The client wrote us a seven-paragraph note explaining their rationale and thanking us for our work, which is extremely classy - many people just stop communicating, making you wonder what happened.
There’s a possibility we can work on aspects of the project later, and this person will be a referral source for us, so all is not lost.
We did a great job on the things we could control. The client found a group with better contacts in the industry that they could leverage for the project's success, which is something I could not control.
Overall it was a great experience, and we’ll be that much better positioned for the next one. Onward!
Meshwell is the name of the second business I started, this one with a partner. This company delivers software deployment and process optimization services, focused primarily on accounting software called Keeper. We were trying to be the channel partner for Keeper, in part to mitigate my weakness in, and the expenses surrounding, marketing.
Speaking of people just stopping communicating 👻, we haven’t heard from our contact in roughly five weeks. They offered to send an email about Meshwell to a couple dozen of their prospective customers, and when I responded with language for the email (and followed up every week), we never heard from them again. 🤷♂️
If they come back, great. If not, we’ll solve around them.
We’ve had great feedback and learnings from our conversations with potential customers. We’ve sent out one proposal. We’re getting introduced to more and more people. Every conversation helps us refine the offer and understand what’s valuable to our potential customers.
Is it slower than I’d like? Sure. But I can also sense the progress that’s being made, and I can’t be too mad if we’re going in the right direction. I have a tendency to be impatient, and I’m sure that’s happening here. Always happy, never satisfied 🙂
In general Group 18 news, we received two referrals last week. And a previous client came back with new work.
Another previous project-based client came back and committed to small recurring consulting work.
In fact, if the big project we lost had closed, even with Anna and I working together, we would not have been able to fulfill all of this work! I’d have had to said no to something, or hired someone to help deliver.
I know not all of these inquiries will result in new business for us, but it’s a really positive sign that clients are referring Group 18 to their network. It shows lots of trust!
I hope you have a great week!
Kevin
A Quote
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The best way to expose invisible rules is to violate them. Go for a seeming moonshot you don’t think you’ll achieve. Ask for a raise you don’t think you deserve. Apply for a job you don’t think you’ll get.
I’m a Chiefs fan, but I found myself rooting for the Jaguars all night. Trevor Lawrence winning the game after flopping on the ground (twice!) was a really fun end to a great game.
This was an excellent book, describing Paul’s journey out of the traditional corporate career and into a professional life of his own design. If you’ve ever wondered about leaving your corporate gig, Paul’s book is for you. A lot resonated with me as someone who is only seven months onto the “pathless path.”
(please enjoy this 6️⃣ minute read)
Deep Dive on Focusing on What You Can Control
It’s a familiar scene. A leader is spread thin. They’re managing up. They’re managing across to their peers. They’re solving interpersonal dynamics on the team. They’ve got operational issues to deal with. Quality failures to address. Client and customer escalations.
They’re burned out, and understandably so.
But if you dive deeper, you’ll often find that they’re working on the wrong things.
Most leaders aren’t burned out because they’re doing too much, they’re burned out because they’re trying to control what they can’t.
The solution is to redirect your energy away from what you wish you could control, to what you actually control.
Two Buckets of Control
The idea to focus on what you can control comes to me by way of the Stoics. The Stoics considered that there were two types of things in life; those you can control, and those you can’t. Our energy should be spent on the former.
Things you can’t control: - Interest rates - Your client’s reactions - Your employee’s emotions - The weather - Other people
Things you can control: - Your investment positioning - The quality of your work - Who you hire - What you wear - Yourself
Further, the Stoics said that we don’t control our emotions. They arise unbidden. What we control is our behavior in response to those emotions.
As a leader you’ll experience many emotions, but the job is to remain conscious and control your behaviors.
Anger may arise, but you choose not to yell. Fear may arise, but you still act with courage. Sadness may arise, but you still move forward.
It may be obvious that we don’t control the weather, but where do leaders end up wasting energy on trying to control things they don’t control?
Frustrating the woman for months, it turns out the rain was just a coincidence.
Where Leaders Waste Energy
In order to retain your energy for what matters, watch out for when you’re trying to control outcomes, people, or the past.
Outcome Obsession We live in a complex, probabilistic world. While outcomes are the things you care about, it’s on the inputs that you control.
An Olympic athlete wants to win a gold medal. They only control their preparedness.
The other athletes, the course conditions, and luck are outside their control.
Focusing on the results rather than the inputs leads to anxiety and poor decisions.
I’ve had expensive and time-consuming projects where a business leader wants to improve the accuracy of forecasts. They’re arguing to put more resources on this problem. They’re arguing to change the analytics methodology. All in attempt to get decimal-level precision on something that’s inherently uncertain. Meanwhile, they’re doing nothing to improve their resilience to volatile load.
Leaders spend weeks re-forecasting numbers they can’t control instead of improving the processes that create them!
Stop obsessing over the outcomes themselves. Obsess over the inputs that drive the outcomes.
"I’ve witnessed far too many people harm their motivation and their performance by defining success in the wrong way. They’ll focus solely on outcomes, neglecting to realize that what place they finish in or what their grade is on a presentation is largely out of their control. Shifting the focus toward process-oriented goals, such as the effort you can put forth, helps remedy these situations."
Control Instead of Influence The second big energy waster for leaders is in trying to control their people. “If I’m accountable for the outcome, I just need everyone to do exactly as I want, when I want it, with whom I want, saying exactly what I’d say.”
It’s the Rescuer myth from the Drama Triangle: “I’m okay...and you’d be okay if you’d listen to me!”
Thinking this way, leaders tend to tighten their grip. They create move oversight. They add more process steps. More meetings. Like a puppeteer, they tie strings to their marionettes and get them to dance.
Try to control people and you'll create a mess.
These leaders try to control the outcome through micromanaging their people. This creates fatigue, resentment, and slower learning in the team - and also creates fatigue in the leader!
When this instinct arises, instead of control, think about influencing through context. Instead of telling people what to do, define what good looks like and why it matters.
This unlocks autonomy, creativity, and speed - and lets you spend energy on direction, not supervision.
"...we all need to remind ourselves, whether we're the boss or not, that no one can actually change another person. We can't force people to change how they think and act, even when we have formal responsibility over them – let alone when we don't. We can only influence them."
Emotional Resistance A deal falls through, a teammate underperforms, or an exec makes a call you disagree with - and your energy shifts to resentment, rumination, or ego defense.
You replay conversations. You vent. You stew. You mentally litigate the unfairness of it all.
You’re resisting what is because it doesn’t align with what you think it should be.
You’re burning cognitive and emotional fuel on what can’t be changed. The past is the past, and no amount of rumination will enable you to go back in time and change the outcome.
Yes, make space for constructive learning, but if you find yourself repeating the same thoughts over and over again, you’re wasting energy going in circles and it’s time to get back on track.
Accept what is. Redirect your energy into figuring out the appropriate action given what is.
This isn’t apathy, it’s efficiency. You reclaim the energy otherwise spent on indignation and put it into adaptation.
"Complaining does nothing to change the present situation you find yourself in, though. Thinking about how it wasn’t your fault doesn’t make anything better. The consequences are still yours to deal with. Always focus on the next move, the one that gets you closer or further from where you want to go."
The solution to all of this is focus on what you control. And if you want bigger outcomes, focus your energy on areas of leverage: architecture, influence, and learning.
Leaders are organizational system architects. Design poor systems, and even with great people, bad outcomes will follow. Design the right systems, and good outcomes will follow, even with average people. Put your energy into deploying an effective system of work.
Instead of a top-down command-and-control methodology, influence your organization through context. Put your energy into being an effective communicator. Establish good values, allow a positive culture to flourish, and direct your team to the problems that need to be solved. Don’t control how they’re solved, and don’t try to get your team to be a mirror image of you.
Learn how to "get right," don't expend energy trying to "be right."
When something doesn’t go the way you expect, put your energy into figuring out why. What beliefs do you need to adjust? Do you need different behaviors? Do you have blind spots? Learn quickly, and try to improve your outcomes next time.
Bringing it All Together
Leadership isn’t about controlling everything, it’s about directing energy where it compounds.
When you obsess over outcomes, you fight probability. When you try to control people, you suffocate initiative. When you resist reality, you drain yourself emotionally.
The Stoics had it right: Your job isn’t to control the world - it’s to control yourself, your focus, and your effort.
Great leaders conserve energy by putting it where it matters most:
On the inputs they can improve.
On the people they can influence.
On the systems they can design.
And on the lessons they can learn.
Everything else is noise.
Let go of what you can’t control, and you’ll find you have more power, and energy, than ever.
"You don’t need to control everything that’s happening. You don’t need to push, struggle, fight, force things or try to manipulate people in order to make things the way you want them to be. It’s exhausting and unnecessary."
Do an audit of your stress this week. Write down every worry, every time suck, every source of stress.
What elements are out of your control? Ignore these. What elements can you control? Focus on these.
Use the approaches described today. Can you improve the system of work? Can you provide more context to your people? Can you improve your skills?
Every minute spent fighting what you can’t control is a minute stolen from what you can. Stop exhausting yourself on the wrong things. Focus where your effort compounds.
