BIG CHANGES: We are now High-Return Leadership. Hello, fellow leaders! I want to share some updates with you about our community and how it will be changing. I have worked hard to understand how to build a community. I think there are a few things I was not getting right, hence the stall in new members. One realization: being unclear about how we can achieve real ROI while developing our leadership skills. The conclusion I've come to is that, as business owners, it's vital for us to see a return on the investments we make, whether in time or money. This was not demonstrated directly in the previous name, nor in how I created the classroom content. My strong belief is that when we take leadership training, it is rarely tied to how it actually pays off in our business. Hence this shift. I want to prove that we can tie measurable ROI to enhanced leadership skills. The underlying philosophy does not change: Leadership + Team + Systems is still the backbone. The change is that content will now be much more intentional about how those components interact to improve profitability through mindset, teambuilding, repeatable systems, and more. Over the next few days, I will be updating some of the branding and reorganizing some things. I've already changed the community name to "High-Return Leadership" and updated the URL as well. Don't worry if you have bookmarks; I believe the URLs should still forward to the new one. DM me if you have trouble finding anything during the renovation. Finally, thank you for being here. If it's been a while since you've visited, come back and check it out. I am very excited to implement this new direction. My hope is that we will continue to grow, as it is my genuine desire to help business owners develop as leaders while also building strong, profitable businesses. Together, let's lean into High-Return Leadership. See you inside, Cris

Curious: What system holds you back in your business? (If you're feeling really brave, share why in the comments!)

What keeps you stuck in client delivery?

Don't piecemeal-patch up your business with random systems or delegations to try to extract yourself from client delivery. When you do, you're building a structure that keeps you entangled. It's a pattern a lot of B2B service business owners unintentionally follow. The symptoms: A carousel of repeated questions, approval requests, and decision check-ins from the team to you. And for some reason, they never quite 'get it,' no matter how much you repeat yourself. So you stay involved. You answer the questions, review the details, approve the next step. You protect the client experience. Then sales, strategy, growth, and breathing room get pushed to the edges. The real issue: Task lists are easy to access, but your thinking is not. After 20+ years of B2B business ownership, founding and selling a profitable marketing company, earning an MA in Leadership, and advising hundreds of businesses, here's where I'd start: Altitude. Altitude looks at client delivery from three connected places: How the owner leads, how the team makes decisions, and what systems support consistent delivery. Because your engagement with client delivery will not change through documentation or random acts of delegation alone. Owners need to lead differently. Teams need stronger decision support, and systems must make standards, handoffs, and expectations easier to follow. Together, those pieces help the team make stronger decisions about deliverables, without putting the client experience at risk. And it gives you more space for the parts of the business only you can lead. You can think about it like this: Do you want to keep being the person your team waits on for every answer, approval, and decision? Or do you want to build the leadership, team habits, and systems that help client delivery run with less of your daily involvement?

One small change can be worth more than it first appears. In yesterday's Leadership Lab, we learned how to save at least an hour a week through a very simple exercise. At an hourly rate of $250 (which is at least what your time is worth), saving one hour a week adds up to $13,000+ over a year! 🤯 Repeat the process for added value. The lesson, Identify Where to Reduce Your Involvement in Client Delivery, will help you pinpoint one recurring area that still requires your time, judgement, approval, knowledge, or attention, then choose a practical next step that helps the team take greater ownership of that work. You’ll use the guided exercise to: - Identify one specific situation - Clarify what the team needs from you - Decide what could be made clearer - Choose one practical change that will reduce your involvement The exercise takes less than 30 minutes. You don't get that kind of ROI by continuing to answer client texts at night or scrambling to clear your inbox every morning. Share with us: What change will you make, and how much time will it save you? What's your dollar value for that time? Comment below.