Inner Circle starts Oct 1. A small group of leaders will learn how to fuel grit and strategy with joy so their teams do not just deliver, they love the climb. Only a couple seats left. If you have been on the fence, this is your moment. DM me to join.

I learned poker before I was 10. Sitting next to my dad, uncles around the table, watching them bet, bluff, fold. It looked like luck. It wasn’t. Poker is discipline. It’s knowing when to play small, when to fold fast, and when to raise big on a strong hand. I learned:

The Execution Trap: When Activity Masquerades as Progress You lock teams into rigid, long-term plans that collapse the moment the market shifts. You chase the "perfect launch" instead of shipping small, learning fast, and adapting. A 🧵 (1/4):

46% of workers sit through 3+ meetings a day. That is 11+ hours a week lost. It kills energy. It kills joy. In Inner Circle I show leaders how to reclaim that time with PACE: async updates, focused meetings, more joy. We start Oct 1. Seats almost gone. Reply if you want in.

The Measurement Trap: When Data Lies You celebrate downloads, signups, and dashboards full of green arrows while ignoring whether customers actually get value. You spend 6-12 months building, then discover the market doesn't care. A 🧵 (1/4):

The Analysis Trap: When Perfect Planning Kills Progress You spend months writing the "perfect" requirements document, only to watch it become obsolete the moment customers touch the product. A 🧵: (1/4)

Most product leaders are trapped. You battle bottlenecks instead of building acceleration. You manage stakeholder resistance instead of building momentum. Start building breakthrough systems instead. Subscribe to the Beyond Incremental Newsletter: leadershipadvantage.xyz/

The Performance Paradox: Your best intentions are sabotaging breakthrough results. You need to innovate faster, but you're trapped in systems that demand certainty for breakthrough decisions. What performance trap is quietly killing your breakthroughs?

7 Subtle Ways High-Performing Teams Accidentally Kill Breakthroughs 1. The longer you plan, the less relevant your plan becomes. 2. The more stakeholders you add, the less bold your ideas get. 3. Vanity metrics give the illusion of progress.

I built my career on grit and strategy. But real breakthroughs came when joy was in the room and my team enjoyed the climb. That is why I created Inner Circle: coaching for leaders who want teams that thrive while they deliver. We kick off Oct 1. Limited spots. DM me to join.

If you can win Zoom Bingo before lunch, imagine what your team could do with half those hours back. Most meetings should be an email. But the real fix is finding the right operating rhythm. If Zoom Bingo feels too easy, your rhythm needs work. Where would you start fixing it?

I built my career on grit and strategy. But the biggest breakthroughs came when joy was in the room, and my team actually enjoyed the climb. Early in my leadership journey, I championed 3 principles: • Improve Effort to Effect Ratio • Bring Ideas to Reality • Have Fun A 🧵

The metrics that matter for competitive advantage: Leading • Costly behavior shifts • Exclusive partnerships • Compounding data Lagging • Market share • Win rates • User growth The strongest companies measure what competitors can’t copy, not what they can count.

🔥 Hot take: Being the go-to person is overrated. If you’re indispensable, you’re not promotable. Leaders don’t get noticed for doing everything. They get noticed for setting direction. I had to learn this the hard way. A 🧵 (1/8)

Are starter packs still a thing? I am getting new followers, but engagement seems way down for me here. Is it just me?

“What went right?” feels safe. Safe is why most teams never break through. Feature factories stop there. Breakthrough teams go deeper. They ask:

Being indispensable feels flattering. But when every decision runs through you, you have not scaled leadership. You have scaled dependency. The Context Keeper Trap looks like value, but it creates fragility. This week, I share the three shifts to escape it.

The Context Keeper Trap Being indispensable feels like leadership. In reality, it makes you the bottleneck. That’s the Context Keeper Trap.

Urgency is Red Bull. Focus is oxygen 🤔

Urgency is "do it now!" Where Focus is "do it first, and DON'T do these other less important things." As leaders, creating the space for what NOT to do is just as important (and sometimes more useful) than saying what to do.

40% of AI answers come from Reddit. You wouldn’t run your strategy off a Reddit thread, but thousands of leaders do it daily by trusting AI blindly. AI is powerful. But not an oracle. Use it. Just don’t outsource your judgment.

As a product leader, minimize risk by asking questions, running tests, and deciding up front what you'll do with the data. Stakeholders have theories and often want others to simply execute on them. Balancing requests by deciding what bets to take and experiments to run TOGETHER builds consensus.

Leadership isn’t about titles. It’s about the ripple effect you create. Every time you show up with clarity, someone else gets permission to do the same. Start amplifying your impact (free 7-day course): leadershipadvantage.xyz/amplifyyouri...

This is my first take on creating a diagram for my Beyond Incremental framework. I feel like it might be too overwhelming as a diagram. What do you think? #buildinpublic

The best networking hack isn’t pitching. It’s caring. Here’s why ↓

High-performing teams master 3 areas: • Framing progress as a series of bets • Measuring the impact of each bet, so decisions are driven by evidence, not opinion • Building an operating rhythm where these cycles happen naturally day after day, week after week.

The old way: Chase the metrics. Court the market. Collect the praise. The new way: Build the thing you’d drag through mud, over walls, and past every “no” you hear.

Which is the bigger risk to your career? A) Burning the candle at both ends B) Losing the fire inside

Innovation sparks with what’s just beyond the reach of your fingertips. What would make your challenges disappear if it existed? This insight doesn’t happen in brainstorming sessions. It happens quietly, when your mind wanders and contemplates, “what if?”

The moment I realized I was already a leader, I wasn't managing anyone. I was the developer who helped struggling teammates debug their code. The one who spoke up when project timelines were unrealistic. The person others came to for advice during company changes. More below ↓

A title is borrowed power. The 3 Cs are the real thing.

When someone makes a statement you 100% disagree with, Chances are you are not open to learning from their point of view. When you feel that way, don’t respond. Listen with curiosity instead. You might be surprised what you learn.

Your title gets you in the room. Natural authority makes people listen. Tomorrow’s newsletter breaks it down. Subscribe now: leadershipadvantage.xyz

What would you build even if no one paid you? This question changed everything for me. Seven years after founding Plum Analytics, a traumatic brain injury forced me to step away from everything I'd built. I couldn't lead, couldn't think straight, couldn't trust my brain to do the simplest tasks.

Real growth started when I stopped trying to do everything. Every task I removed gave me back speed, focus, and sanity. Subtraction isn’t a weakness. It’s a strategy. -------------------------------- ♻️ Found this useful? Repost so others can too 📌 Save for the days you forget to subtract

When you resist the urge to multitask, and fully commit to: → one thought at a time → one task at a time. Everything simplifies and amplifies.

My Friday afternoon high: Pressing the button to schedule my newsletter for 8 am Saturday morning.

Most product leaders get stuck optimizing within constraints. But breakthrough leaders transform the constraints themselves.

This year, I've been working on a new book about Breakthrough Leadership. I've decided to share more as it progresses to get feedback as I write. Time to #buildinpublic !!!

The brutal truth: → Features get forgotten → Movements get built What problem are you so obsessed with, you’d bet your career on it? 👇 Drop it in the comments. Let’s build conviction together.

You don’t need more discipline. You need a reason worth showing up for. Build a simple cadence: → Each week, set an intention around one problem you want to solve → Each month, reflect on what energized you most and choose your next focus That’s how you build conviction and protect it.

Most entrepreneurs start companies because they see market opportunities. I learned that category creators connect what they personally need the world to have with what customers actually need. Read the full story in my latest newsletter ↓ leadershipadvantage.xyz/posts/what-c...

I currently publish my newsletter on Kit, and am thinking of also publishing it on substack. Any advice? What email platforms are you using / seeing growth on?

3 ways to fix broken rhythm: 🔥 Daily standups → async status + blocker focus 🔥 Block 90min of deep work windows daily 🔥 Monthly reviews → focus on patterns, not reporting Pick one. Start there.

2-week sprints aren't just for delivery. Here's the strategic power most product leaders miss: - Engineers: identify dependencies before they're blockers - Product managers: share fresh user feedback - Designers: reveal insights from recent research

Your team's mental energy peaks in the morning and crashes after lunch. Batch meetings into a 2-hour window. Protect peak energy for challenging work.

The PACE Framework for team rhythm: P - Purposeful outcomes A - Async-first communication C - Customer connected E - Escalation boundaries Transform scattered activity into coordinated momentum.

24% of developers think improving collaboration would improve their job satisfaction. The best leaders understand: scaling only works when your team has the right operating rhythm.

Your team feels chaotic even when you're shipping. The problem isn't time management. It's rhythm management. You need better operating rhythm, not more hours.

My organizational task: • revamping how I store my files on my laptop I have a huge mess, and am shaking my head at how it ever got this bad! My client-files are nice and neat. Everything else? Ugh Help!!!