Find the full transcript at yourfuturerealized.com/116.

A client looked at me across Zoom recently, and said, “I just don’t want to get forgotten while I’m gone.”

She was five months pregnant—organized, working all hours. She’d been chasing a promotion all year and wanted to prove she was ready before stepping away. So she pushed harder: wrapping every project, mentoring her backup, rewriting SOPs.

The harder she pushed, the less room there was to breathe… or even wonder what might matter after the baby came. One day she said, almost whispering:

“What if I don’t even want this when I get back?”

That’s when it was clear we had to stop talking checklists and start talking about space.

In this episode, you’ll get a simple approach to design your last 90 days before mat leave so you and your team are ready—without you working straight through to labor.

Find the full transcript, and more resources for operations executives, at YourFutureRealized.com/115.

Once upon a time, a team of rainmaking sales leads were landing big sales. And the company would ring a loud bell to celebrate every close.

But over time, the culture leaned harder on their “close at all costs” style. Downstream, operations was drowning in promises no one had checked, stuck playing “the bad guy” with furious clients.

Those rainmakers were under big pressure to keep revenue flowing, so they’d take the shortest path they knew. That meant skipping reality checks. Resentment grew, scalability tanked. Growth stalled on these few irreplaceable stars.

It’s a common tale: rainmakers making it rain, everyone else mopping up the flood. In this episode, learn simple ways to speak up from the ops seat—bravely, tactfully, and without blowing things up, starting today. .

Find the full transcript, and more resources for operations executives, at YourFutureRealized.com/114.

There’s this story about Prince at the 2007 Super Bowl halftime show, and it goes like this: Right before he went on, people were worried about the rain. It was pouring. The director called him and said, “Hey, it’s really starting to come down—are you okay?” Prince’s answer simply was:

“Can you make it rain harder?”​

I love this story. It’s not just showbiz swagger. It’s a mindset. And it’s the kind of energy I want for operations leaders: you don’t hide from the storm, you face it. You’re willing to look at the chaos with clear eyes, and a low center of gravity, and say, “Okay, then, bring it on.”

In this episode, you’ll hear how to build that kind of steady confidence and use small reinventions to keep going no matter what’s coming at you.