place?

Over a family dinner recently, my brother-in-law explained that my mother-in-law’s car has some high-tech alerts on it. I asked my mother-in-law if it had a collision avoidance system, and she responded, “All I know is that if I hear three beeps I need to stop so I don’t bang up the car.”

What if we had a similar alert system for leaders of businesses – when something goes wrong, you hear three beeps and you know you need to stop so you don’t damage your business?

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Three Pillars of Effective Leadership: Insights From Experienced CEOs

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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What If You’re the Problem with Your Team?

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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All the Videos from Trajectify’s Business Growth Conference

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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You Seriously Don't Have an Annual Plan?

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

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

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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Review Your Business Model to Get Better Results

Review Your Business Model to Get Better Results

Most of us take care of things that are important to us on a regular basis – maintaining our car, going to the dentist for a checkup, and updating software on our computer. But do we take a step back and invest the energy to look at our business model to see if everything is working the way we’d like it to? When you take time to review your business model, you may be surprised by the value you discover by making some tweaks – or perhaps even reinventing what you’re doing and how you’re doing it.

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It’s All About the People, the Team, and its Values (#3 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

It’s All About the People, the Team, and its Values (#3 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

As a leader or entrepreneur, you get to create vision, set goals, and define success. As a business coach, I’d be negligent if I didn’t say that money (revenues & profits) is important. A business needs to be able to sustain itself (and its principals, team, investors, etc.). To make money, we need people. To attract and keep people, we need team and well-defined values. There is a direct relationship between money, people, values, culture, and organization. Who you hire and how you lead and build team is critical to the long term success of anything you may undertake where organization is necessary.

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