Episode 90: Reflections: Addiction to Progress
Business on Top with Kaeli Lindholm
Release Date: 01/10/2022
Business on Top with Kaeli Lindholm
Last week, I released a 7-part series on operational excellence, and the response was incredible. So many founders reached out saying these conversations completely shifted the way they think about growth, leadership, and building a business that doesn’t rely on them for everything. So, I wanted to bring the entire series together in one place. In this episode, you’ll hear all seven parts back-to-back as we dive into the systems, leadership, and operational frameworks that I’ve seen transform businesses over the last decade of working alongside hundreds of founders as they’ve crossed...
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If you’ve ever felt like your business is growing, but you’re carrying more stress, more responsibility, and less freedom than ever before, this episode is for you. Today, I’m sharing Day 1 of our five-day SPARK Leadership Intensive, where I dive into one of the biggest shifts every growing practice owner has to make: realizing that sustainable growth isn’t about working harder, it’s about leading differently. In this session, I’ll walk you through why so many successful businesses hit a plateau, how leadership, not demand, becomes the biggest growth constraint, and what it really...
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Most leadership conversations focus on what founders need from their teams. But in this episode of Business on Top, I want to flip the script and talk directly to employees, emerging leaders, and team members who want to grow their careers, increase their impact, and become indispensable within their organizations. One of the most valuable lessons I learned climbing the corporate ladder was this: if you want to be a great leader someday, you first need to learn how to be a great follower. In this episode, I share what I’ve learned from both sides of the table, as an employee who worked her...
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If there’s one thing entrepreneurship has taught me, it’s that there are no guarantees. Not in hiring. Not in growth. Not in leadership. Not in life. In this episode of Business on Top, I’m sharing one of the most important mindset shifts every founder must make if they want to reach their next level: stop searching for guarantees and start becoming one. Over the years, I’ve worked alongside hundreds of entrepreneurs navigating employee turnover, cash flow challenges, competitive threats, leadership loneliness, and unexpected setbacks. What I’ve learned is that the founders who...
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One of the biggest leadership lessons I’ve learned is that business growth doesn’t require me to become more essential, it requires me to become less essential. For years, being the person everyone relied on felt like a badge of honor. I answered every question, solved every problem, and made sure nothing fell through the cracks. That mindset helped me build my business, but eventually it became the very thing slowing it down. In this episode of Business on Top, I’m sharing why I believe one of the most common blind spots for high-achieving founders is the addiction to being needed....
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Most founders are not lacking information. They’re lacking activation. In this episode, you’ll hear Part 1 of our Provider to CEO Panel from ALT, featuring POP Leadership Academy members Jill Canes, Shannon Morrow, and Dr. Jill Goodman. Despite leading different businesses in different markets and stages of growth, they share a common thread: a commitment to investing in their leadership development and becoming the CEOs their businesses required them to be. We explore one of the biggest growth barriers business owners face: confusing knowledge with transformation. From conferences...
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In this episode of Business on Top, I’m talking about something I believe every founder eventually encounters whether they realize it or not: bombing season. This conversation is all about the seasons of business growth and why some of the most powerful leadership decisions are not about adding more… but about refining, simplifying, eliminating, and protecting what actually creates momentum. I share a recent conversation with one of my longtime clients, a multi seven-figure founder, who found herself in a season of strategic subtraction. Closing locations, ending partnerships,...
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In this episode, I’m diving into a conversation that I believe more female founders need to be having: financial intelligence, financial leadership, and why you should never outsource your awareness around money. As more women become primary breadwinners, scale businesses, and generate significant wealth, I think it’s incredibly important that we learn not just how to make money, but how to understand it, steward it, protect it, grow it, and direct it intentionally. In this episode, I share some of my own financial mistakes as a founder, the mindset shifts that changed my relationship with...
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In this episode of Business on Top, I’m sharing Leadership Lesson #4: Your Partner Cannot Support a Vision They Don’t Understand, a conversation about communication, advocacy, and what it really looks like to build alignment inside a relationship while pursuing ambitious goals. This episode is also Part 2 of the ALT husbands panel we shared last week, where we continue the conversation with an honest look into what support, trust, and partnership actually look like behind the scenes of building big businesses and ambitious lives together. I open up about the early days of building KLC,...
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In this episode of Business on Top, I’m diving into something that impacts nearly every woman building at a high level, but rarely gets talked about openly: the evolution of partnership as your business grows. You’ll hear a powerful panel conversation we hosted at ALT, where we intentionally brought husbands into the dialogue, not as outsiders to the business journey, but as a meaningful part of the ecosystem that supports it. This conversation is part one of a two-part discussion exploring what happens inside relationships as women step more fully into leadership, create wealth, expand...
info_outlineIn this week’s Fierce Factor episode let’s address the elusive ideology that we aren’t always the ones in control and how we as business owners don’t always have the ability to see through the clearest lense.
I routinely use the analogy that you can’t see the bottle from inside the label. Or the picture from inside the frame. It’s a perspective thing. That is why it is extremely valuable to bring someone you can trust in from the outside who understands your industry and your ambitions to help you see the bigger picture.
So often, we have a distorted view of what is actually going on in the business because we are in the eye of the storm. We are the eye of the storm.
Think about a hurricane… The eye of the hurricane feels completely justified and in control, it’s powerful, its magnetic, its commanding, it’s slowly executing its purpose. But what’s happening around it is chaos. A flurry of disruption that is creating a domino impact. Yet it’s all happening so organically that seems almost indestructible, in fact at times it seems purposeful. And so relating that back to your business, think about the central focus of your business. Similar to the experience of this client, it can be eerily deceiving that the things that once brought you value or you believe still are, are in fact the things that are becoming your biggest barrier to growth.
Success is a double edged sword. It’s so interesting that often the tools, strategies, and mindset that brings success will ultimately become the thing that needs to change to stimulate next level growth in the future.
And it makes sense. Because as business owners we are growing as humans. If we aren't really embracing and investing in this journey of personal growth, our business will never grow beyond us.
Too many times, I’ve witnessed strong, commanding, purposeful business owners become victims to their own storm they have created for themselves because they lose focus. They overlook or misvalue the importance of slowing down and really evaluating their business model.
As I’m reflecting on the past 15 weeks, this is a central idea for me. How can I create meaningful impact in the world that allows me to have freedom, influence, and autonomy at scale?
As you are planning for the future leader, I hope I can inspire you to think about your role in your business and the way you have shown up for your business in the past as a beautiful stepping stone to who are capable of becoming in the future.
Tune in to hear a powerful story of success, growth, and opportunity and how your addiction to progress may be both the catalyst AND the achilles heel to your ultimate fulfillment in business and life.
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