Purpose-Driven Growth Coach | Author, Grow North Thursday | Marketing Advisor | 3x Entrepreneur | Airplane & Sauna Builder

👋 Follow me for weekly thoughts on business growth, personal purpose, and life design. 

🔥 Try my free newsletter Grow North Thursday. Get 1 actionable growth system each week to align profit, purpose, and a meaningful life. 

Award-winning marketing leader with 20 years experience growing B2B technology brands, SaaS startups, and $300M+ legacy businesses.

My purpose is to help others grow in their personal and professional purpose, advancing joy and meaning in individuals and communities, and courageous choices that lead to a fulfilling life.

Personal interests: Experimental aviation, sauna building, lifting heavy weights, meditation, lifestyle design, and attacking cancer. Proud boy mom and partner in projects and dreams with my husband, my life build teammate, Ed.

My Core Values:
-Service & Integrity
-Growth & Curiosity
-Connection & Understanding
-Wellbeing & Health
-Courage & Creative Freedom

LET'S CONNECT.

I love working with smart and interesting people from all walks of life.

If you have an idea for a collaboration, want to jam out on a podcast, or hire me, then let's chat.

Colleen Kranz💡

Happy International Women's Day to these gals and everyone who supported TechSHEroes Against Cancer last week.

It was out of this world seeing the community of women in tech rally together for a cause bigger than themselves. And let me tell you, this event wasn’t just "inspiring" it raised over $140,000 and was like a masterclass in purposeful execution! Leave it to these powerhouse women!

Huge credit to the planning committee and volunteers who pulled everything together so beautifully. Events like this look effortless when you're attending, but they only happen because of a lot of thoughtful work behind the scenes.

To me, #IWD is about celebrating this exact kind of power: women leading the charge to solve real-world problems.

Way to go TechSHEroes! 👏

Purpose-Led Growth Architect | Advisor to Entrepreneurs Building Profitable, Sustainable Businesses | Author of Grow North Thursday | 3x Entrepreneur & Builder of Communities, Airplanes & Saunas

Becoming calm is the loudest flex.
 

Anyone can lose their shit, react quickly, and raise their voice. Most of us can do that without thinking.
 
But staying steady when things feel chaotic is different. When the heat tries to pull you in and you stay grounded.
 
When life hits you again and again, and you still choose awareness over impulse.
 
It’s freaking hard. And it takes maturity to realize you don’t need to prove something in every moment.
 
It takes unlearning old reactions, sitting in the uncomfortable, and understanding the difference between passion and letting your emotions run the show.
 
Calm isn’t weakness. It’s mastery.
 
It’s knowing in your bones you don’t have to prove anything, explain everything, or react to everyone.
 
While others burn energy panicking, you move quietly, clearly, and with purpose.
 
In a world addicted to noise, calm is a freaking superpower.

✌️

A few years ago, Ed and I planned to build a sauna in our basement.

We had fallen in love with traditional Finnish sauna. Like the ritual of it, and the way it forces you to leave all the tech at the door, the calm nature of it, and the best sleep ever afterwards.

We knew we wanted sauna, and the culture that surrounds it woven into our daily life.

Then we had a different thought.

If we’re going to build this, could it be an asset?

So instead of building it in our basement, we built a high-end wood-fired sauna on a trailer. 

The idea was simple: build it, rent it, and generate income. Let it pay for itself.

At first, the model looked promising. Bookings came in quickly. People were excited.

But the lived experience of mobile rentals was different from what we expected.

It meant hauling equipment across the cities, setting up in unfamiliar spaces, answering the same stove questions over and over, and staying “on” the entire time. We were not facilitating calm experiences... we were managing logistics.

We kept trying to optimize it with better instructions, tighter systems, and more efficiency.

What we weren’t questioning was whether we even wanted to scale that version of the business.

Looking back, I can see that this is exactly how growth confirmation bias works.

In tomorrow's newlsetter I'm unpacking how confirmation bias sneakily shapes your growth decisions - and how to make sure you are scaling the right thing for you, not just the thing that looks successful.

(We'll also cover the great place Saunable ended up!)

If you'd like the full scoop, check out the link in my bio. ↑

So… I messed up.


Last week, I double sent my newsletter. Two different, carefully written emails went out at the exact same time.

I stared at my screen confused. Then I felt it in my body before my brain fully caught up. My heart started beating faster. I got hot. (I literally took off my flannel because I started sweating!)

Nothing catastrophic happened. A few people unsubscribed. Most probably skimmed and moved on.

But what caught my attention wasn’t my mistake.
 
It was the thought that came up immediately:

“I don’t do that.”

That sentence told me this wasn’t about email scheduling. It was about identity.
 
When you hold yourself to a high standard for a long time, it slowly becomes part of who you believe you are.
 
I am consistent. I am disciplined. I am steady.
 
And those are good things.
 
But when your identity gets tightly wrapped around competence, even a small mistake can feel worse than it actually is.
 
If you build in public, lead a team, run a business, or simply care deeply about doing things well, this will happen to you.
 
Something will slip.
 
The real question is not whether you can avoid mistakes.
 
It’s whether your identity can absorb them without turning one moment into a character judgment.
 
Tomorrow’s Grow North Thursday is about high standards, flexibility, and the long game.
 
If you’re not on the list yet, now’s a good time.

✌️

Hey LinkedIn Friends,


Miss Luna pup, the fam, and I are hitting the road to explore the Great Smoky Mountains (or frankly wherever our motorhome can get that's not snowing this week).

Stepping away from the feeds for a bit, but I'll still have a few ideas coming your way while I'm gone. 

Are you traveling anywhere this spring?

Schedule your fun first ☀️


Summer is around the corner here in Minnesota.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received and now live by:

Schedule your fun first, before anything else.

Your travel, workouts, date nights, time with relatives and friends, hikes, camping trips.

Put joy on your calendar before work and routine fills every gap.

Most people schedule work first.

Then schedule play and adventure with whatever time is left.

Instead book fun like it's a meeting, an appointment, an obligation. Schedule it in stone.

It's really not work/life balance.

Because it's all life.

Don't miss it.


📌 EAA AirVenture Oshkosh with our aviation life crew. One week in July. The world's biggest aviation gathering. On the calendar forever ✓

45 is the new 50. Please don’t ignore this.


Colon cancer screening guidelines have changed.
 
The recommended age to begin screening is now 45.
 
If you thought you didn’t need to think about this until 50, that’s no longer true.
 
My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 44.
 
A good friend just had their first colonoscopy at 45, and pre-cancerous polyps were caught early.
 
Colon cancer is one of the most preventable cancers when it’s caught early. But it’s showing up in younger adults more than ever, and too many people are finding out too late.
 
Please don’t assume you have more time.
 
If you’re 45, schedule it.
 
If you’re close to 45, put it on your radar.
 
If you have people in your life who are 45 or older, send this to them.
 
Someone shouldn’t miss this because they didn’t know.
 
Awareness saves lives.

I am the biggest fan of Julia Child. Here's why:


Julia Child didn’t become Julia Child until her late 30s.

She wasn’t a prodigy chef. She didn’t grow up in a kitchen. She found cooking in her late 30s and then approached it with a level of curiosity that was relentless.

She loved the technique, was constantly testing, and kept honing her process.

The second half of this sentence I'm standing by is the part people miss.

A lot of people want to find their passion. Far fewer are willing to stay interested in something long enough to actually get good at it.

Interest and sustainable passion is what keeps you learning when the early excitement fades.

It pushes you to understand the craft, not just perform it.

And over time, that’s where real work and real contribution start to compound.

Julia Child built a remarkable life around that simple idea.

Find something that genuinely fascinates you.

Then stay curious about it for a very long time.


📌 If you're ever in St. Paul, check out the Julia Child exhibit at the Minnesota History Center. It’s excellent!!

I don't write about things I'm perfect at.


I write about things I want to keep close.

To deepen my understanding of. To explore in new ways, protect in my heart, to hone my craft.

Yes, I share with the hope of helping others. But at this point, I would create even if I never hit publish.

Because there's something beautiful about the creative process itself. That consistent determination, the struggle, the discovery (and drastically improving my skills in the process).

That, I think, is the secret. It's in the imperfect doing.

It's about believing in your journey with conviction, and most importantly believing in yourself.

So here's to the makers, the builders, the creators, the growers, the travelers. 

To the one in the arena today pushing forward, despite the critics or the self-criticism. Despite not having it all figured out.

If you are in that space right now of exploring, building, creating, and finding your way, know that you are not alone.

You’re exactly where you’re meant to be. Please keep going. ✌️


📌 What are you pushing forward today?

You can’t out-strategize misalignment.


I’ve seen it dozens of times (and felt it myself): The strategy is polished. The messaging is "on brand." The funnel is built.

But your gut tells you something's off.

When your "stated" values and your "actual" operations don't match, you aren't just tired, you're losing money.

In tomorrow's 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆, I’m breaking down the business case for being genuine. It’s not a personality trait; it’s a growth strategy.

3 signs your alignment is leaking:

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿 𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁: If you value "deep work" but your calendar is 90% reactive meetings, your strategy is performative.
  
• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗽: If you feel like you’re constantly "convincing" people rather than connecting, your messaging is likely trying to be "liked" rather than being clear.
  
• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁: If you feel chronic drain after sales calls, you might be wearing "emotional armor" instead of showing up as yourself.

Growth gets a lot lighter when you stop optimizing for optics.

☘️ Erin Go Bragh and Grow North! ☘️

[📍I’m sharing the full breakdown of how to operationalize this in the newsletter tomorrow. Check the first comment to join 160+ weeks of these conversations.]

One person’s "Go For It" can look like a disaster at first.


I spent my spring break mountain biking with the fam in Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Walmart. I saw this tag on Sam Walton’s keys to his 1979 Ford F-150 in the museum.

If you're like me, you hear his name and envision the empire, but did you know Sam’s first "go" was a total train wreck?

He lost his very first store because he forgot a simple auto-renew clause in his lease. His landlord kicked him out, and he had to move his family to a tiny town, Bentonville, to start over from scratch.

A "rookie" mistake that should have been the end of the story.

I got to talk to an AI version of Sam about this in the museum. He talked about how starting from scratch forced him to rethink store norms and processes, that mess prompted a whole new way to grow.

I went to Bentonville as a Walmart skeptic. But riding world-class trails and walking through incredible art museums built by that family's investment kind of changed how I look at the impact Sam made.

Bentonville is the booming mountain biking capital of the world today because one guy wasn't afraid to look like a failure or start over in a place nobody cared about.

Going for it doesn't usually lead to immediate success. Most of the time, it leads to what feels like a mess. It leads to people not "getting it" yet. It may lead to starting over.

I survived the trails (barely). But I’m coming home thinking about those keys.

If you’re overthinking a move because it might look messy:

Go for it.

✌️

I am a world-class over-optimizer.


If there is a more efficient calendar system, new food tracking tool, or a "perfect" morning routine, I’ve probably tried it. I used to think that if I just added the right habit or the right software, I’d finally feel like I was "winning."

But over the past few years I’ve realized most of the time, I wasn’t short on information. I was short on awareness.

I was building high-level goals on top of very old, very dusty internal programming. I’d hit a wall of burnout or frustration and my immediate reaction was to add more... more discipline, learning, or effort.

I called these reactions "my personality." I thought being the one who "fixes everything immediately" was just who I was.

What I didn’t realize was that I was living from assumptions that I treated as facts. Assumptions like: "If I don’t handle this right now, everything falls apart."

My real growth over the last few years didn't come from a new tool. It came from... self-inquiry.

Self-inquiry is the ability to pause and ask, "Is this actually true?" before a thought becomes a decision, and that decision becomes my life. It’s creating space between what happens and what you do next.

In tomorrow’s edition of Grow North Thursday, I’m breaking down a simple 3-step method to practice self-inquiry in real-time.

We’re moving past "over-optimizing" our schedules and starting to look at what’s actually driving the bus.

If you’re ready to stop calling your old programming "personality," join us. Link is in my bio. 👆



#𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗳𝗜𝗻𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝘆 #Leadership #GrowN𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗧𝗵𝘂𝗿𝘀𝗱𝗮𝘆

This sunrise. I had to pull over and take it in. Every day is a chance to reframe your perspective. Here are some of my favorite mindset shifts:  

“I don’t have time” 
→ “I’ll spend just 10 minutes.” 
Starting small beats not starting at all.  

“I want to write a book” 
→ “I am a writer who writes daily.” 
It’s really not about my goal. It’s about showing up as the person I want to be.  

“I have to work out” 
→ “I get to work out.” 
Gratitude for my legs and my life gets me moving.  

“I’m not skilled enough” 
→ “I’ll figure this out.” 
I don't have to know everything to start. I just have to begin.  

“This is too much” 
→ “What’s one thing I can control right now?” 
When I feel overwhelmed, I try to simplify. One step forward is enough.

“I don’t know where to start” 
→ “What will future me thank me for doing today?” 
Think long-term, but act short-term.  

“I’m afraid to fail” 
→ “If I fail, I’ll know what to improve.” 
Safe failure is data.  

“I don’t want to do this” 
→ “I’ll feel so great once it’s done.” 
I try to tap into the relief and accomplishment waiting on the other side.  

“It’s not worth the effort” 
→ “Every step builds character.” 
Chop wood. Carry water. Even the smallest actions build who I'm becoming.  

When your thoughts feel heavy today, remember, a tiny reframe can change everything.

What is the best piece of advice your mother or father has given you? 

Did you/do you follow that advice?

Fractional Leader | COO / Integrator (EOS®) | Leadership Coach

I cut my teeth in the corporate world leading marketing operations inside medium-sized, private-equity–backed companies across both B2C and B2B markets.  It was a great training ground but if I’m being honest, the real education came later.

Even a graduate degree (Master's of Science in Organizational Leadership) 10 years into my career couldn’t have prepared me for what I’ve learned firsthand inside entrepreneurial companies. As a 4x business owner and through my work alongside dozens of lower–mid market privately held organizations the better part of the last decade+, I’ve lived the founder journey from the inside... The late-night decisions. The “this seemed like a good idea at the time” moments. The realization that scaling a business is less about a perfect strategy and more about building the systems, leadership, and structure that allow great ideas to thrive.

Along the way, my team and I have helped companies expand profit margins, break through to their next stage of revenue scale, and refocus their leadership teams on the work that actually matters. Just as importantly, we help uncover the unseen forces inside organizations—the intangible assets that create stability, structure, and long-term enterprise value.

Outside of business, I live in sunny Colorado with my husband and our three daughters, which means I get daily practice managing chaos, negotiating competing priorities, and running complex operations… just at a much smaller scale and with more snacks involved. Between entrepreneurship and raising a family, I’ve learned a thing or two about managing scalable energy—in both business and life. I’m passionate about helping other leaders do the same.



🔗 GET THE BOOK! Unseen Forces: https://www.savvystrategicpartners.com/book



🔗Learn from our Vision Untethered Podcast: https://www.savvystrategicpartners.com/podcast

Jill Simonds

An entrepreneur friend of mine reminded me recently; no matter the business we're in, we should all strive to be entertainment companies. (Am I right John Mashni?)

Not entertainment as in lights and stage performance. Entertainment as in: EXPERIENCE. Hospitality. 

How people FEEL when they interact with what you built. How people experience either the product or the service you deliver is what actually differentiates you.

I got a front-row seat to a company doing this well at the JUMP Convention in Denver, run by the team at DanceOne. Huge shoutout to them!

What really stood out was something many organizations in this industry might overlook: the full family experience.

They kicked things off with a parents hip hop class, led by an actual choreographer. I was ALL ABOUT IT. They designed an experience for the whole ecosystem around them. That kind of detail doesn’t happen by accident. 

It comes from a team that understands what they’re really building.

An experience people remember.

Founder & CEO of Savvy | award-winning fractional C-suite agency | Value Savvy™ Framework Author

What I wish more founders understood about hiring executives:

When things start breaking, the instinct is…
We need a full-time COO.
We need a real CFO now.
We need a CRO to fix revenue.

Because more executive = more leverage… right?

Not exactly.

Look at how most executives actually spend their week:
Board prep.
Internal meetings.
Cross-functional alignment.
Recruiting.
Fire drills.
Quarterly planning.

By Friday, the hours left for actual executive work — designing systems, improving economics, building durable capability — are thin.

A COO spends 60% of their time unblocking tasks → senior project manager.
A CFO explains numbers → reporter instead of capital strategist.
A CRO lives in forecast calls → deal manager, not revenue architect.

Making the role full-time doesn’t fix this.

It often just scales the noise.

Strong and mature organizations do something different.

They treat executive time like a scarce asset.

They decide what only executives should do — and build layers to protect it.
If your COO runs standups, the system is underbuilt.
If your CFO reconciles spreadsheets, the finance layer is thin.
If your CRO negotiates discounts, the leadership bench is weak.

It comes down to design, not headcount.

So the real question isn’t:
“Do we need a full-time executive?”

It’s:
Are you paying for executive leverage — or funding a very expensive buffer for organizational inefficiency?

Where in your company is senior talent absorbing friction instead of removing it?

Valuation can often be treated as a function of growth.

Revenue is up = multiple is up.

But there’s a less obvious driver of both: decision speed…. speed at which a company converts information into committed action.

Slow decision making show up as missed opportunities, deferred owner, and teams waiting for alignment that never quite lands.

Mature companies remove friction from decision-making:

1. They are explicit about who decides.
2. They treat most choices as reversible.
3. They shorten feedback loops so learning happens quickly.

Decision speed requires structure. 

It lives in operating cadence, clarity of ownership, and the willingness to move before perfect certainty.

Anyone else think that perhaps fractional leadership has a positioning problem?

It’s often framed as a stopgap. A temporary bridge until a company can “afford” a real executive.

but this framing can also miss the point.

Fractional leadership ACCELERATES maturity.

Most growing companies are too complex for scrappy generalists, but not yet ready for a full executive bench. 

Revenue is climbing. Decisions are heavier. The operating model hasn’t caught up.

This is exactly where we see so many companies stall.

A seasoned fractional leader brings pattern recognition.. what I mean by that is they've operated at these inflection points before. They know what breaks at $5M, $20M, $50M — and they install actual systems, not just advice.

Because they aren’t angling for tenure, the mandate is: build capability, create clarity, elevate decision quality.

Used well, fractional leadership compresses the learning curve.

It introduces executive-grade thinking earlier than most companies believe they “deserve.”

If the constraint is experience or structure — not hours worked — fractional is often the fastest way forward.

The companies that treat it as a bridge outgrow it.

The companies that treat it as a lever mature because of it.

That’s the difference.

Most companies are built around a founder.

But few of them are built to actually outlast one.

In the early years, the founder’s taste sets the bar.  Their speed drives momentum. Their judgment breaks ties. But what makes a company take off can quietly prevent it from scaling.

If every key decision routes through one person...

If culture lives in the founder’s personality...

If strategy exists only in their head... it’s fragile.

Founders who cling to control often make the company brittle.

Rather than thinking of it purely as 'letting go'.. you still have a responsibility here. You have to build something strong enough to survive you.

Roles are often built around tasks.

That’s why so many teams feel busy and stuck at the same time.

When a job is defined by tasks, success becomes activity: send the report. Join the meeting. Update the deck. Close the tickets.

If the boxes are checked, the job is “done.”

But nothing meaningful may have changed.

Task-based roles reward motion.
Outcome-based roles reward progress.

Here’s the difference in plain terms:

A task-based marketer publishes three posts a week.
An outcome-based marketer generates qualified pipeline.

A task-based ops lead runs the weekly meeting.
An outcome-based ops lead reduces cycle time.

The tasks might look similar. The mindset is not.

When you define a role by outcome, three things happen.

First, priorities get sharper. You can’t define outcomes without deciding what matters. That alone cuts noise.

Second, capable people think more. When you’re measured on results, you look for leverage. When you’re measured on activity, you look for visibility.

Third, misalignment shows up faster. If someone owns an outcome but lacks authority or resources to influence it, that’s a design flaw—not a performance issue.

This isn’t about working harder.
It’s about defining success clearly.

If your team feels overloaded but underpowered, don’t add more process.

Rewrite the role.

Start with the result you need.
Let the tasks support it.

Let me ask you something I’ve asked a few founders over the years.

If someone offered you the chance to buy your own company today — at a healthy multiple — would you say yes?

Not as the operator who already knows where the bodies are buried. As a buyer. Writing a real check.

You know where revenue is fragile.
You know which clients are hanging on relationships.
You know which systems only work because a few people overextend themselves.
You know which problems you’ve been meaning to fix “next quarter.”

An outside buyer would diligence all of that. Many leaders are running companies they wouldn’t personally invest in.

This does not mean you're a moral failure. It’s acutally a clarity opportunity!

When you build something slowly, you normalize the cracks. 

You adjust to the workarounds. You tell yourself it’s temporary.

Strong numbers can hide a weak foundation.

Many say they care about long-term value. But then they manage the business one quarter at a time.

I’m talking about assets you can’t easily measure:

Trust from customers…
A strong leadership bench…
People who know how the work really gets done…
Clear systems that support good decisions….
A culture that keeps capable operators…

These don’t move overnight. That’s why they’re often the first to be cut. Training gets trimmed. Product investment slows. Hiring is delayed. 

The early signs are easy to miss:
Good people leave.

Customers shop around.

Execution depends on a few key individuals.
Decisions take longer because trust is thinner.

Financial results are an outcome. The intangibles are the cause.

If you manage only the outcome, you slowly weaken the cause.

Durable companies treat trust, talent, and capability as real assets. They invest in them even when the return isn’t immediate.

Because staying strong is harder than looking strong.

Many founders carry the business longer than they should.
Enjoyed this conversation with Rocky Foroutan about making the shift to a team that carries it forward.

A must-listen episode with Rocky Foroutan, Founder & CEO of LenderHomePage.com, for leaders ready to stop carrying the business and start leading the team that carries it forward.

taplio

The Battle

Colleen Kranz💡

Jill Simonds

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreColleen Kranz💡's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJill Simonds's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Colleen Kranz💡

Jill Simonds

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Colleen Kranz💡's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreJill Simonds's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreColleen Kranz💡's LinkedIn Performance