Bald tires & blowouts: how you can unwittingly sabotage the traction you’ve worked so hard to achieve

Who hasn’t done this? You’re speaking with someone – perhaps a potential customer at a networking event – and they ask what you do. They are intrigued by your elevator pitch and follow up with, “So exactly how do you do that?”

The single most embarrassing lesson I’ve ever learned in my whole business life came when I found out my employees had nicknamed me “Hurricane Ken”.

It happens to all successful entrepreneurs: your business gets to be more than you can handle. When you first start a company, you have no alternative but to be involved in every aspect – planning, sales, operations, finance, personnel – because you’re working either alone or with a very small team of collaborators. You work hard, and the business grows to the point where being involved in everything is a job and a half. You are overworked, overwhelmed, and the freedom you dreamed of having when you started out is nowhere to be found.

Once upon a time, a middle-aged man lost 60 pounds over a ten-month period. Five years later, he’d gained back every pound. He recently re-adopted the same system he lost the weight with the first time and dropped 10 pounds in the first three weeks. This man is confidently back on the way to shedding another 60 pounds; this time with new determination to keep them off for life.