My Top 7 Mistakes Raising $200M from Investors

Posted on by Real Leaders


By Scot Chisholm



I founded a software company and raised over $200 million from investors — seed through series D — from angels, venture capital, and private equity. So, I’ve seen a lot and made many mistakes along the way — but you don’t have to. Here are my top seven mistakes raising $200 million — and how you can avoid them.

  1. I met with investors in the wrong order. Never go after your top prospects first. This is when you’re least practiced and least confident. Instead, rank prospects from most interesting to least interesting.
  • Reach out to the least interesting prospects first and work your way up.
  • Use early feedback to strengthen your pitch with each new meeting.


  1. I focused my pitch on the wrong things (by stage). Investors look for very specific criteria at each fundraising stage, so you need to know what they’re looking for and tailor the pitch.
  •  Seed: Market and team
  •  Series A: Product market fit
  •  Series B: Repeatable sales process
  •  Series C: Command of unit economics
  •  Series D: Profitability (or path to)

Note: The market continues to be important at every stage. (See #3.)


  1. I didn’t present the market well. Investors don’t need every little detail about your market. They’re more interested in how you’re going to attack the market.

For market size:

  • Show total addressable market like an archery target.
  • The middle is where you’re focused today.
  • Each outer ring is a future market.
  • Now, show how you’ll move from ring to ring with the same core product.


For competition: Focus almost entirely on your “unfair advantage.”


  1. I didn’t time the raise correctly. You should fundraise when your momentum is at a “local maximum” — right after you’ve crossed a major milestone or had a breakthrough. This could be a big product launch, landing a whale, hitting profitability, etc.

This becomes the “why now” section of your pitch. You want the new funding to build upon this milestone and accelerate things.


  1. I chased the valuation. I’ve been guilty of focusing too much on valuation and not enough on other terms. It even resulted in a bad-fit investor who almost drove us into bankruptcy. Instead, do the following:
  •  Be willing to accept a slightly lower valuation if other terms are great.
  •  Don’t let them prop up your valuation by increasing the liquidation preference.
  •  Keep it at 1x non-participating.


  1. I didn’t negotiate the term sheet well enough. Getting a term sheet is exciting. However, key terms or details are often left out, leaving too many important items open for negotiation during due diligence.
  • Make sure all key terms are covered (board composition, liquidation preference, etc.). 
  • Don’t sign anything unclear or if the investor marks something TBD. (Not a joke. I’ve seen this multiple times.)


  1. I wasn’t ready for due diligence. Your most vulnerable moment during a fundraiser is after signing the term sheet.

Why? Because now you’re locked in, and the investor gets to pick your business apart for the next 30–90 days. 

If you’re not ready, they could pull out of the deal or renegotiate terms, so you need to have your house in order: three- to five-year financial model, metrics per customer, capitalization table, legal documents, etc. If you’re prepped, you’ll close in 30 days.

Kool Leadership: From Necessity to Legacy

Posted on by Real Leaders

Many leaders launch their platforms and find their voices in business, politics, or academia, but some leaders find their passion and voice out of necessity while fighting for those they love most.


By Kaci Fisher



Tucked in communities all around the world are leaders advocating for people with rare diseases, special health care needs, and disabilities to elevate care, inclusion, research, awareness, and support. Many of these fierce advocates are parents. They never imagined the course their lives would take when their precious babies were born. For many families, the journey brings heartbreak, grief, individualized education program meetings, financial hardships, loneliness, and fear — but also a deeper understanding of resilience, gratitude, patience, and appreciation for the little wins, milestones, and services received for their loved ones. 

One such organization filled with these incredible parents, family members, and caregivers is the Koolen-de Vries Syndrome Foundation. It was launched in 2013 by a small group of Kool families fueled by a desire to find answers for their loved ones diagnosed with KdVS. It is a genetic syndrome identified in 2006 involving the 17th chromosome and is caused by a microdeletion at 17q21.31 (including the KANSL1 gene) or a mutation of the KANSL1 gene. The microdeletion or mutation causes developmental delays and learning difficulties and may cause several other health concerns. Children and adults with KdVS tend to be friendly and cheerful, and about half of those with KdVS have recurring seizures (epilepsy). The prevalence is now estimated at 1 in 55,000 individuals. 

The KdVS Foundation is now connected to over 500 Kool individuals worldwide and is still exclusively run by families dedicating their time and expertise to fulfill the foundation’s mission to educate, increase awareness, and promote research for the support and enrichment of individuals living with KdVS and their families. The foundation has a board of nine medical professionals from around the world committing research efforts and scientific expertise to advancements in KdVS. 

In addition to funding worldwide research, the foundation supports patient advocacy summits every other year, bringing medical researchers and families together to learn, contribute to research efforts, and be in community together. Research is funded exclusively through fundraising by Kool friends and families, and as a result, projects include mice colonies to understand behavior and possible treatments, a biorepository containing biofluids, cell lines and biomarkers, a natural history study to understand the full progression of the syndrome, and exploration into gene therapy for a treatment of epilepsy in KdVS individuals. 

Ask any of the parents who started the foundation or still serve, and they will likely tell you what began as a necessity has turned into a passion that will help future generations. These parent leaders have together built a legacy that makes the future for Kool individuals even brighter and the journey for their caregivers a little lighter. 

Water Safety Warrior Miren Oca

Posted on by Real Leaders

Here’s how my swim school surpassed 2.5 million lessons in 30 years and became employee-owned.


By Miren Oca



My journey with Ocaquatics Swim School began with a passion for water safety. As a swim instructor and single mother of a young child, I was alarmed by the high rates of drowning, especially in children in my South Florida community. But I didn’t view the rates as merely statistics — I saw them as preventable tragedies. This set me on a mission to teach families to love swimming and become safer, more comfortable, and more responsible around water. At Ocaquatics, we are proud of our work to help significantly reduce drowning rates through high-quality water safety and swim education. 

I started the business three decades ago by teaching swimming lessons in backyard home pools and eventually leased locations like country clubs and hotel pools. As the business grew, I started hiring part-time team members. The more people I hired, the more the business continued to grow. I realized that I needed to develop a business model and operating philosophy. We also needed to address the weather challenge of working solely outside because it was negatively impacting our ability to consistently teach our swimming classes. 

So after 15 years of teaching in outdoor leased locations, I decided that I was going to need purpose-built indoor facilities. The change was a big, bold, scary move that required significant capital investment, but I realized that moving to indoor locations and implementing more sustainable practices could affect greater change. The expansion allowed us to teach year-round, which was very different in South Florida at the time. It also allowed us to make a greater impact and reach more people to make children and families safer around water. 

Investing in Our Employees

With this new growth, we were also able to create a more sustainable model. We added a second part to our mission specifically dedicated to our team members. We committed to helping them grow within a framework of social and environmental responsibility so that we could expand our school in a sustainable way and make a bigger impact in our world.

We realized that we could not honor our mission to our families without a strong commitment to our team members. We wanted to be a workplace that cared about our people and invested in their development. We made sure our team had fair wages, good benefits, and personal and professional growth opportunities. We grow our team from within, helping them learn the skills they need to lead in a culture that is supportive and inclusive. 

We discovered that our team members really enjoy working with an organization that is making a difference in the community. As a certified B Corp, we teach our team members about social and environmental responsibility and how a business can be a force for good. We ask our team to help us designate our charitable contributions by making donations to the charity of their choice on work anniversaries, birthdays, and key milestones. We offer paid community service time and paid time off to vote in elections. We help our community and environment with all of these initiatives and are excited to continue doing them.

Expanding Our Operations

Between 2009 and 2019, Ocaquatics underwent significant expansion. We built five new, dedicated, indoor facilities and remained true to our mission for our families and our team members. Expanding our operations required navigating financial uncertainties, regulatory landscapes, and building a team that shared our values and mission. These challenges taught me the importance of resilience, adaptability, and the value of community support. 

Our greatest milestones include celebrating Ocaquatics’ 30th anniversary and transitioning to a 100% employee-owned company through an employee ownership trust. These achievements are not just markers of success; they are affirmations of our mission’s impact. We now have 165 team members between five year-round, indoor, warm-water locations where we have taught over 2.5 million lessons. 

As we embrace our new identity as a 100% employee-owned company, I am filled with optimism about the future. This transition marks a new chapter for Ocaquatics, with every employee-owner playing a pivotal role in our journey forward. Together, we are committed to deepening our impact on water safety and swim education, leveraging our collective creativity, dedication, and passion. This collaborative approach will ensure that Ocaquatics continues to thrive, making a difference in every life we touch.

To my fellow impact CEOs and those aspiring to make a difference, my hope is that our journey serves as an inspiration. The path to making an impactful change is paved with collaboration, dedication, and a deep sense of purpose. Embrace your values, cherish your team, and remember that the most sustainable path forward is one walked together. We are stronger together. I encourage anyone interested in this space to join a group of like-minded, purpose-driven businesses, such as those that participate in the Real Leaders Membership.

Scaling for Success

Posted on by Real Leaders

These three fundamental inputs help build and scale successful, purpose-driven organizations.


By Chris Sullens



We all want to build a successful organization — one with a purpose that grows rapidly and profitably, produces highly differentiated and loved products, delights its employees and customers, and creates significant shareholder value. However, less than 10% of early-stage businesses succeed in achieving any of those outcomes. In my experience, the main reason businesses fail is that the leaders focus, sometimes to the point of obsession, on the outcomes rather than the inputs that drive those outcomes.

Successful leaders flip the script by relentlessly focusing on defining, nurturing, cultivating, and strengthening the inputs that they believe will yield the outcomes they desire. So, let’s delve into the three fundamental inputs that I’ve seen drive success in the organizations I’ve led and in others I admire.

The Mission: The North Star for Success

The cornerstone of any purpose-driven enterprise is a well-defined mission. Research cited by John Kotter and James Heskrett in their book, Corporate Culture and Performance, demonstrates that purpose-driven companies outperform their counterparts in stock price by a factor of 12. The mission statement is your North Star because it tells every stakeholder what strategies you will pursue and what you won’t. When I was a new CEO in my current and past organizations, my first order of business was to refine and solidify the mission because doing so informed the type of employees we would hire, investments we would make, and type of organization we sought to become.

Core Values: The Ethical Compass

Once the mission is solidified, clearly defining the core values is the next priority. Core values serve as the moral compass guiding an organization’s decisions and actions and is the input that drives the culture you build. It’s less about putting words on a wall and more about defining what type of people you want to hire, because who you hire drives the culture you create. Core values are not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but the components I’ve had success with revolve around operating with compassion and humility, doing the right thing, challenging the status quo, and winning and losing together. 

The Big Four: The Input Framework Driving Operational Excellence

To ensure a relentless focus across the organization on the inputs, I’ve found success by creating a framework I refer to as the Big Four. Framing the key inputs into a short, digestible list, ensures alignment and accountability across the organization so that every initiative is aligned to an input, making long-term success more likely: 

  1. Hire and develop great people.
  2. Build must-have products quickly.
  3. Turn customers and employees into raving fans.
  4. Continuously invest in process, systems, and infrastructure.

The Importance of Board Alignment and Over-Communication

While my organizations have never been perfect, they have experienced a significant amount of success across most of the outcome dimensions discussed here, which is directly attributable to a laser focus on the inputs. Once you’ve defined your mission, your core values, and your version of the Big Four, it can’t stop there. These inputs must remain a centerpiece of every story, every update, and every meeting to the point of feeling like you’re saying it too much. Remember, your team is hyper-focused on the day-to-day tasks necessary for the organization to achieve its mission, so it can be easy to lose sight of the why behind it all. Consistent reinforcement of the why and the how reminds them why they chose your organization and why they will continue to choose your organization going forward. 

Finally, for those with a board of directors, I recommend including the board as you define and align on the inputs you believe will drive success. Then, organize your board updates around those inputs. Doing so will serve as a consistent reminder for the board and an accountability tool for your team, keeping everyone focused on cultivating and strengthening the inputs as you drive for the outcomes you desire.

Pantys: For Women and the Planet

Posted on by Real Leaders

Pantys goes from bootstrap business to market leader in reusable absorbent underwear and beyond.


By Emily Ewell



I worked for 15 years in health care starting in strategy consulting. It’s a multi-trillion-dollar business, but it’s also a human right, so it’s an area where you see a lot of technology, innovation, and disruption. At the same time, you have this side of equity and access. And it’s a very complex market. After completing my MBA and master’s in public health at the University of California, Berkeley, I moved to Switzerland and worked with a pharma company there that brought me to Brazil for a project. Brazil has amazing talent and a huge population and is perfect for startups to test, innovate, and create new solutions. I saw it as a special opportunity to leave the corporate space and start something that I really believed in. 

As a chemical engineer, I was excited about product innovation. Underwear had other brands in other markets, but at that time, most of the value proposition was focused on leak-proof products — markets where tampons were predominantly the main or preferred use for customers, and menstrual underwear was used in conjunction to help prevent leaks. In Brazil, Latin America, and a lot of other parts of the world — Asia and Southern Europe, for example — 90% of the markets use external menstrual pads, which are the most wasteful and the least comfortable. They can take over 500 years to decompose. The standard ones are usually not made of 100% cotton, so they’re bad for the environment. They’re also expensive as a monthly purchase. I saw an opportunity to design highly absorptive, reusable menstrual underwear that could replace disposable menstrual pads.

Breaking Barriers

We were a bootstrap business. My co-founder, Maria Eduarda Camargo, and I started the company in 2017 in a lean way and said let’s get it to the market and see what happens. We’ve been thankful for our journey, that we’ve been able to grow and scale with the cash flow of the business coming in for the past nearly seven years. We were lucky. We had a strong launch, and there was such an appetite and readiness in the market for this product that it helped quickly validate that the product and timing were good. Fortunately, we continue to grow. We’re the leader in the market here today. 

Our product is patented in a number of countries, including the U.S., Brazil, China, and South Africa. As the first brand of its kind in Latin America and beyond being a functional product, we also had to build a movement around it — educate and mobilize the community, create a desirable brand, and do a lot of storytelling. We had to break the taboo — not just around menstruation, because it’s not a topic that many people feel comfortable talking about — but also around trying to build a new product category in a nascent market. We’ve focused a lot on building community and creating that welcoming space where women can have that two-way dialogue versus one way with the brand communicating outward to people. 

There is a big psychological barrier in this space specifically around reuse. Women spend decades using the same products — basically whatever their mom gives them, whether it’s a tampon or pad or otherwise — without questioning it. We don’t want to eco-shame, to be like, “You’re doing something bad and you need to change.” It doesn’t work. We focus on the aspirational side, inviting people to make this behavior change in their lives.

Putting Health and Safety First

Because I came from the health care industry, I’ve always viewed the business as a health care business disguised as a lingerie or apparel business. On the outside, our products look like they’re apparel products, but people don’t buy them because they’re underwear or fitness clothes or swimwear. They buy them because they’re functional for a specific health purpose and need. We believe we are the only clinically approved menstrual underwear brand in the world. It was an important process in making sure that we’re not creating harm to consumers. I felt that it was a strong responsibility for us as a brand to design and go through clinical studies to show that we have the same level of safety and efficacy as any menstrual product in the market or better. 

We also did quality-of-life studies with our product showing that, for example, three out of four women who use our product forget that they’re menstruating or that they’re on their period, creating a sense of liberty as if it’s a normal day for them — and that’s the ultimate goal. We found a 100% reduction in sleep disturbance, which has a huge impact in terms of productivity and quality of life, and over double a sense of feeling hygienic or clean using Pantys compared to traditional menstrual products. We’ve done a lot of tests on our products around safety and the chemical side. For example, our liner technology doesn’t use silver because many women, especially dermatologically, are allergic to silver. That’s a different view of the business than what we see in the market today. 

Disrupting Markets

We’ve focused on a lot of innovations, looking for those gaps in terms of what needs aren’t being met today and how we can disrupt different segments of the market. Now, we have a swim line, a fitness line, a line for first menstruation, a line for trans men who menstruate, and a maternity line. We believe we were the first in the world to launch absorbency-proven nursing bras, which came from a consumer suggestion on Instagram. We have a strong co-creation mindset around innovation with our community. Johnson & Johnson reached out to us to partner on a pharmacy line, helping us to reach more people and have an even greater environmental and social impact.

We started as a digital brand and eventually opened our own physical retail locations in Brazil. Then, we looked at how we can disrupt segments in other markets. We’ve been taking one step at a time with our global expansion, which also is a huge opportunity, because there are so many markets asking for this product, and we already have a robust portfolio. We launched in Selfridges in the UK and Galleries Lafayette in France. 

I like to push the envelope on impact. I think about what people are not doing yet that they should be doing and how our brand can create movements to inspire other brands. For example, we were the first known fashion brand in Brazil to launch carbon labels in 2020. They bring more transparency to the consumer and communicate that the product is more sustainable. We hired globally certified carbon assessor WayCarbon and worked with them to define a methodology around creating carbon labeling for apparel in Brazil. It was an amazing self-awareness journey. One thing that surprised me is that a lot of our emissions came from consumer use, specifically chemical-based laundry detergent, which is horrible for the environment. So on our carbon label, we included use and disposal/end of life as well. We did a 360-degree compensation analysis of the product. It inspired us to design a biodegradable, coconut-based laundry detergent with enzymes that break down any natural fluid proteins that absorbed into our liners. That is now one of our bigger product categories after apparel, and it reduces our impact. 

I’m hopeful that within a decade, every woman in the world will have a pair of menstrual underwear in her drawer. That’s what we’re focused on making happen.

Flipping the Script

Posted on by Real Leaders

I buy “dirty” companies and clean them up to help build a greener tomorrow.


By Rob Safrata



As the world grapples with an environmental crisis of unprecedented proportions, the call for sustainable solutions has reached an all-time high. My journey toward sustainability began with a pivotal moment sparked by my partner, Jacqueline Koerner, a lifelong environmental advocate. I recall her poignant question upon my acquisition of Novex Delivery Solutions, one of the largest same-day couriers in the Lower Mainland, Canada, in 2000: “What are you doing buying such a polluting business?” To which I replied in a moment of realization: “Because I can clean it up.” And that has become my life’s work. I buy “dirty” companies and clean them up.

In that spirit, I acquired West Coast Sightseeing in 2009, and it has grown to become one of the largest tour bus operators in Vancouver, Niagara, and Seattle. Operating under Coast to Coast Experiences, we’ve incorporated electric tour buses and developed a robust social hiring program. In 2015, I became CEO of Changequity, which buys high-carbon companies and transforms them into restorative, market-leading green businesses.

My path toward sustainability was not without challenges. In the early days, pre-Al Gore, I had trouble rallying support and enlisting champions. Yet, armed with a solid commitment to environmental responsibility, my team at Novex Delivery Solutions and I made significant strides in reducing Novex’s carbon footprint by over 59% as of 2020 with the aim to achieve zero emissions by 2030 — successfully transforming from a high-carbon business into a leading green courier in Canada.

Navigating the balance between economic growth and environmental preservation emerged as a central question in my sustainability strategies. I adopted a pragmatic approach, demonstrating that sustainability need not come at the expense of profitability. By harnessing green and social initiatives, I demonstrated how businesses could simultaneously drive sales growth, reduce costs, enhance brand image, and mitigate risks.

Three Strategies Along the Sustainable Journey

Central to my sustainable journey are three key traits: adaptability, collaboration, and innovation. Recognizing the imperative need for change, we fostered a culture of sustainability, empowering our team and our customers to embrace new ways of doing business. For example, using internal greenhouse gas audits to understand sustainable impacts, Novex transitioned to hybrid and electric vehicles using vehicle wrap advertising programs and offsetting remaining emissions, earning a reputation as one of Canada’s greenest couriers while maintaining 11% earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. At Coast to Coast Experiences, we deployed vehicle-to-grid infrastructure and paved the way for medium- and heavy-duty vehicle owners to afford electric trucks and buses. We also added walking and biking tours and experienced significant sales growth over the next three years. 

Businesses can have a profound impact in shaping a sustainable future under purpose-driven leadership. With vision, determination, and innovation, a greener tomorrow is within reach.

Overhauling Human Resources

Posted on by Real Leaders

Here’s how to transform your approach to human resources for everyone’s benefit.


By Daniel Turner



The traditional model of human resources is an unwieldy behemoth, an ever-expanding array of responsibilities. What started as a moral reaction to the harsh conditions of factory work in the late 1800s — or an attempt to improve economic efficiency — has become a vital part of organizations of any size. 

Yet, as companies grow and the nature of employment evolves, the HR professional is constantly torn between advocating for employee interests and safeguarding the company’s well-being — a contradictory set of responsibilities that hurts engagement, retention, and efficiency. At TCG, a medium-sized public benefit corporation and U.S. government contractor, we blew up the traditional approach to HR.

Too Many Hats

HR professionals are tasked with a daunting array of responsibilities. Everything about employees is in their purview — recruiting and hiring; formulating and adjudicating company policies; payroll; learning and development; performance monitoring; disciplinary actions and investigations; workplace culture; conflict resolution; compliance and safety; health care; surveying; compensation; rewards and incentive programs; and on and on. It’s an enormous job. 

After spending their morning listening with empathy to an employee’s issues with their manager and advising on how best to work with them, the HR professional must then fire that same employee in the afternoon because their manager wants them gone. They will welcome a new employee with warmth and friendship on Monday and then engage corporate counsel on Friday after the employee has been sexually harassed by a client or coworker. They have to love employees and what they can do for the company, but also fear them and what they can do to the company. Are we stuck with this inadvertent portmanteau, this pushmi-pullyu, this house divided against itself?

A Blueprint for Restructuring

Our experience at TCG led us to a strategic overhaul of the HR function. We created a new HR structure, enhancing operational efficiency and employee satisfaction. In plain English: We blew up HR, sorted it, categorized it, moved the pieces to where they made the most sense, and ended up with a repeatable solution.

Recruiting as a Unique and Vital Function

Our product is our employees’ hours, so recruiting is vitally important for us. But recruiting isn’t actually HR. It’s a combination of skills — marketing, sales, brand management, data analytics/business intelligence, and customer relationship management. For us, recruiting is primarily supply chain management. Having too many or too few employees represents opportunity costs we can’t afford. Initially reporting directly to the CEO, our recruiting group now falls under the purview of the chief operating officer as a supply chain management function. 

Resolving the Duality

Once we split off the complication that is recruiting, it was easy to examine the duality inherent in typical HR. Engaged employees are retained longer and have (and create) fewer problems. HR is typically tasked with curating and maintaining the culture, in addition to loving and caring for employees. Culture plus love and care leads to engagement. Simultaneously, HR must ensure that the company is protected from its employees. Whether by harassment, poor management, illegal interviewing, bias, theft, unethical actions, or a hundred other ways, employees’ behavior can bring down a company. 

An HR professional who loves and fears employees is dual-natured. That’s very difficult to pull off. So we split the two parts.

Employee Happiness Department

Our vice president for employee happiness is focused on organizational development, employee experience, and relations. Reporting directly to the CEO, she addresses the need for a dedicated effort toward cultivating a positive workplace culture. 

The happiness department’s remit includes learning and development, career discussions and goal-setting, community events, soft benefits, biannual engagement surveys, and regular meetings with each employee. It is accountable for retention — if someone quits, it is expected to know why. It is the softer side of HR, the side that loves employees and wants them to stay forever.

HR Focused on Compliance

With recruiting and happiness carved out, HR can concentrate on compliance and hard benefits, reporting to the CFO. This focus and place in the organization allow HR professionals to dedicate their expertise to ensuring the company meets legal and ethical standards without conflicting responsibilities. Our HR professionals work with immense compassion and empathy, but their focus is on ensuring the company’s goals are met, rather than employees’ goals. 

Ongoing Challenges

While our new model has definitely improved operations, it’s not without its challenges. Handoffs between recruiting, HR, and happiness require careful management to prevent oversights. We might have more full-time employees among the three roles than most companies have in traditional HR.

Benefits of the New Structure

Recruiting’s proximity to clients’ projects increases its understanding of their needs and prioritizes them. There are fewer complaints from project managers about recruiting, and since they sit at the same table, communication is constant.

Nobody fears going to happiness to get help resolving an issue because happiness is not HR. The term HR comes with baggage. There’s no fear that happiness is going to hold a grudge come evaluation time.

HR has a considerably stripped-down set of requirements, so it’s easier to find people to fill HR positions and easier to keep people in those roles. It’s also more well-defined and easier to manage.

Employees tell us they’ve never been treated so well by any previous employer. Engagement scores are stellar, our turnover rate is less than a third of the industry average, and our HR, recruiting, and happiness employees love what they do.

Today Doesn’t Have to Be the Same as Yesterday

The journey of HR from a mere administrative function to a strategic partner in organizational success is ongoing. Our experience demonstrates that rethinking and restructuring the HR function can lead to significant improvements in employee satisfaction and operational efficiency. Regardless of size or sector, organizations must critically assess their HR models and consider whether a restructuring could enhance their operations and workplace culture. Your employees deserve nothing less.

Tony Robbins: Why a Crisis Is Your Greatest Opportunity

Posted on by Real Leaders

Turn the eight triggers of a business challenge to your benefit.


By Tony Robbins



If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from operating dozens of companies, it’s this: Leaders anticipate change while the losers are left reacting to it.

Businesses today feel the pressure of the narrowing window between seismic changes in any industry and across cultures. That’s because the lifecycle of ideas and products has shrunk — as the timespan between the moment you come up with a breakthrough concept and the instant somebody else comes up with a better one has gone from decades to years, down to months. Artificial intelligence tools are only expected to speed this cycle even more. 

How do you gain control and turn crises into opportunities? You must discover the power of anticipation and how to master it, so you and your business are prepared for anything. And that begins by understanding that there are known triggers of crises. Eight to be exact.


Business Trigger #1: A Change in Technology


Remember when nobody took Amazon seriously? In business, the psychology of a leader who resists a coming trend in technology can destroy a $4-billion company — or in the case of Amazon, multiple ones. Conversely, if you become a leader who figures out how to use technology to fulfill needs and add value, you become the disrupter, not the disrupted.

AI represents both a crisis and an opportunity for businesses, depending on how leaders approach it. As a crisis, AI can disrupt traditional business models, leading to job displacement and ethical concerns regarding privacy, bias, and control. Those who fail to adapt to AI advancements may find themselves struggling to compete or even facing obsolescence.

At the same time, AI presents significant opportunities for businesses that embrace it. It can enhance efficiency, productivity, and decision-making processes, leading to cost savings and improved customer experiences. AI-powered technologies may unlock new revenue streams and facilitate innovation across various sectors.

Take a moment now to think: Are you stuck in your head and making yourself a potential target to the emerging competition relying on new AI and other cutting-edge technology? Ask yourself: How can AI change my business? What technology can we be the first in our industry to employ? How can I be the creator of change? 

Business Trigger #2: A Change in Your Competition


The next business trigger to be on the lookout for is competition by a would-be challenger who seeks to provide customers more value than you do. No one wants to become the Blockbuster video of their industry. What many people fail to remember is that Blockbuster thought they had the video rental market cornered. 

In 2023, Netflix brought in over $33.7 billion in global revenue. It’s easily one of the biggest streaming platforms in the world and paved the way for dozens of others. But in 2000, the young Netflix tried to sell itself to Blockbuster for a mere $50 million when the video rental company’s revenues were $4 billion annually. Netflix practically begged to become Blockbuster’s streaming service, but the company effectively scoffed and said, “What do we need this for?” They failed to recognize their competition as a business trigger and paid the price.

Blockbuster launched its streaming subscription service four years later, but it was too late, as Netflix already had 4.2 million subscribers. Sure, the stubborn storefront boasted 50 million members in its 2007 heyday, but Netflix announced its billionth DVD delivery that year. In 2010 when Blockbuster finally filed for bankruptcy, Netflix had achieved a worth of around $13 billion.

So note this lesson: Whether you’re a leader of a small business or a part of a billion-dollar behemoth, competition will create a crisis.

Business Trigger #3: A Change in the Economy


Were you in business in 2008–09? How did that economy during the global financial crisis affect your company? Did you anticipate or react to that crisis? Would you have done better, perhaps even thrived, if you anticipated how this financial crisis economy would impact your business and its operations?

How are you applying it to future economic winters? Now is the time to anticipate and implement what you need to be more efficient and effective and to get yourself ahead of the ever-ebbing and flowing economic tide. Winter is always around the corner. This means you need to be prepared.

Business Trigger #4: A Change in Government/Regulations


Your business could be out of business with one new law or regulation — literally overnight. Go back to early March 2020. At that time, most of the world, including business leaders, were trying to understand what COVID-19 was and how it was going to impact them. Boy, did we all learn. Arena events I planned for months were suddenly a no-go when federal, state, and local governments passed regulations that prohibited large gatherings.

If not arenas, why not smaller gatherings in movie theaters? Then the movie theaters were closed by regulation. Then why not use church spaces? Then the churches closed. I sensed a level of growing frustration in people who were on constant lockdown. I wanted to give people some answers, but how? I ate my own cooking and focused hard to find an innovative solution to this crisis.

Weeks after COVID-19 upended life as we knew it, I spoke with some of the brightest communications minds in the world, including Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, the man behind the pandemic-era Zoom revolution. I needed to figure out how to get more than the allowed 1,000 people on Zoom all at once and make it have the emotion, energy, and real-time feedback of my live events.

By June 2020, my team and I were ready for a live virtual event with hundreds of thousands of participants from around the world. They were the first to experience a virtual 360-degree interactive experience in a new Florida studio, complete with 30-foot-high ceilings and 16-foot-high retina screens stretching 50 feet wide and wrapping around the room 180 degrees in front and back.

We continue to use the live virtual experience. Often more than 1 million people sign up and log in for these virtual events — that’s multiple times the number of attendees who got into our in-person arena events. 

Business Trigger #5: A Change in Your Customers’ Lives


The global pandemic changed the way we carried out our day-to-day lives. Circumstances and time play a part in triggering widespread customer behavioral change. Since the dawn of time, as people change, have children, and age, they make decisions differently, which applies to you, your customers, and your employees.

When large swaths of the economy are controlled by one or two demographic groups like Baby Boomers or Millennials — and they go into a different stage of life — it can affect your business, particularly if you have a targeted ideal customer base.

Always remember, the lives and needs of people are in constant motion depending on the moment. Are you prepared for this business crisis trigger? Have you anticipated what may happen, and how you will respond as a leader?

Business Trigger #6: A Change in Your Life Stage


There is no doubt that your own life looks drastically different today than it did 10 or 15 years ago. Don’t forget to look in the mirror and consider also what might trigger a business crisis: you. 

I’ve realized that many of the life changes we all go through are more predictable than we think. Maybe you need to be more present for your family. Perhaps you realize you’re a business operator, not a true owner. Or you hit a threshold and just had to do something that made you happy. Maybe there was a period when you burned out, fell in love, beat cancer, got married, had a baby, or went through some other event that upended your business. Many people also experienced a big life-stage shift during the pandemic when they reevaluated their priorities.

Business Trigger #7: A Change in Culture


How many people still visit a record store on a regular basis anymore? Not many. In 1999, the brick-and-mortar music business made $38.6 billion in sales. That same year, the illegal music file-sharing platform Napster arrived. From the peak of about $40 billion in 1999, the music industry plummeted 58% to $16 billion the following year. Think about that. That’s nearly a 60% drop in revenue practically overnight. 

All it took was a shift in consumer culture. However, as with any business trigger, you can make this one work for you instead of against you. 

Consider how Apple harnessed that changed culture. Apple founder Steve Jobs reasoned that while our culture balks at paying $15 for a new CD, people also don’t want to poke around the internet for hours and steal entire libraries on Napster. He had a crazy idea: Short attention spans might appreciate the simplicity of 99 cents per song. By 2007, the sale of those cheap little digital singles overtook CDs in a landslide, generating $819 million in sales.

When the culture demanded a cheap, easy, fast way to get music, Apple had the ingenuity to address this business trigger and become the No. 1 music retailer in the world — all because it monitored critical shifts in cultural behavior and added more value faster than anyone else.

Less than 10 years after Apple deployed its iTunes Music Store, it surpassed 25 billion songs sold. Apple triggered an industry crisis and changed how the world consumes music, books, and in-pocket entertainment. 

To stay ahead of this business crisis trigger, ask yourself: What behaviors are trending? What cultural shifts are afoot? What belief systems apply to those trends, and how can they affect our business? What cultural shifts can we use to our advantage today?

Business Trigger #8: A Change in Employees’ Lives


Many business owners have experienced a top employee or salesperson going through a life stage like the birth of a child or a divorce, and they ask for some time away. Suddenly, they aren’t around as much, and if they are, they’re less productive, which can be a real hit on your business.

Business Leaders Embrace Crises and Change


After more than four decades of studying the highest achievers in business and life, I know one thing for certain: People who succeed at the highest level are not lucky — they’re doing something differently than everyone else.

Don’t wait to react to a business crisis. You don’t need to operate in fear if you anticipate change and embrace the opportunity it brings. Analyze the landscape. Ask questions. Challenge yourself to anticipate how a business crisis might emerge. Examine how you and your team can attack potential challenges. Create a pre-crisis plan that takes advantage of crisis opportunities when they open up to you.

There is no time better than the present to be a leader, my friends.

Additional Resources


Subscribe to Robbins’ newsletter at core.tonyrobbins.com/event-calendar, and check out his new book in his financial freedom series: The Holy Grail of Investing: The World’s Greatest Investors Reveal Their Ultimate Strategies for Financial Freedom. The Tony Robbins 

Business Accelerator Program’s next virtual Business Mastery event is Aug. 14–18, 2024. Learn more at tonyrobbins.com.

The Art of Transformational Leadership

Posted on by Real Leaders

The Art of Transformational Leadership Leadership isn’t just about managing tasks or making decisions—it’s about inspiring and transforming.


By Brian Arterburn

In a rapidly changing world, effective leaders go beyond the status quo. They create a vision, empower their teams, and drive positive change. Here are key principles of transformational leadership:

1. Visionary Thinking Vision:

Share your vision with your team. Paint a picture of success and rally everyone around it. Transformational leaders dream big. They envision a better future and communicate that vision passionately. Whether it’s a startup disrupting an industry or a nonprofit tackling global challenges, a clear vision inspires action.


2. Empowering Others Empowerment:

Delegate authority and encourage autonomy. Let team members take ownership of their tasks. Leadership isn’t a solo act. It’s about lifting others up. Empower your team by trusting their abilities, encouraging creativity, and providing growth opportunities. When everyone feels valued, innovation thrives.


3. Authenticity Matters Authenticity:

Be genuine. Show vulnerability when appropriate and build trust through transparency. Authentic leaders lead from the heart. They’re genuine, transparent, and vulnerable. Authenticity builds trust, fosters collaboration, and creates a positive work culture.


4. Emotional Intelligence Emotional Intelligence:

Understand emotions—yours and others. Use empathy to connect and resolve conflicts. Understanding emotions—both yours and others’—is crucial. Emotional intelligence helps navigate conflicts, build strong relationships, and make empathetic decisions.


5. Adaptability Adaptability:

Embrace change. Be agile in decision-making and open to new approaches. Change is constant. Leaders who adapt thrive. Be open to new ideas, embrace uncertainty, and learn from failures. Adaptability ensures relevance and resilience.


6. Servant Leadership Servant Leadership:

Serve your team. Listen actively, remove obstacles, and foster growth. Serve before you lead. Put others’ needs first. When leaders serve their teams, loyalty and commitment follow. It’s not about hierarchy; it’s about humility.


7. Continuous Learning Continuous Learning:

Stay curious. Seek knowledge and apply it to improve your leadership Leadership evolves. Stay curious, read widely, attend workshops, and seek mentorship. Learning keeps your leadership fresh and relevant. Transformational leadership isn’t about titles—it’s about impact. Lead with purpose, inspire change, and leave a legacy.


Remember, transformational leadership isn’t theoretical—it’s a daily practice that shapes organizations and impacts lives.

In closing, remember that leadership isn’t confined to boardrooms or titles—it’s a mindset. Whether you lead a team of five or influence a global organization, these transformational principles apply. Be the leader who inspires change, empowers others, and leaves a positive legacy. As you navigate challenges and opportunities, keep the vision alive, embrace authenticity, and adapt with resilience. The world needs leaders who not only do well but also do good.

From Farmworker to Keynote Speaker: Lessons in Leadership and Resilience

Posted on by Real Leaders

From Farmworker to Innovator: Lessons in Leadership and Resilience


By Ovidilio Vasquez


In this fast-moving world, leadership must be visionary, resilient and purpose-driven, creating social value and impact in every aspect of business I now apply the lessons I learned as a child farmworker in Central America, to my work with leaders across the United States.

The Early Years: Building the Foundation

Born in the 90s in a small Central American village, I grew up without electricity, until I was eight. We grew all our own food; beans, yuca “cassava”, plantains, corn, and other crops, and worked hard – really hard, always. I learned so much about grit, and the importance of working hard from sunrise to sunset. Later, after arriving to the United States, as a teenager, I learned English because it was a great equalizer – for education, for working life. There were so many obstacles to learning this language, but it was paramount for me to learn it.

Fast-Tracking Education: A Testament to Determination

After that, I knew I had to change things, so I immersed myself into education, graduating from high school in three years after starting and working a graveyard shift to support my family back home. These years forcefully implanted the ability to focus amid distraction and tiredness, and put in place the work ethic that would define me as a family trait I learned from my grandmother. After that, I earned a Bachelors Degree in Management within two years, and was also accepted into Harvard Business School Online. Hard work and a belief in one’s potential can propel a person beyond what seems conceivable.

The Power of Education and Technology

My career as a Keynote Speaker, has taken me to some of the globe’s most forward-thinking companies – Apple, Tesla, Salesforce, and Uber – where I witnessed bleeding-edge product development, revolutionary approaches to workforce management, data analytics and real-time human-machine collaboration. Through these experiences, I learned how technology can make the world a better place while cultivating a culture of innovation.

In 2022, I released a mobile app that would serve as the hub for $5 million in available scholarships for underserved and underprivileged students to help them build a bridge between potential and opportunity through technology, after learning about my story, based on my own experiences.

Resilience in Leadership: Navigating Complex Challenges

Now, leaders are also expected to be resilient and develop resilience by consistently learning from a multitude of life’s challenges and opportunities. My career followed an unplanned trajectory that blended a fast-paced educational track with misfortune, and finally with a family. Standing there, as a husband, juggling with my business, my three children, education for life-long learning, I wondered how resilience could possibly be taught to our next generation.

Fostering a resilient culture is an essential task for any current leader. Resilient leaders push their teams to master challenges, build strength from failures, and increase team performance.

(Churchill et al.)

Sustainable Leadership for a Better World

My work contributes to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – through my youth motivational speaking work, systemic thinking and innovation that drives social impact, specially in schools. My personal highest purpose, to ‘Plant Seeds of Hope’, contributes to SDG 4: Quality Education. Innovation and technology can scale solutions and consequently impact people’s lives and businesses.

When re-base lining business as usual, the leader will ultimately catalyze more effective and sustainable societal development. Concurrently, he or she will ensure that the company is well-positioned to be more resilient, more reputable and more resourced over the long-term. Indeed, the success of a company is ultimately tied to the achievement of a more successful and fulfilled world.

Case Studies and Real-World Examples

Global Tech Company: A global tech company lowered its carbon footprint and invested more in thermoelectric this year. This then strengthens their brand image and the connection with our customers.
(Boyle)

Restricted to just one non-profit. Confined to outdated cultural stereotypes. Solar-powered electronics startup: Using green technology, this nonprofit transformed a community’s living conditions. The impact: Not only did they power local villages, the tech also provided Bandwidth to children, enabling them to learn continuously.

(benevity)

Conclusion: Embracing the Future of Leadership

From farmworker to National Keynote Speaker, I have witnessed firsthand how education combined with grit, resilience and enlightened leadership can transform not only myself, but our planet and the pervasive social challenges we face. Let’s share this vision and believe that better leaders will create a better world. 

As we become adept at learning, adapting, and regenerating, executives must embrace sustainability to ensure the long-term well-being of their organizations, communities, and humanity. We are ready to lead.

0