Elizabeth Greenfield reframed it for me: "everything internally and externally is giving us feedback on where we truly want to go." What looks like friction in your practice might really be a signal. Want to work through yours? https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min …more
Founder Mindset
Saeed Amidi's one filter for founders: what's your Plan B? A good one, he passes. Coaches and consultants still half-in on your practice... half-in is a strategy for half-results. Hear him: https://inspiringfounders.com …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
"I didn't know how to run a business."
Liz Greenfield, after 25 years as a nurse, in her first stretch out on her own.
She's honest on this episode about all of it. The morning she rolled out of bed and realized the paycheck had stopped. Undervaluing herself. A speaking coach telling her, point blank, that she wasn't ready.
None of that is a nursing problem. It's the half nobody teaches you inside an organization.
Watch the episode:
https://youtu.be/vXDMfaJVcNQ
Like it, comment, subscribe... it genuinely helps the show reach the next person who needs to hear it. All episodes at inspiringfounders.com
#IndependentConsultant #GoingIndependent #Positioning #CoachingBusiness …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Who have you actually watched build the startup you're trying to build?
Saeed Amidi makes a point about Stanford I keep coming back to: the reason so many students there start companies is that they grow up seeing it as normal. A graduate feels they could just as easily go build the next Google as go get a job at one. He points to the poster children — Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Bill Hewlett, Dave Packard. When you can see people like you doing it, building becomes something you can picture yourself doing.
I launched the startup incubator at San José State, where I still teach. Same engineering talent as anywhere. Far fewer startups. The gap isn't intellect... it's whether or not students believe they can do it.
The same dynamic runs for anyone starting a business. What you believe you can attempt is shaped by the peers you can watch attempting it. That's why community isn't just encouragement — it's the infrastructure your belief runs on.
Watch Saeed make the point himself here: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA
Who in your peer group has already made this leap? And if you can't name anyone... is that why you're hesitating?
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Consulting …more
This post has video.
Watch it on the channel.
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
You think the thing holding your practice back is that you don't have enough. Enough budget. Enough network. Enough runway to survive a mistake.
I've told myself that story too.
Then I listened to Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play. Early on, he flew to Jeddah with a borrowed suit, his father's credit card, and money for exactly one trip. No safety net. No plan to come home empty-handed. In his words: "I'm not coming back till I sell something."
Having no Plan B didn't slow him down. It focused him. He stretched that one trip into 45 days and closed his first two deals.
Comfort never makes you that sharp. Constraint does.
Watch Saeed tell it himself here: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA. It's the clearest case I've seen for why fewer resources can make you more resourceful, not less.
What constraint have you been treating as an obstacle that might actually be your edge?
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
I sat across from Saeed Amidi in San Jose, a live audience in the room with us.
Saeed founded Plug and Play Tech Centers. He also, almost as an aside, runs a plastics and bottled-water company that does a billion dollars a year... which he still calls his "day job."
He told us about a building on University Avenue in Palo Alto. His first tenant there was Peter Thiel. His third was Andy Rubin. And in that same stretch, Larry and Sergey were building Google. He calls it the lucky building, the one that got him into PayPal.
Now Plug and Play invests in about 100 startups a year. He's building an AI Center of Excellence in San Jose. He thinks the AI revolution is 10 to 20 times bigger than mobile... and still only the tip of the iceberg.
But the part that stayed with me wasn't the numbers.
It was when he talked about pressure as a prerequisite. And why he won't back a founder who has a Plan B.
Then he closed with a line, and the whole room lit up:
"You can either get a job at Google, or BUILD Google!"
Full conversation with Saeed is on the Inspiring Founders Podcast. Watch it on YouTube, or listen on Spotify.
#IndependentConsultant #GoingIndependent #Coaching #ThoughtLeadership …more
Today's post is 263 words, a 2-minute read.
Sources: Sahil Bloom — "9 Harsh Truths Nobody Told You About Success"
https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/9-harsh-truths-nobody-told-you-about-success
1 big thing: What just changed in how B2B marketers should think about success
The market for telling people what they want to hear is much larger than the market for telling people what they need to hear. That fact explains most of what you see in B2B marketing — and most of what holds marketers back.
Why it matters: The mental models that built your career to this point are not always the ones that take you further. Recognizing which ones to keep and which ones to replace is a leadership skill most people never develop deliberately.
Driving the news:
Sahil Bloom's latest piece identifies nine patterns common among people who plateau — not because they lack intelligence, but because they lack adaptability and self-awareness.
→ The most counterintuitive finding: success is a more powerful trap than failure. Once you reach a local maximum, the comfort of that position makes the descent required to reach the next peak feel unbearable.
→ With AI flattening the intelligence playing field, courage — the bias for action — is the differentiator that cannot be replicated
Zoom in:
The four principles Bloom identifies for consistent success: create value, finish things, be easy to work with, do uncomfortable things sooner.
→ In B2B marketing, that last one does the most damage when ignored. The delayed conversation, the avoided pivot, the campaign you know isn't working — the bill always comes due.
Yes, but: Simple principles and easy execution are not the same thing. The bar is low. Clearing it consistently is what most people fail to do.
Be smart: Audit your current work against those four principles. Where are you performing? Where are you hiding?
The bottom line: Intelligence is abundant. Courage is not. Act accordingly.
https://www.sahilbloom.com/newsletter/9-harsh-truths-nobody-told-you-about-success
#Leadership #B2BMarketing …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Smashburger with Marcelo today!
Years of friendship, and somehow every story we tell starts the same way... a motorcycle.
The crazy ones. The stupid ones. The ones we probably shouldn't repeat in public.
And today there's a new one for the pile — Marcelo completed the Baja rally and came home with the King of the Cactus award. Congratulations, my friend!
Here's the thing about Baja. You can't talk your way through it. You can't negotiate with the desert. You prepare, you show up, and then you keep going long after the fun part ends. (Marcelo was the only one to finish - out of 9 riders.)
I’ve taken my moto all the way to the tip of Baja and it’s not easy.
I've watched Marcelo do exactly that for years. And it's the same thing I keep seeing in the people I work with now — coaches, consultants, folks who walked away from a title to build a practice of their own.
You don't get to control the outcome. You get to control whether you prepare, whether you show up, and whether you finish.
Marcelo finished. King of the Cactus… and he wouldn’t even let me buy the burgers.
Who's the friend who taught you what finishing actually looks like?
#GoingIndependent #Solopreneur #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #PersonalBrand …more
K
Kent Kaufman
Organization focused on AI leadership and innovation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, based in Silicon Valley
POV: Stop managing workers. Start augmenting them.
The biggest AI leadership failure I see isn't a bad model choice or a stalled pilot. It's treating AI as a tooling decision when it's really a mindset shift.
Here's the pattern. An organization buys the licenses, bolts AI onto its existing management paradigm, and waits for the productivity curve to bend. It doesn't. Six months later the tools are impressive and the results are flat — and everyone blames the technology.
The technology isn't the problem. The paradigm is.
Old management thinking is built around headcount: how many people do we need to get this done? AI-era thinking is built around augmentation: how much more can each person do when the work is amplified? Those are two different questions, and they lead to two different organizations.
That shift doesn't start with the workforce. It starts with leadership. Leaders set the ceiling on how much value AI can create — through the questions they ask, the workflows they're willing to rethink, and whether they see their people as costs to manage or capabilities to expand.
Winning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a leadership challenge before it's a technology one. That's the core argument I make in AI L4IR: Leadership and the 4th Industrial Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/AI-L4ir-Leadership-Industrial-Revolution/dp/B0FP2XVX21/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0
For your team, what's the hardest part of this shift — the mindset, the workflows, or the org design underneath?
Follow along this month as I dig into each one.
#AILeadership #FourthIndustrialRevolution #FutureOfWork #AIL4IR …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Everyone wants to look like the professional, but the truth is you just have to practice until you don’t suck anymore …more
This post has video.
Watch it on the channel.
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Everyone going independent gets the same advice: own your authority. Be the expert. Command the room. The most convincing builder I listened to this month argued the opposite.
Tom Shen made the point in Episode 7 of the Inspiring Founders podcast, and it's stuck with me since. His exact words: "I believe that the heart of an entrepreneur starts with humbleness."
Read that as weakness and you'll miss it. It's not self-doubt. It's positioning yourself to learn from everyone around you. Tom's version: when you're the dumbest person in the room, you absorb the most. Humility doesn't get celebrated in entrepreneurial circles — not because it's soft, but because it doesn't look like winning. It just happens to be what makes winning possible.
I think this lands hardest for the people I work with — coaches, consultants, and advisors who spent a career somewhere the authority came with the title. When you go out on your own, that authority doesn't come with you. The learning posture does. The faster you trade "I already know this" for "show me what I'm missing," the faster the transition goes.
Ego tells you to have the answers. Humility gets you the ones that actually matter.
What's one belief about going independent that humility has forced you to revisit?
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand #ThoughtLeadership …more
M
Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
A short one to close the month.
I've spent July writing about positioning, focus, and what it takes to turn what you know into a business that wins clients. So here's the question I'd actually like you to answer:
What did you have to unlearn when you went out on your own?
The habits that made you great inside an organization — trusting the work to find you, staying modest about your wins, letting the company's brand do the talking — are often the exact habits that stall an independent practice.
I'll go first: I had to unlearn building quietly. For years my work spoke through companies and products. On my own, invisible good work is just invisible.
Your turn. What did you have to unlearn — or what are you still unlearning? I'll read and reply to every answer.
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand …more
Channel names and logos are trademarks of their respective owners.