Brian Schroller
Minutia

We strongly encourage all the entrepreneurs we work with to go through our LifePlan retreat. Getting clear on the life they are intended to live is a crucial first step in having the clarity and conviction it takes to get their business working for them. Once they have their ideal life in clear focus, doing the work it takes to re-engineer their business to support that life becomes a foregone conclusion…

Minutia
Brian Schroller
IKIGAI

The organizations you lead and the roles you play there, should support and fulfill the purpose for your life, not the other way around.  More often than not, we see leaders completely unaware of their calling or purpose other than what their vocational role might dictate.

It is our contention that you are not only created for a particular purpose, but that your Creator desperately wants you to know what it is.  The clues are written on your heart, have been evident throughout your life, and are fully embodied in the things that bring you greatest joy, deepest pain, and get you out of bed in the morning.

IKIGAI
Wise Counsel
Brian Schroller
Become

When I look at the life of Jesus, for instance, He seemed to only do and say what the Father told him.  In fact, He routinely walked past the opportunity to do good, because He seemed to be called to other places and things.  Often that thing was simply spending more time alone with the Father.

As a Christian, it is hard to look past the opportunity to do good.  As a Type-A person who has spent a lot of time trying to do good things for God, I’ve had to come to the sobering reality that God would rather have me do a few things with Him than do a lot of good things apart from Him.

Become
Wise Counsel
Brian Schroller
Time

This is the time of year, when hope springs eternal.  With 365 days (minus about 25 now), we can accomplish almost anything.  But in the chaos of the tyranny of the urgent, even the best laid plans we’ve made begin to fade.  Like sets of endless waves crashing on the beach, the day to day issues we face in our lives and enterprise, can begin to wear us down.

Time
Wise Counsel
Brian Schroller
Strategy

It is the beginning of a new year and every intentional leader I talk to is hoping that 2016 will be different than 2015. They’re seeing the new year as a grand opportunity to chart a course toward a different future.  Believing that maybe this is the year where a sense of team emerges, their biggest challenges and frustrations get addressed, and they have a huge celebration at the end of the year to celebrate all they’ve accomplished.

Strategy

Restore

Restore

My father died far too young, his body beaten down by stress, worry, and exhaustion.  Somewhere in my subconscious, I always wished that he had not been so alone in his work.  That he had worked with partners or a leadership team, had clear vision, a solid plan, and had imagined a bigger and better future.  He deserved better than he got.  Owning his own company took decades off his life.  Just like every other small business owner I have encountered, he started his own business for freedom, margin, and the opportunity to have more control of his life.  And almost like every other small business owner I know, the business dictated his life and owned him.  He was looking for freedom and found the opposite.

Behavior

Behavior

I spent a lot of years trying to sanctify the life I had lived, the decisions I had made, and possibly even my family of origin.  The Baptist church I was baptized in at 19 said some really cool things about me coming “Just as I am” and the new bible I was reading said some pretty amazing stuff about forgiveness; past, present, and future.  I think I intellectually accepted all of that, but I am not sure that I really believed it at the deepest level.  Not in the core of my being… at the level of the heart.

October Top 5 Reads

How To Turn Your Good Ideas Into Great Questions
Despite the popularity of brainstorming in meetings, sharing ideas doesn’t often lead to a creative discussion. Asking questions does. Here’s a technique to turn your good ideas into great questions.

How Steve Jobs Ran His Legendary Meetings
An inside look at a series of meetings led by the most famous entrepreneur of our generation.

The Three Biggest Differences Between Being Busy And Being Productive
Here's how to figure out if you're super productive or just needlessly busy.

Before You Pitch
Before you try to make yourself understood, you need to work out why the person you are pitching to will care about what you have to say.

Who Is This Not For?
When we spend time thinking about growing our businesses we tend to focus on our ideal customers—the people we know we want to matter to. A great way to get really specific about who you are creating your products and services for is to think about who they are not for.

More

More

As co-heirs, sons of God, who were uniquely created and wonderfully made to  bear one aspect of the Father’s profound glory different than all other members of His creation, we countered a lie: more of Him in less of me.  The right equation is something far different than we have been taught to believe.  In terms of the new heart given to us and our new identity as the redeemed, what we really need is... more of Him in more of me.

Treaties

Treaties

Despite all that our Western culture encourages, we were not meant to walk alone.  Having circles of deep fellowshp with other men has changed everything.  My wife, children, and virtually everyone I encounter knows me as a different man.  I’ve banded together with several aggregations of good and like-minded kings who want to change the world.  They are freedom fighters who will settle for nothing less than advancing the Kingdom by awakening the hearts of other good kings and encouraging them to live the life they were intended to live.

Generational

Generational

Steve’s book, “Anchor Man: How a Father Can Anchor His Family in Christ for the Next 100 Years,” was a rescue from my greatest fears.  Despite the fact that my wife and I had departed from the culture of divorce of both of our families, it often felt like a thin veil of consolation.  The whisper of our enemy was that a new belief system and a strident commitment to marriage was nothing more than wishful thinking with inevitable failure just around the corner.

CASEVAC

CASEVAC

It should’t surprise me at this point, but when they discussed the challenging season of their time in the west and the heroic journey they took to arrive here, the primary role player of the enemy didn’t enter my mind.  When I recanted the paralysis we were feeling in all that was set in front of us, I didn’t acknowledge him either.  I listed all the catalysts, reasons, and excuses for the lack of motivation and focus, but I didn’t note the one who is most powerfully marshalling his forces against us in order to keep us from our appointed Kingdom assignments.

Receive

Receive

What we are really after is the same destination that Christianity ultimately aims for…  transformation.  What we want is healing, restoration, and living into the new heart that has been set within each one of us in salvation.  We want to address the underlying condition driving what is on the surface.  It is the irreversible change that only true transformation can bring.  (It is ironic that the sword of legalism I used to wield actually produces the opposite of its intent.  By forcing the reality of things into hiding, shrouded with modified behavior, the heart’s true condition is left untouched and unaffected.)

Bullies

Bullies

One of the unfortunate consequences we are finding in either faith-based or high-integrity leadership situations, is the rise of the bully.  While operating in a "mean-spirited" environment might be more obviously unhealthy, "artificial harmony" is equally so.  In those environments, the difficult conversations never seem to happen.  There is little resolution to problems.  Employees and divisions get silo'd, everyone operates in a vacuum, unhealthy offline conversations prevail, the company spirals without clear leadership and addressing of important issues, and... bullies emerge.

August Top 5

Why You Need A Personal Code And How to Create One
Our values should cost us something.  There are plenty of projects I won’t get involved in because I’d have to compromise my values. And yet, the more I live into these values, the more clarity I have in life and the more I get done.

8 Personality Types And How To Manage Them
Getting the most out of everyone on your team can be a challenge. This can help.

How Much Is Enough?
Last week I had knee surgery. It’s still swollen like a softball even when I keep it propped up over my head. It’s hard to work in this position. I’ve gotten some things done, but looking at my work load, I’m wrestling with the question: How much is enough?

The Difference Between Strategy And Tactics And Why You Need To Know
When it comes to business we spend a lot of our time working on the tactics.
We agonise for weeks over perfect taglines, choosing logo designs and installing fixtures, often without fully understanding if and how those tactics (the things we spend most of our time doing), are helping us to get where we want to go.

One Thing I Do Every Day That Helps Me Say No
Every day at the bottom of my personal planner, I write this phrase: “I exist to help people and institutions discover, live and communicate a better story to the world.”  Simply writing this sentence everyday keeps me on track.

Fun.

Fun.

At the end of the day, it is the great privilege of operating at His discretion within an unfathomable personal relationship with Him, that all of this is possible.  It is not merely some coaching and all the incredibly hard work of a great team, but the guidance of His hand.  We get to approach the throne of the Creator of the universe and seek his counsel, direction, and blessing.

Surprises

Surprises

As He has invited us into being co-heirs of His Kingdom work, He enlists us in important and essential ways.  The reality is that He is the great magician; both Creator and Healer of all things.  But we are His hands and feet… we have a crucial role to play.  In this case, He is writing such an unbelievable story and inviting my friend into playing such an essential role, that I am awaking each day awaiting the next set of surprises as well.  You see, when one submits to the adventure of God’s larger story in their life, it beautifully permissions the rest of us to do the same.

July Top 5

Why Bosses Who Show Vulnerability Are The Most Liked
A leader who isn't afraid to show their vulnerability is more trusted not to mention able to make more authentic connections.

6 Warning Signs Your Successful Leadership Needs Help
Your leadership success earned you position, budget, and authority. As your leadership influence increases, fewer people are willing to give you feedback or able to question your actions. As a result, you are less accountable for your day-to-day behaviors. This is a dangerous place, and can lead to your decline.

The Purpose Of A Billboard
Powerful marketing is both smart and generous, we know it when we experience it, because it changes how we feel and gives us a story to tell. Weak marketing is obvious and selfish, we know that when we see or hear it, because it screams ‘LOOK AT ME!’ and leaves us cold.

How Running A Business is Like The Acts Church
Every time I read the book of Acts, I’m a little envious. But just a little.  All the snake bites and temporary jail time doesn’t appeal to me, but there’s one thing that does: community. And I’m not talking about a short Bible study of age-related peers.

Why Mitt Romney Lost The Election And Why Hillary Might Lose, Too
So whether you’re an author trying to sell a book, a business owner wanting to get customers in the door, or even a pastor desiring to lead people into an authentic experience of faith, know this: If you talk too much about how awesome you are, and too little about how awesome your reader, viewer or even customer is, you’ll lose people—their votes, their purchases and their attention.

Woodpile

Woodpile

I remember feeling like my wife and others were the cause of all my problems and that if they would just get “fixed” everything would be okay.  Somewhere in a rising tide of a failing marriage buckling under the weight of my disappointment, I allowed myself to take some ownership of at least a portion of the issue.  Maybe I was some small percentage of the problem.  My false humility handled the rest.  I WOULD TAKE 100% OWNERSHIP OF MY 1% OF THE PROBLEM.  The arrogance of that statement makes me embarrassed even as I write it, but it was a crucial step.

Attaboy

Attaboy

For there is an invigorating momentum that comes from understanding we have a crucial role to play.  There is fuel for the journey in seeing that we actually contribute and play an important and particular part in the larger story of God.  It is not about taking credit, but honestly owning all the privilege, responsibility, and nobility of our appointed roles in the Kingdom.  We matter.  What we need are more Kings not making themselves the point of the story, but using their prominent place in the story to carry out the incredible work He has given us to do in the larger story.

Name

Name

I was becoming a new man with a new identity.  I was putting the old man behind me and putting on the new one.  As the bishop tells Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, “You no longer belong to fear and hatred.”  God knew me in some precious and unique way that would redefine my life.  I would bear His image uniquely and most profoundly reflect His glory through that identity.