For most of a career, you get told your value is what you can do. Close the deal. Take the call at midnight. Have the answer by morning. This week I'm sitting with a different question, one that came out of a visit to a nursing home, not a boardroom. What's actually left of a person's value once the usefulness is gone? A short episode on the thing underneath the resume.

Tom Hagen was the model trusted advisor, until the story itself decided he wasn't tough enough for wartime.

In this episode of Corporate Thought, Marc builds the real argument behind the project: why willingness to speak up isn't the differentiator people think it is, why most lawyers fail at delivering hard truths, and what it actually takes to keep a leader's worst instincts at bay when the pressure is highest. Companion to Monday's letter, The Consigliere Thesis.

New episodes every Wednesday, letters every Monday at corporatethought.com.

After thirty years building other people's things, Marc asks the question that finds every operator eventually: what runs because of you? In this launch episode of the new season of Corporate Thought, Marc introduces the craft at the center of everything ahead, the wartime consigliere, and makes a covenant with listeners about what showing up every week actually means. New episodes every Wednesday. The companion letter runs every Monday at corporatethought.com.

Marc talks with Larry Harding of the HSP Group on developing his business supporting the international expansion of others.

This episode is part of the Entrepreneurial Mindset series. This week we explore creativity as an aspect of the successful entrepreneur's mindset and learn how Hank Ingram came up with the idea to age whiskey on the Mississippi River on barges.

Marc talks with Weston LaBar during Men's Health month to discuss physical and mental health and the importance of maintaining a healthy body and mind as an entrepreneur.

Hank Ingram of OH Ingram River Aged Whiskey comes back to the show to discuss passion.

Marc makes a brief detour to discuss the commencement speaker at his daughter's graduation and the topic of incivility in America

Marc is joined by Erin Coupe of Authentically EC to discuss passion as an element of the Entrepreneurial Mindset. Erin can be reached at erincoupe.com

Marc introduces the entrepreneurial mindset to the conversation