Having key performance indicators (KPIs) won’t just improve your profit margins, it will improve your team.

First and foremost - people join communities to achieve a goal. That goal may be their career, or sharing a hobby, or launching a business. But they want success. After that, there are 2 more necessary ingredients for an epic culture.

“He who is communicating is connecting.” What kind of communicator are you? Do you cut people off or talk over them?

Every business has unavoidable parts - marketing/sales, operations, and finance. You must understand each of them before you can hire them out so that you can eventually be an effective leader. But getting there can be a painful and frustrating journey.

Stop forcing relationships to work - sales, marketing, clients… friends! Pay attention to the non-verbal clues and ditch the dead weight. When you find YOUR people, that’s when the magic happens, but you’ve got to make space for them.

There is a time in a place to leverage your energy to get things done, and a time, and a place to leverage your intelligence and the intelligence of the people around you to get things done. Which one do you need right now?

One of my favorite quotes is by Lao Tzu and goes, “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” I will take it one step further and say that before you can even watch your thoughts, you need to watch your emotions.

Don’t insult your people by blowing smoke. They will respect you more for speaking true. The key is to reframe the perspective in a way that challenges them to still excel even in tough situations.

Our job as leaders is to see around corners, anticipate what’s coming in the future, and adapt, to receive it in the best way possible.