I was just talking with a prospect about working together.

He had never worked with a coach before, let alone someone like me who does deep transformational work.

I realized that there had to be a way to level set. Before the next conversation. Before we started looking and the unhelpful and untrue stories he was creating about his business and his world.

I sent him an email asking him to commit to reading and considering a few principles that I come from before we talk.

I’ve expanded on that email here in the hopes that it might be helpful for you as well. Whether you’re a founder like him, a leader, or just trying to live your best life.

The World You Live in Is 100 Percent Internal

Humans are not built to experience the world directly. We have sense organs, true, but these only process a tiny percentage (way less than one percent) of the available light and sound and touch and taste information that is available. (Sight, hearing, and our other senses are themselves arbitrary ways to experience the world but that’s a topic for another day).

We take this electromagnetic information and convert it to a model that our bodies can use. The information that we receive prioritizes biological survival and potential threats to it, and of course, reproducing. These are way beyond any personal interests we may have. They go back to the beginning of our species’ existence.

Then, we filter this sense information through the stories that we have been told and believed about the world and ourselves. Stories from our culture, and in particular, influential adults from our childhood.

What stories about the world and yourself are you believing without question?

You Are Creating In Each and Every Moment

Thought creates the world and then says “I didn’t do it.” — David Bohm, Quantum Physicist

Most of the time we try to change the world by trying to change our thoughts about the world. That doesn’t tend to go very well because in doing that we assume that the thoughts are real. Are solid.

But if we see the thoughts are just thoughts—that’s when the magic begins to happen. All those thoughts begin to slow. Your breathing deepens. Your physiology changes. And you begin to literally see and experience a different world.

You Can Choose to Create Differently

Humans create through words. Every word, whether spoken or written (or even thought), is an act of creating in that moment.

Even to say, “the sky is blue,” creates. The concept of “the sky” and “blue” have no independent existence other than when someone speaks of them.

The most powerful leaders in history, whether motivated by love or fear, have been masters at creating themselves, others, and the world around them through their words. Every word they say is a conscious creative act.

When your mind quiets a bit, you can begin to notice your words and how they have limited you. When you see where you have been unconscious, the conscious creating can begin.

Nothing Outside of You Can Make You Happy (or Unhappy)

Most successful people have created companies or careers from the misguided belief that those external things would make them happy.

But if we can never experience anything outside of us, how can those things make us happy?

Only the stories that we believe about those things can make us happy. Or unhappy.

But there is one more thing to see that challenges even that.

Who Are You, Really?

YOU are not your thoughts. Or your bank balance, or job title, or anything else you can say ABOUT you.

YOU are the thinker of those things. The creator of those things. The experiencer of those things. YOU are the capacity to create and love without limitation.

And happiness is in the joy of conscious creation, not in the things that are created.

When you see that, your life changes. Your choices change. Your experience changes.

You see the humor in things, and you see that whether things look good or bad in one particular moment, your thoughts about them change constantly and that those thoughts are no more real than the clouds in the sky.

And seeing that as the witness to your creations, rather than the one whose happiness depends on them, changes everything.

Including what you create.

Our Work Together…

Is to begin the habit of looking at our assumptions about the world. To see what is helpful and what is not. To see what we have been creating and if we want to create something different.

Does this resonate? It can be helpful to get away from the day to day grind to explore this outside of your current habits and routines.

I have two ways of doing this—one-on-one and in a group.

If a part of you knows this is the next step for you, reach out.

Michael came to me in the middle of a transition.

His business had scaled to $20M.

He’d installed new leaders, pulled back from some day-to-day functions, and was starting to breathe again. Then things started to wobble.

Sales felt soft. A $1.5M project evaporated overnight. The team wasn’t moving with urgency.

And suddenly, the space he had fought so hard to create felt unsafe.

So the question became:

Had he let go too soon? Or not soon enough?

At First, He Brought Business Problems to Our Conversations

Hiring.

Estimating software.

Sales accountability.

Cash pressure.

All real, all urgent.

But it didn’t take long for the real work to emerge—because what’s “urgent” in a founder’s world is almost always entangled with something deeper:

A belief.

A fear.

A mental model that once worked—and now doesn’t.

Things Started To Shift, Because He Started to Shift

Michael has gone through several shifts in our work together so far.

Shift #1: From “Problem Solver” to “System Designer”

Michael’s instinct was to jump in and fix things.

If something was behind—jump in.

If someone underperformed—step back in.

If cash got tight—grab the wheel.

But as we worked together, he saw something quietly profound:

“The system is working perfectly… to keep pulling me back in.”

He wasn’t just reacting to problems.

He was reinforcing them.

The way the company operated—its language, habits, bottlenecks—depended on his involvement.

And that system was working exactly as designed.

When he saw that, he could begin to change it.

Shift #2: From “It Has to Be Right” to “We Learn By Doing”

One day, mid-session, we were talking about rolling out a new sales process.

Michael hesitated.

“I just don’t want to roll this out until we’ve got it right.”

He caught himself—his pattern. Then he paused, smiled, and said:

“Wait… so we can actually learn by implementing? That’s wild.”

It sounds simple. But for a founder who’s used to being the expert, it was a major shift.

We’re trained to think that leadership means having the answer.

But what Michael saw was that progress doesn’t come from perfect planning.

It comes from thoughtful implementation—with feedback, iteration, and team buy-in.

So we built the habit:

Build → Implement → Learn → Refine.

That rhythm became his leadership operating system. And he continues to refine it today.

Shift #3: From “I’m the One They Follow” to “We’re Building This Together”

As we talked over our first four months, Michael often said:

“I’m good at sales. I can close the big deals. But I can’t seem to teach it.”

He carried the weight of being the charismatic founder.

The closer.

The one who couldn’t be replaced.

But in that model, his team was always a step behind.

They weren’t co-creators—they were followers.

As he shifted, we explored a new frame:

What if your team doesn’t need another version of you? What if they need a system they can shape with you?

That meant giving them ownership—not just instructions. Letting them try, miss, adapt.

And trusting that leadership is less about being copied—and more about creating capacity.

Shift #4: From Reactive Urgency to Constructive Clarity

Michael had what I call “cash fear.”

It’s not uncommon for founder-CEOs. When cash dips, the old wiring kicks in:

This is mine to fix. Get involved. Hustle harder. Do more.

But that wiring—once a superpower—isn’t built for scale.

So we looked underneath it. Where did the fear come from? How could he trust the system and still lead with intention?

We didn’t eliminate urgency. But we gave it structure.

Michael began naming what was real, and what was reactive. And acting accordingly.

That changed everything.

The Language Shift: From Describing to Creating

One of the most powerful shifts in our work was how Michael began to hear his own language differently.

“I’m trying to get over the hump.”

“I’ve hit a ceiling.”

“We’re in chaos.”

These sound like observations.

But they’re actually creations.

The metaphors we use don’t just describe reality—they shape it.

As Michael started to notice the metaphors he leaned on, he began to choose new ones:

• From “ceiling” → to “threshold”
• From “chaos” → to “friction with purpose”
• From “problem” → to “signal”

That shift in language reflected something deeper:

He wasn’t just reacting to what was happening.

He was taking authorship of it. And choosing to create it differently.

Coaching Isn’t About Tactics. It’s About Transformation.

In four months, Michael didn’t just put better systems in place.

He saw himself differently.

He led differently.

And most importantly—he started designing a company that didn’t need him to hold it together.

That’s the real work.

Not fixing more things.

But letting go of the identity that says you must.

Because as a leader, the most important systems you’ll ever design are the ones inside yourself.

It Started With Two Days

Are you ready to begin this journey for yourself?

Michael and I started with two days together. Two days that created the foundation for profound transformation in his leadership.

For a select group of leaders, I am creating an event in Denver on October 20-21 to do the same.

Would you like to be considered? DM me and I can tell you more.

It’s a familiar scene in many growing companies:

The leadership team retreats for a couple of days, digs deep, crafts a compelling vision, maybe even a new set of values—and then rolls it out with great fanfare in a company-wide meeting.

There’s a well-designed PowerPoint. Possibly a video. Maybe even branded mugs.

But here’s the question:

How much of it truly sticks?

Not just as slogans on the wall, but as the driver of the company?

Culture Isn’t What You Say. It’s What People Feel.

Culture isn’t installed. It’s not a software update.

It’s an ongoing co-creation of meaning—shaped every day by how people show up, how they make decisions, and what they believe they’re building together.

And that’s the key word: together.

The most enduring cultures aren’t handed down from the top. They’re built from the inside out.

From Rollout to Invitation

A founder I coach had this insight recently. He and his leadership team were circling around a unifying “why”—something beyond revenue targets, something they could all rally behind. And they were excited about sharing it with the team.

But instead of presenting it fully formed, we explored a different path:

What if the team helped shape it?

What if, at the next quarterly meeting, they posed a question instead of presenting a statement?

• “Why are we here?”
• “What kind of experience do we want to create for our customers?”
• “What do we want to feel when we go home at the end of the day?”

These aren’t fluffy prompts. They’re questions that create culture-shaping conversations. And they reveal what already matters to people—what’s already in the DNA of the company that’s waiting to be brought out in to the open.

You Don’t Need a Big Offsite—You Can Just Start

The right culture isn’t created. It emerges.

It’s coaxed from what already is happening when people are at their best.

Here’s what defining a culture can look like in practice:

• A lunch meeting where field staff and office staff share stories of when the company was at its best.
• A whiteboard in the break room with the question: “What’s one thing we’re proud of this quarter?”
• A 15-minute all-hands session where each team shares what they stand for—not what they do, but why they care.

These are simple moves. But they create buy-in because people see themselves in the answers. And they want to be more like the stories they are hearing. They want to be one of the people in the stories.

And when your team helps build the “why,” they don’t need to be reminded of it. They live it—because they made it.

Culture Is a Feeling, Not a File

The best company cultures aren’t designed. They’re discovered.

They live in hallway conversations, the tone of your emails, how you handle pressure, how you celebrate wins—and how you treat each other when you’re not winning.

So if you’re a leader thinking about how to shape culture as you grow:

Try less rollout. More invitation.

The PowerPoint can wait.

Start with a question. And let your people surprise you.

What I am about to share with you might be the most powerful tool I have found in leadership.

Like many of the best coaching tools that I know, I first learned of this one from Steve Chandler.

A large part of the leaders role is to get people to follow, without having to micromanage.

Delegation is an important part of this. But most people who delegate set themselves up for failure.

How?

One Leader’s Attempt to Delegate

One of my clients took particular pride in is willingness to delegate. To hire someone and let them run.

But he wasn’t getting the results that he wanted. And he came to me asking why.

He told me about his most recent hire and all the things that the person was not doing. How he was frustrated, but he didn’t want to tell the person how to do his job.

I asked him if he was familiar with the distinction between expectations and agreements.

Expectations and Agreements, Compared

In almost any area of our lives, when we have a frustration with someone, it is often because they have violated one of our expectations.

The issue is that most of the time, it is an expectation we have never communicated.

Remember that we are all living in separate, internal, worlds?

How would someone else know what we are thinking, unless we have told them?

Just seeing this is a major “aha” for most people.

But there’s more.

Know Your Own Expectations First

My client was hiring people expecting that they would know what to do in their role without much guidance from him. And they did, but they were doing different things than my client expected.

My client didn’t know that he had these expectations—they were not explicit for him—until the new person started doing his or her job differently.

So the first step for my client was observing and documenting these expectations.

Problem solved, right?

Not so fast.

Explicit Expectations are Still Expectations

Even if you get really clear on what you expect from someone, and you document it, you don’t actually have an agreement.

Agreements are based on conversation. Agreements result in buy-in from both parties.

Without buy-in, greater detail on expectations really doesn’t help.

What Are Agreements?

Agreements look something like this—

CEO: “Our investors expect sales to grow 50 percent this year, and I am counting on you and your team to deliver that.”

CRO: “I’d like to talk about that. We don’t have the bandwidth to build the pipeline and have all the meetings that would be necessary to close that kind of business.”

CEO: “Hmm. Tell me more. What would you need from me to be able to commit to that kind of increase?”

CRO: “I have some ideas. One would be another senior sales resource. Another would be…”

CEO: So if I were to give you those resources, you would be willing to commit to a 50 percent increase?”

CRO: “Absolutely.”

Now this is a much longer conversation, but you get the idea.

And sometimes the leader will require her team to stretch, without all the requested resources.

But the key thing is that everyone feels heard. Everyone feels included. And everyone is, to a much greater degree, committed to delivering a result.

This does not happen when the leader simply declares.

When possible, agreements are set in writing, with specific timing and deliverables, and both parties are involved in creating the document.

This is what means to “give ownership.” You AGREE both to the terms and the deliverables. And if you do it right, the person you have given the ownership to is as excited to take it on as you are.

Want to Know More?

Getting clear agreements is one of the things that will make the most dramatic different in your results as a leader.

If you’d like to dive deeper, I will be spending two days with a group of leaders in Denver on October 20-21.

The event is filling up fast. DM me if you are interested in hearing more.