John Barcanic

Lisa had been sitting at her dining room table, updating her books, for so long that the screen had gone blurry thirty minutes ago. She loved owning a business. She enjoyed doing what she was good at: providing excellent marketing services to other business owners. She was grateful for her amazing team. But she was exhausted all the time. “I don’t know how long I can keep this up,” she thought to herself. “Maybe instead of trying to grow, we should scale back to serve a more manageable number...

I was frustrated. And confused. And didn’t know what to do. I really liked my executive team. Each of the seven people on our team was a highly skilled expert in their function. We shared the same values. We got along. We worked hard and had fun doing it. But our progress was much slower than I thought it should be. And I couldn’t pinpoint why. Then the US Navy came to visit. The Commander Our Finance Director’s father-in-law was a retired naval commander. He now consulted with all...

I was so surprised by the question that it took me several seconds to even respond. My client sat across the desk. He’d been in marketing for more than a decade and his firm had experienced some real success. Now, though, he was facing one of the most difficult growth barriers for a business owner to overcome. We call it mid-life crisis. You can tell a business is in mid-life crisis when they have already achieved success; they continue to do the things that made them successful; but...