Sherman Black

Building a business is easy. Running one is the challenge. Every founder has to be scrappy at first. You're the CMO, CFO, and everything in between. But then one day you look up and realize, You've built a machine that only works when you do. That lesson often comes after burnout, stress, or lost momentum. But you deserve to run a business without stretching yourself thin. Here's what you need to avoid: 1. If you’re always available, you’re not leading. ↳ Being constantly accessible keeps you in reaction mode. 2. Dodging hard conversations leads to bigger problems. ↳ Silence solves nothing. 3. Holding on to the wrong people hurts everyone else. ↳ Your team notices when you keep members not performing as well. 4. You’ll always be the bottleneck until you build a system. ↳ If everything runs through you, your business is unscalable. 5. Delegation is the most important skill you learn. ↳ Avoiding it is what keeps you drowning. 6. Your energy is more important than your calendar. ↳ You can control your time and still burn out. 7. Working harder is not a plan. ↳ If more revenue = more hours, you're building a job, not a business. 8. Perfectionism stops you from being useful. ↳ People don’t need you to be flawless. They need you to be real and present. 9. Hiring more people will not fix a broken machine. ↳ A bigger team with no systems creates more chaos. 10. Growth isn’t the goal. Freedom is. ↳ A bigger business means nothing if you lose your time, health, and joy. You didn't start this journey to be exhausted. You started this to build something better for yourself. The cheat sheet breaks down each problem and how to fix it. Take a look and see where you can make a change. What advice would you give to your younger self with what you know now? ♻️ If this hits home, share it with your network. 🔔 Follow Christine Carrillo for more. 💡 Get weekly insights in your inbox: https://lnkd.in/gQCveimB

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“We loved your product — we really did. But reporting is really important to us... and the other vendor just did it better.” At Groundswell, we chase feedback like it's revenue. When we lose a deal, we don’t walk away quietly — we ask for 10 minutes on the calendar. Just to listen. Not to argue. Not to sell again. Just to learn. Sometimes we realize the prospect misunderstood our capabilities — a messaging problem, not a product one. 🎤 Sometimes we discover a competitor seeded misinformation we couldn’t quite uproot in time. 🌱 But more often than not, we just face the music: 👉 They needed a feature we didn’t have. That feedback? Product gold. 💰 18 months ago, one theme kept surfacing: “Groundswell’s reporting and analytics are behind the market.” So we went to the whiteboard. Studied competitors. Interviewed practitioners. Listened. Again. And then we asked ourselves: "Should we catch up? Or leap forward?" We heard the same pain points over and over: ❌ Siloed data that made reporting fragmented ❌ Separate logins for analytics platforms ❌ Inflexible, one-size-fits-all dashboards ❌ No drill-down capabilities for real insights So we built something different — not to check a box or avoid losing deals, but to blow the doors off the hinges. 🚀 Today, we’re lifting the curtain on Groundswell’s new Enterprise Reporting & Analytics Suite. 🎥👇 check out the demo below We’d love to hear what you think. What are you solving for when it comes to program reporting? #socialimpact #corporatephilanthropy #productinnovation #reportingtools #B2Bsaas #csr #givingplatform #Groundswell #employeeengagement #dataanalytics #enterpriseSaaS #startup #entrepreneurship

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There are 5 dead-simple questions every PE board + mgmt should be aligned on. But some aren't. The cost? → Lost time → Wasted effort → Value creation risk. Here they are ↓ (In our Ascend PE accelerator, we help execs lead from the front in driving clarity & alignment here. Info in the comments.)

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As I'm leaning into some work with our portfolio companies around leadership, I took a walk down memory lane to revisit this conversation from almost a decade ago where I had the opportunity to sit down with one of the best. I interviewed Alphabet's Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat as part of the Women Techmakers series when I was at Google. This was in 2016, the year after Ruth joined Alphabet. Some of the lessons Ruth shared that resonate just as strongly now: 💡 Be curious & embrace learning: keep taking risks, seek feedback from people you respect, and explore new opportunities 💡 Cultivate sponsorship: have a goal to work for someone who can actively invest in your growth - a sponsor, not just a mentor. 💡 Have a point of view, and back it up with data 💡 Turn adversity into opportunity: adversity can be a powerful catalyst for team learning and innovation. Prioritization and clear goal-setting are key here. 💡 Integrate work and family: a mix, not balance. Ruth encourages integrating professional and family life fluidly. Trust and autonomy are key to thriving in both roles. 💡 Build strategic sponsorships: sponsors play a unique role in opening doors with credibility. Demonstrate competence and trustworthiness to earn such support and speak up about your readiness for new challenges. Catch the full video interview here: https://lnkd.in/gAj7hz6M #leadership #mentorship #sponsorship #culture #teams

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