Winston Churchill could have been an entrepreneur to have so eloquently dramatized the thrill associated with building a business.
Whether you own it yourself or share it with partners, it’s yours to build, to mold according to your dreams and values.
You may be building it from scratch or seeking new opportunities to jumpstart a mature company. In either case, I hope this will help you on your journey.
Why do you have your own business?
Independence, many will say, the chance to run my own show?
Be my own boss?
Do things my way – maybe because you’ve seen them done the wrong way and you can do better?
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Just after obtaining his pilot’s license, a dear friend from the Midwest found himself surrounded by unexpected thunderstorms. He clambered for every streak of sunshine he could find, ultimately zigzagging his way to a safe landing:
“That principle is a metaphor for my life. It seems that I have always flown to the light. If there was resistance or a combination of obstacles, I just vectored my way between them or around them. That approach is superior to flying blindly into clouds. You never know what’s in the cloud or on the other side of it. There could be another plane or there could be a bolt of lightening. You just never know.
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– Jonathan Swift
Weren’t you heartbroken over the death of John F. Kennedy Jr.?
We recently finished a three-day soiree with our long time friends from Boston, who we have visited frequently on Martha’s Vineyard where their family has had a home for more than 100 years.
As usual, the conversation turned to island lore, Fall from Grace, the recent mystery novel from Richard North Patterson, which takes place on the island (which I highly recommend), … and inevitably to the Kennedy folklore and the tragic death of JFK Jr.
My wife has had a lifelong interest in the family side of the Kennedy dynasty, so she was enthralled by a factoid we hadn’t heard before …
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For years, I have used Facebook simply to replicate the articles I’ve published on Sword Tips, the Exkalibur blog.
I rarely provided anything else on the Facebook platform to help you and other business leaders solve their everyday problems … even though that’s what I do every day everywhere else.
That’s not really what I intended, but it was early in the Facebook lifecycle and I wasn’t sure what I should be doing differently on the Exkalibur Facebook page.
Maybe you’ve faced the same questions as you’ve surfed the Internet waters, uncertain about what you may find where and what you can do to more efficiently to find just that exact piece of information to help you with a particular issue?
Don’t you think we’re both trying to figure out how to manage the information tsunami flowing fromblogs, RSS feeds, Facebook pages, twitter feeds and a host of other sources?
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Every Tuesday, we’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make sure to take some time so you’re thinking past today. Don’t forget our 12 part Leadership series and #100 of my newspaper columns.
The past offers no forgiveness for past transgressions!What’s missing? Why do we keep wrestling with the same issues that we’ve examined and discussed throughout our careers?
That’s what makes it both fascinating … and painful … to be reminded about our timeless journey and our ongoing struggle to find the right balance to fulfill the lives we envision for ourselves.
I’ve always been intrigued by Shakespeare’s line … not only because of its famous lineage, but because so few know the words that follow and give the phrase its power:
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Every Tuesday, we’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make sure to take some time so you’re thinking past today. Don’t forget our 12 part Leadership series.
I continue to examine some of the first 100 newspaper columns I’ve written … and continue to be struck by the timeless issues that we face as we build our businesses. We’re human, we make mistakes, we don’t always get done what we intend, we miscalculate, things don’t turn out as planned. Stuff happens. We know we’re on a journey and not just seeking a destination, but that doesn’t diminish our struggle to overcome many of the same forces that have plagued progress throughout civilization.
Every Tuesday, we’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make sure to take some time so you’re thinking past today. Don’t forget our 12 part Leadership series and #100 of my newspaper columns.
The magical mystery tour continues with another retrospective about some of the subjects covered in my first 100 columns … seriously? … the “first 100”? (Is that a threat or a promise?)
As I considered my earlier columns, I was struck that none of these issues has really gone away. We’re continually battling the same challenges … occasionally finding temporary resolution or respite, but so often juggling so many of them that we don’t take time to resolve 
any of them. Why are we stuck in that do-loop? That’s a conundrum we’ll attack in a forthcoming column.
These quotes launched a few columns about leadership succession in the wake of the sudden terminations of the Merrill Lynch and Citicorp CEOs as the mortgage portfolios held on Wall Street imploded on the eve of the Great Recession. My focus, however, was more about how these colossal organizations, so dependent upon talented, international leadership teams, did not have a management succession plan in place.
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Every Tuesday, we’re sharing valuable and practical leadership tips and tools to help you BE a better leader so you can BECOME a better leader. Remember … you won’t BECOME a better leader until you start BEING a better leader … implementing NOW the changes necessary to adopt the proven strategies of successful leaders. You might start by building on the communication matrix and making sure you’re defending the castle to get done what only you can do. Make sure to take some time so you’re thinking past today. Don’t forget our 12 part Leadership series.
This journey began in the Fall, 2007 and for the most part, bi-weekly since then. The only exception is the most recent L.E.A.D.E.R.S.H.I.P. series that was published over 12 consecutive weeks. Most of the columns have climbed around the monkey bars at the intersection of Strategy, Finance & Leadership, but according to several keen observers, I’ve also listened in on their boardroom conversations. Others have said they recognized themselves in my examples … I’ll never tell … and some have even said, “stop writing about me”. We’ll never know if it was intentional or accidental, will we?
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New metrics to Define Financial Performance?
In the tumult surrounding the 3D maelstrom (Debt Ceiling, Downgrading and Deficit) of several weeks ago, you may have missed another chilling corporate finance update on the relentless pursuit of performance metrics that extol the sunshine while you’re in the heart of darkness. Yes, there may be some economic value for certain of these metrics, but they’re dangerous barometers of realizable value and highly misleading as to future achievements of tangible operating profits and free cash flow.
Most of us recall the “eyeball counting” that preceded the Dot-Com-Bomb and those certain “Signs of the Apocalypse”, as when your cab driver is telling you what stocks you should buy.
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Welcome to Exkalibur. I’m Lary Kirchenbauer, President of Exkalibur Advisors, Inc. Please take advantage of our resources to help you build your business ... and let me know what more we can do to serve you.
Read my latest column from the NY Times affiliate, the North Bay Business Journal.
Not only do you get honesty and integrity from Lary but you also get creativity, maturity and deep business acumen. Lary is the diamond in the rough for middle market companies in need of corporate advisory services and transaction services.
Kelly O. Kay, Partner, Center for Corporate Innovation
