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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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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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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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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Clarity, Transparency, Focus: Critical Differentiators Between High Performers and the Rest

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Clarity, Transparency, Focus: Critical Differentiators Between High Performers and the Rest

I’ve had the good fortune of working in a variety of industries, building scale into growing businesses and advising executives on strategic initiatives. Despite the variety of products, services, and customers, I’ve observed certain constants across all businesses that separate the elite performers from the average.

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The Best Growth Strategy is to Make Yourself Dispensable (Lesson #4 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

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The Best Growth Strategy is to Make Yourself Dispensable (Lesson #4 of 8 Lessons Growing 8 Companies)

It took me three years to go from VP Engineering to CTO to COO to CEO. How does someone grow that quickly? Yes, I worked hard and focused on results. Yes, I was afforded an opportunity being at a good place at a good time. Still, no amount of hustle, talent or luck could have made such a rapid transition successful. What made it possible?

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How Do You Get Work Done When There's 100 Events In One Week?

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How Do You Get Work Done When There's 100 Events In One Week?

I attended my first Philly Tech Week (PTW) in 2012. There weren't a ton of events, but my notes say I attended 14, and scheduled another 8 meetings in between events.  Pretty intense, especially for someone who leans introvert. That year I also hosted the first Philly Bootstrappers Breakfast during that week (more on that below).

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4 Valuable (and inexpensive) Business Tips from Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

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4 Valuable (and inexpensive) Business Tips from Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

Bootstrappers Breakfast is a mastermind-style meetup where we have serious conversations about growing a business. This group offers a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and support in a group setting to sharpen your business and personal skills. As a group, we diagnosed the following four topics: referral marketing as a powerful lead generation tool, the importance of practicing your pitch, learning not to stand in the way of your own success, and validating product ideas through user research.

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Review Your Business Model to Get Better Results

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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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The Difference Between Coaches, Mentors, Advisors, and Consultants

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The Difference Between Coaches, Mentors, Advisors, and Consultants

Too often I hear the terms mentors and coaches interchangeably. I'm sure of you search for definitions, you'll easily find ones that support how you've been using the terms. For me, clarity is important. When I built Trajectify, I wanted it to be clear what it is that I am doing - for my clients and myself. If I could put clarity around the definitions, I could better understand the problem and build my business to serve the greatest need. I looked at four roles - Coach, Mentor, Consultant, and Advisor - and tried to simply describe the nature of the relationship:

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Why Are Goals So Hard?

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Why Are Goals So Hard?

One of the first things that I do with each new engagement is to work on goals - for the company and the entrepreneur/leader. It might seem basic, and many have done it before, but my experience is that few entrepreneurs and companies have current goals or have been able to do them well. We don't move forward without goals - it is difficult to grow a business in the absence of them.

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