THE GRIP
mastery playbook
Weekly tools to multiply capacity, master constraints, & create what matters.
Get a grip on CREATING reality!
More Than Enough-Nothing Missing-Never Too Much
Sign up to receive these posts + MEMBERS-ONLY TOOLS & RESOURCES delivered to your inbox:
BRING ON THE NEGATIVITY!
Founders can win every external metric, the raise, the valuation, the exit, and still build a life that doesn’t work anywhere else. This issue breaks down why achievement and personal values operate on different reward timelines, using Clayton Christensen’s own test for measuring a life well-lived. It closes with a quarterly practice for closing the gap before drift becomes permanent.
CHASE THE METRICS, LOST THE LIFE
Founders can win every external metric, the raise, the valuation, the exit, and still build a life that doesn’t work anywhere else. This issue breaks down why achievement and personal values operate on different reward timelines, using Clayton Christensen’s own test for measuring a life well-lived. It closes with a quarterly practice for closing the gap before drift becomes permanent.
THE LEADER YOU HAVEN’T BECOME YET
This issue of The Grip explains why founders hit a growth ceiling that effort alone cannot move, tracing the real driver to perception and language rather than strategy. It outlines who source-level coaching serves, how it differs from business-only coaching, and what it costs to do the work. Written for mission-driven founders ready to build from something more stable than pure effort.
WHY FOUNDERS WHO MOVE FAST STILL GET STUCK
Founders who move fast can still find themselves stuck on a decision, launch, or quarter that won’t budge. This issue of The Grip draws on a conversation between Seth Godin and Steven Bartlett to offer seven principles for seeing a stalled situation differently and moving it forward again.
WORKING IT OUT
This issue of The Grip uses Phil Knight’s founding of Nike to show why the boldest founder moves often look reckless from the outside while actually being the clearest path forward. It distinguishes figuring things out mentally from working them out in motion, and names the real cost of blurring the two. Founders leave with a direct test for spotting which mode they’re actually in.
YOUR NEXT CHAPTER, BUILT IN ADVANCE
This issue of The Grip introduces a simple exercise for sketching three different versions of your future before a crisis forces your hand. Readers learn to test each path against honest criteria, spot which one actually has life in it, and choose their next chapter deliberately instead of reactively.
YOUR GREAT IDEA NEEDS A BEATING
This issue of The Grip explains why timing, not toughness, determines whether an idea survives criticism. It introduces a simple way to tell whether an idea currently needs protection or a real test, and how to choose who gets access to it at each stage. The result is a practical filter for turning feedback into strength instead of an early ending.
ARCHITECTING MORE THAN ENOUGH
The storehouse principle teaches that intentional founders build capacity before pressure arrives, not in response to it. This issue of The Grip Mastery Playbook identifies four domains where building a storehouse changes everything: financial, relational, operational, and inner. A practical audit helps founders identify where to build first and what becomes possible when they do.
WHO’S STANDING FOR YOUR GREATNESS?
The people most willing to tell you a hard truth are often the most valuable relationships in your life, and the ones founders most often distance themselves from. This issue of The Grip explores the strategic importance of truth-tellers: how to recognize them, why most high-achieving leaders lose access to them at scale, and what it looks like to stand for someone else's greatness when it counts.
BROKE YOUR WORD? DO THIS.
This issue of The Grip Mastery Playbook addresses the integrity gap between a founder's declared values and their team's lived experience. Becky Henderson introduces the distinction between keeping your word and honoring it: a leadership practice that goes beyond compliance to full restoration of trust when commitments are broken. Leaders who master this move build cultures where trust compounds instead of erodes.
ENGINEER YOUR MIRACLES
Reframe miracles as structurally produced outcomes, not random events. This issue teaches mission-driven founders that committing to an outcome beyond their current logic and getting into action before the "how" is figured out is the mechanism that produces miraculous results. It provides a two-part fundamentals framework and uses Sara Blakely's Spanx origin story as a case study in engineering the impossible.
YOUR PROPAGANDA IS SHOWING
Self-propaganda is a hidden mechanism where the brain constructs a prosecution file of confirming evidence for a disempowering narrative, then filters out contradictions, causing founders to lead from manufactured "data" rather than reality. This issue of The Grip exposes how the campaign gets built, the common disguises it wears ("I'm just being careful," "waiting for the other shoe to drop"), and provides a practical exercise for deconstructing it by locating the story's origin point and building counter-evidence.
UNREASONABLE RESPONSIBILITY
In turbulent change, founders don’t win by predicting. They win by creating. This issue shows how “wait and see” becomes quicksand, and how unreasonable responsibility restores clarity, momentum, and mission-aligned leadership when certainty is gone.
THE HIDDEN BENEFIT OF WHAT’S DRIVING YOU CRAZY
Some problems persist because they’re useful. This issue of The Grip helps founders spot the hidden payoff behind a repeating complaint, so they can stop “trying and stopping” and start choosing with clarity. You’ll leave with a simple sentence prompt that exposes what’s really driving the pattern.
WHY UPGRADING YOU SCALES THE BUSINESS
Coaching scales the business when it upgrades the founder. This issue of The Grip breaks down seven tangible ways coaching strengthens decision-making, execution, resilience, nervous system steadiness, and leadership impact. You’ll also get a coachability filter to assess whether you’re positioned to benefit from coaching’s ROI.
STOP TALKING YOURSELF OUT OF IT
Founders often delay on what they genuinely want, then their mind talks them out of it with “reasonable” logic. This issue shows how delay is a divided mind in action, and gives a simple process to shift who you are being so action becomes obvious. The result is cleaner momentum, restored self-trust, and faster mission progress.
THE PRESENT IS NOT YOUR ENEMY. RESISTANCE IS.
When you resist “what is,” you get pinned to it. Acceptance is not agreement, it’s the release of tension that restores leverage, calm, and strategic choice. This issue teaches a fast paired-phrase method to neutralize reaction so founders can see options and act decisively.
DON’T UPGRADE THE PRISON. BUILD THE PALACE.
Mission-driven founders often chase “better” and keep getting the same breakdown in a new suit. This issue of The Grip shows how recurring firefighting is usually a context problem, not a competence problem. Design a new game with new standards, ownership, and a leadership identity that creates ease and scale.
IF IT WERE SIMPLE, YOU’D ACT
Many founders don’t drown in work, they drown in self-made complexity. This issue exposes “complexity as a costume,” why simplicity can feel threatening, and how choosing simplicity as a discipline restores momentum, integrity, and execution that compounds.
THE HARD BREAK
This issue of The Grip shows why your nervous system, not your calendar, is the real bottleneck on your growth as a founder. Using Aaron Edelheit’s “hard break” story, it lays out how one protected weekly rest day becomes strategic infrastructure that restores health, clarity, and creativity so you can scale without coming apart.