When Growth Stops Feeling Like Progress

When Growth Stops Feeling Like Progress

Don Vanpool
Published on: 14/01/2026

Growth eventually exposes the limits of personal effort. Step 4 of the Five Steps to Freedom helps owners and executives replace heroics with systems—creating clarity, discipline, and real operational freedom without bureaucracy.

Leadership Development
Running a World-Class Monthly Operating Review: Where Strategy Meets Reality

Running a World-Class Monthly Operating Review: Where Strategy Meets Reality

Don Vanpool
Published on: 08/01/2026

Most Monthly Operating Reviews (MORs) are status updates, not management tools. A world-class MOR turns data into decisions, accountability into action, and strategy into results.

Leadership Development
The CEO Who Almost Quit

The CEO Who Almost Quit

Don Vanpool
Published on: 19/12/2025

How clarity and rhythm turned chaos into control — and freedom

Leadership Development
Giving Back Where It Started: Judging the FSC Shark Tank Pitch Competition at Catapult Lakeland

Giving Back Where It Started: Judging the FSC Shark Tank Pitch Competition at Catapult Lakeland

Don Vanpool
Published on: 12/12/2025

Proud to give back to Florida Southern College as a judge for the BUS 1115 Shark Tank pitch competition at Catapult Lakeland. Impressed by the students’ clarity, creativity, and communication—proof that strong business fundamentals matter at every stage.

Leadership Development