ADHD Entrepreneur Accelerator

One of the Holy Grail's of business life is a SaaS business where customers sign up and you get high margin revenue every month like clockwork, with a minimum of customer support. Investors love this model. Founders crave it. But I find that getting too attached to a business model can get in the way of bigger growth. Why is that? Because customers don't really care about your business mod...

After nearly 3 weeks fighting Covid, my voice is good enough to scratch through a new episode of the Rocket Ship Founder Podcast. What's on my mind this week? Navigating pivots. Pivots enter the picture when your business isn't getting the traction you'd like in spite of great effort over time from you and your team. There are two main questions to answer when contemplating pivots: Wha...

One of the hardest challenges I have experienced and seen in business is not being able to count on sales month to month or quarter to quarter. Up months and quarters followed by down quarters and months make it nearly impossible to plan and execute well.  Do you hire for the surge in business only to have to reduce staff when things get thin again? How often do you adjust your budget? What can yo...

What do you do when your new offering isn't taking off like you hoped? Many of the stories you read about a business taking off will spin a nice, tidy yarn about how someone saw a pain, started a waitlist, got huge signups, therefore validated their market and went on to glory, wealth and fame. Easy, peasy, right? But the reality is that it's usually way more messy. Usually it goes this wa...

"It's the mental game of being a Founder that's really surprised me." This week I had a call with a Founder who took advantage of my offer of a free Breakthrough Session for anyone who takes my Founder Type Quiz. Like many Founders, this person has tremendous knowledge and experience in their category. But this is their first go at sitting in the Founder seat. And it's differ...

This may sound strange. In my conversations with prospective coaching clients, my goal is to not to sell. It's to diagnose. On one level the conversation is about understanding WHERE they are in their business, where they want to go and what's in the way of them getting there. But there's almost always another level. I call it the Bigger Game level. That is more about HOW they are curr...

Over the past week I've been on-boarding the first group of Founders into my 2X Accelerator Community. It's an amazing group of who are bought into creating a ruthlessly simple business that can consistently accelerate - without sacrificing their sanity. For every new member of 2X, I do a personal Gameplan session to understand where they are - and set their plan for going through the key...

This week I had a breakthrough session with a Founder who is in the very early stages of launching his business. The big challenge is finding product market fit. This Founder is a classic Type E - Expert Craftsperson. Huge domain expertise in his field garnered from years of experience working inside some of the biggest companies in the space. This founder literally knows the game from the inside...

I only got diagnosed with adult ADHD last year at 55 years old, but I’ve been living with it for a long time. The good news is now that I know what I’m dealing with, I can work with it. I recognize my mind's little quirks. Time blindness. Emotional dysregulation. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Limited reserves of executive function. Last year, I identified my ADHD as both the biggest catalys...

We weren't even half way through yesterday's live workshop, called "Your Secret System" when one of the participants remarked, "Wow! I've just created three social posts based on what we've just learned! This makes so much sense." 'Time to wow!' for this workshop: ~30 minutes. Let's talk about "time to wow!" The pendulum has swung on the cu...

A good moat is one of the most desirable things to create for your business. It's also one of the most challenging things to do. Some classic moats are: - Network effects, e.g. social media sites like Facebook or marketplaces like eBay - Hardware ecosystems like Apple - Long term contracts - Steep switching costs/hassle (Salesforce, payroll companies) - Patent protection (assuming you have res...

Happy New Year! Coming back from the holiday break this week, I was eager to come roaring out of the gate and start crushing 2024. Then something interesting happened. Instead going super fast, I've slowed it way down. Which is, y'know, the opposite of going fast. The reason for this is that like many businesses I coach, my own business is at an inflection point. It's been a super inte...

As we hit the midway point in December, we experience a dual mentality. We want to get the most out of what remains in Q4. But we also want to lay the groundwork for the coming new year. As this is my last new Podcast episode for 2023 (I will be off the final two weeks of December), I thought it only appropriate to walk through steps in preloading the new year so you come out of the gate running....

Yesterday, I was leading my Quiz Daily Lead Machine Workshop. I walked a great group of Founders through my own quiz lead funnel. I showed my LinkedIn setup, how my quiz software creates personalized PDF reports and how it's all integrated into my CRM. Then I walked everyone through a 5-step quiz design process. As we worked through the 5-steps, one of the participants asked, "Out of ever...

You have a secret system in your business. You probably don't even realize it's there. But it's driving your product design and your unique way of solving your customers' problems. You might be thinking: "But, Steve! I've founded and created my whole business. I am the expert on my product and/or service I know everything about it! How can I possibly have a secret system t...

With this week's Rocket Ship Founder Podcast Episode falling on the US Thanksgiving holiday, it's only natural that I dedicate it to gratitude and giving thanks. According to Harvard Health, "positive psychology research has shown gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, impro...

According to a review by Venture Intelligence in 2022, only 29% of seed-funded startups raise Series A capital. I have a speciality in coaching Seed to Series A Founders. That means that by Venture Intelligence's estimates, the odds are 71% of my clients's businesses may fail to get to the next round of funding. To be clear, not getting to Series A is not equivalent failure. But the Founde...

Over the past week, I helped my Founder Clients to: Navigate challenging Co-Founder issues Nail sales processes and proposals Develop core messaging and positioning Strategize next steps in fundraising Identify and rank options for extending runway  Deal with team communication and performance Build out an company OS for Seed Stage Manage their board and investors effectively On one level, these c...

This week I launched a campaign for my "How To Create Stupid Offers" workshop. Every time I launch an offer like this, I have two feelings: I'm super excited by the content, to teach it and see Founders get those light bulb moments - where they suddenly get unstuck and excited for moving their business forward. I've got a pit in my stomach as I'm about to hit send on an email...

"I’m usually pretty good at being optimistic, driven, and focused. Then the really big issues seem like a giant monster when you stop, turn around, and face them. At that point I wonder if what I'm doing really means anything?" Over the past week I had both a client and a fellow coach share how much the heavy news coming out of Israel and Gaza this past week was weighing on them. The...

"Sometimes if feels like things are moving too slowly." Many of the people who have been in my Founder Family know, that over the past four years, my now 21-year old has been suffering through a serious, debilitating health crisis. After two years of searching for the right diagnosis, we got the diagnosis of a Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) Leak. In 2021, We had two temporarily successful p...

"Everything feels like it's a mess." This was the first words out of one of my Founder client session this week. He described how he felt like they were trying to do too much, and serve too many different customer types. Even the team was mentioning that things felt messy. Those who have had sessions with me, know that as my backdrop I have a bookshelf with a few books that I intenti...

Hi {{contact.first_name}}, My path to being a wise Founder Coach has been paved with mistakes. Let me list just a few with just my first startup: Hired an expensive VP of Sales way too early and ended up laying them off within months Didn't understand that I was building my business on customers that bought intermittently and required highly customized solutions Waited too long to fire a a poi...

I'm back with this week's podcast episode after a little bout of COVID last week. All better now, so let's get to it! One of the toughest things about the Founder journey is the overwhelm. There's so much coming at you all the time. I was talking with a Founder this week who has been notified that their biggest customer is undergoing a serious re-organization. Their champion is lea...

Last week, I talked about the Founder journey being one of navigating crises, setbacks and fiascos, with some good wins thrown in to keep you going. This week I want to address the inevitable companions to the journey: doubt and exhaustion. These two words popped up a few times this week during my sessions with Founders. I empathized in this moment as, despite a lot of effort and expense, our myst...