Latest posts
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Week 7, Post 2: What Scaling Actually Looks Like
My Mindful Money organizational chart has 25 positions. If I actually launched the company tomorrow with 25 employees, I would probably be out of business pretty quickly. That difference between what the company may eventually look like and what it actually needs at startup has probably been one of the more useful things for me…
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Week 7, Post 1: Investor Money Is Not Free Money
I probably look at outside investment differently because of my finance background. When I hear that a startup raised $5 million or $20 million, my first thought is not necessarily that the company is successful. My first question is usually: what did they give up for it, and what are they going to do with…
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Week 6, Post 2: Hiring Great People Is Only Half the Job
It is interesting how much attention companies give to recruiting. There are recruiters, job boards, interview processes, assessments, onboarding programs, and sometimes signing bonuses all designed to get the right person through the door. Then the person starts working and the effort can drop off pretty quickly. The conclusion of How to Hire A-Players focuses…
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Week 6, Post 1: The Hardest Hiring Question Might Be “When?”
I expected the personnel portion of this class to mostly be about deciding which employees a startup needs. What I found more difficult was deciding when the company actually needs them. Hiring too early is expensive. Hiring too late creates an entirely different set of problems. That became obvious when I was building the employee…
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Week 5, Post 2: What Can You Actually Teach Someone?
One thing I have noticed throughout my career is how specific some job descriptions become. Companies will ask for five years of experience, experience with a particular system, experience in their exact industry, knowledge of a certain reporting tool, and several other requirements. By the time you finish reading it, it almost sounds like they…
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Week 5, Post 1: Being the Founder Does Not Automatically Make You the Best CEO
The discussion of role dilemmas in The Founder’s Dilemmas brought up something I had not really considered before this class: creating the company and being the best person to run the company are two different things. Those roles probably overlap a lot at the beginning. Someone has to make decisions, find customers, manage the money,…
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Week 4, Post 2: Avoiding “Me Incorporated”
I laughed a little when I got to the “Me Incorporated” idea in How to Hire A-Players because I can absolutely see myself doing this. If I started Mindful Money tomorrow, there are a lot of things I would probably try to handle myself. Finance, forecasting, budgeting, reporting, some content, administration, strategy, and probably whatever…
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Week 4, Post 1: Is a Comfortable Team Always a Good Team?
If I were starting a business tomorrow and needed to hire three people, the easiest thing to do would probably be to call three people I already know and trust. There are some obvious advantages to that. We already know how each other works. Communication is easier. There is probably less friction early on. That…
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Building the Team Behind Mindful Money
When I first began developing Mindful Money, I mostly viewed it as a financial coaching business that I could operate on my own. The initial idea was fairly straightforward: help individuals and families understand their finances, establish practical goals, and make decisions with greater confidence. That vision still represents the purpose of Mindful Money, but…
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Your Network Is Part of Your Capital
Working in finance, when I hear the word capital my mind immediately goes to money. Cash, debt, equity, funding, etc. The discussion of social capital in The Founder’s Dilemmas made me think about capital a little differently. A founder can have a great idea and some money behind it and still be missing a lot…