When a leader talks about “hitting a wall” in terms of a challenge, it’s generally taken that the wall is their stopping point where they can’t do anything else. They’re aggravated and feel helpless by this immovable obstacle that is preventing them from accomplishing all that they planned to. That’s because they’re acting like a battering ram when they may want to observe how a Roomba®️ robot vacuum responds to a wall in front of it. See, there’s no denying that the batterin

Kim Feil CEO, bizHive, CMO & CSO Aspire Healthy Energy Drinks and Board Member For 30 years, Kim Feil has been a corporate executive at manufacturing, retail and consulting companies. Today, as the CEO and founding partner of bizHive, she leads a company that is connecting small businesses seeking the essential support to grow with large enterprises that have great solutions to offer. At bizHive, these small businesses can get answers on how, why and what they should do as we

There’s a story we tell during our Leading With Courage Academy workshops of the negative correlation between how a person ascends through an organization to the level of honest communication that person receives. In this instance, a person we’ll call George becomes the President of a major division within his company. It’s a huge promotion for him and naturally, he’s feeling like a million bucks. As George admires his fancy new office and title that goes with it, a colleague

In this, the second part of our two-part Leading With Courage℠ conversation with Paul Darley, the CEO of W.S. Darley & Co., we dive into how the 109-year-old manufacturer of firefighting and emergency equipment continues to bring aboard new generations successfully, while minimizing family friction along the way. We also examine why it’s so important for leaders who seek long-term credibility to communicate the bad news in a transparent fashion to the organization just as muc

As the head of a 109-year-old company, Paul Darley strives to build upon the proud heritage of W.S. Darley & Co. (now four generations of Darleys) by manu- facturing a superior line of firefighting, emergency and special operations equipment. Darley recently took some time for a Leading With Courage℠ conversation with us that highlights how his company has sustained a culture of success for over a century while forging strong relationships with firefighting organizations arou

A lot of companies talk about having a recipe for a winning culture but foodjunky.com Co-Founder and CEO Travis Johnson has a cookbook for it in his environment. In the third post of our 3-part Leading With Courage℠ conversation, Johnson speaks to scaling a culture successfully, including why making your job obsolete is nothing to be afraid of – in fact, at foodjunky.com, it could be the best thing that ever happened to you. Leading With Courage℠ Academy: Travis, one of the b

In Part I of our Leading With Courage℠ conversation with foodjunky.com Co-Founder and CEO Travis Johnson shared how his concierge service makes ordering food from local restaurants easy for individuals, groups, and catering. He also opened up about the de-railers to effective leadership that he tripped over in his first few years in business. From those experiences, he’s become someone who is never afraid to ask the customer, “What do you think?” We continue the conversation

foodjunky.com is a concierge service that makes ordering food from your local restaurants easy for individuals, groups, and catering. At the helm of this online platform is Travis Johnson, whose mission is to alleviate the headache of ordering lunch and instead deliver a whole lot of happiness to customers. Leading With Courage Academy: foodjunky.com has been in business since 2011, but you had the idea for the company a lot farther back from that date, didn’t you? Travis Joh

In the first post from our conversation with Brian Scudamore, Founder and CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and O2E Brands, we talked about how he built a nearly $300 million business but not before he had to let all 11 of his first employees go because they didn’t fit with his vision of customer service. After that reboot, his business fundamentally changed with hiring happy people that he liked, hiring on attitude and training for skill. As a follow-up, we talked to Brian about how he

“It’s All About People.” This was the motto that Brian Scudamore adopted for his company, ironically, after he let the entire team go in the name of revamping his culture under a clarified vision. From this critical turning point to bring about a fundamental change in the way he hired, Scudamore transformed a $1 million company into 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, a thriving junk removal business that operates in hundreds of locations across Canada, the U.S. and Australia. As part of our