Most people who do this work with me aren’t in trouble. They’re successful, capable, and quietly running a game they stopped believing in. What follows is how I think about that, so you can decide whether I’m the right person before we ever speak.
Where this comes from
I stopped performing for an audience of many
For a long stretch I looked like someone who had it figured out. Built a company. Ran a fifty million dollar business. Chaired a national board. From the outside, solved.
What was actually happening was quieter and less flattering. I’d worked out that I could get A-results on C-minus effort, and I ran that arrangement deliberately, because if you never fully try then nothing that goes wrong is really about you. That’s not laziness. It’s protection.
Undoing it meant looking at what I thought my worth depended on, which was not a comfortable few years.
What changed is who I was doing it for. An audience of many, whose approval I could never quite bank, became an audience of One. From there, discipline stopped being white-knuckle. It became a by-product of paying attention to something steadier than my own performance.
I’m still climbing. That’s precisely why I’m useful on the way up rather than shouting from a summit I haven’t reached.
What I hold to
Five things, and I’d rather be judged on them
Depth over performance. A good conversation that changes something beats a polished one that changes nothing. I’d rather be useful than impressive, and when those two pull apart I know which way I go.
Generosity first. Give before there’s a transaction, and often without one. It’s the long game, and it also happens to be the only version of this work I’d enjoy doing.
From the arena. I only offer what I’m actually living. I’ve signed the personal guarantee, made the payroll decision with my own money behind it, and sat in the chair when the plan wasn’t working. Everything I say comes from inside that, not from a book about it.
A stable few offers. I don’t launch things reactively or change how this looks to chase attention. If you come back in three years it will be recognisably the same business, doing recognisably the same work.
Some things outrank growth. My family, my health, my marriage and the company I still own all sit above this business in the order. That isn’t a disclaimer. It’s the reason the advice is any good.
The money
The pricing is the teaching
A small amount up front. At the end, you decide what it was worth and pay that. The same in every arm of the business.
I never bill hourly. An hourly rate rewards me for taking longer, and it turns the work into exactly the kind of scoreboard I’m trying to help people put down. It would be strange to run one while asking you to stop.
The up-front amount exists so I’m genuinely at peace not needing the rest. That matters more than it sounds. If I ever catch myself keeping score at the back end, the answer is to lower the front until the peace is real again.
For a smaller business it means something practical too. You can start without committing to a number you’d have to justify to a partner or a board.
How I work
Three things I’ll hold you to
Say the real thing. You can hire agreement anywhere. What’s scarce is someone who’ll tell you the thing your team won’t, and stay in the room afterwards.
Leave it working. If it falls over when I stop, it wasn’t finished. Every engagement is built to be handed back.
The person and the business. Companies don’t get stuck. People do. I’ve never separated the two and I’m not going to start.
The name
Why 3:23
It’s Colossians 3:23.
Whatever you do, or whatever your task may be, work from the soul, that is, put in your very best effort, as something done for the Lord.
Most translations say “work heartily”, which I’ve never liked. Heartily sounds like enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is easy to perform for as long as somebody’s watching. From the soul is a different instruction. It’s about where the work comes from, not how it looks while you’re doing it.
That’s the whole idea, and it’s why the standard doesn’t move depending on who’s in the room.
You don’t have to share my faith to do this work. You just have to be a little tired of the wrong scoreboard.
Checking
The question I ask myself every quarter
Is this still adding life? Not is it growing, not is it profitable. Is the person doing it more alive at the end of a week than at the start.
If the answer is no, the plan changes. That’s the whole point of building it this way, and it would be a strange thing to recommend to you and not do myself.