Growth Instigators Hotline
Welcome to the Growth Instigators Hotline, where we ignite your personal and professional development. For more resources, visit growthinstigators.com. Keep instigating growth in all you do.
Episodes
568 episodes
You’re Closer Than You Think
You know that frustrating season where you’re working hard, showing up, doing the right things, and still wondering if any of it is actually working? This short Growth Instigators Hotline message is a calm, direct reminder that the work is not ...
Financial Clarity For Leaders
The scariest part of money in leadership is rarely the math. It’s the feeling that we should already understand it, and the quiet shame that creeps in when we don’t. We name that reality head on: finances can feel heavy, complicated, and oddly ...
Exhaustion Is A Signal
Bone-deep exhaustion is not a personality trait, and it’s not the entry fee for leadership. I’m Aaron Havens, and I’m taking on the cultural lie that says grind is noble and constant fatigue proves you care. If you’re doing everything “right” b...
Stop Avoiding The Coach
That one name you keep ignoring isn’t a scheduling problem. It’s a mirror. Today we dig into the uncomfortable moment when a coach, mentor, advisor, or truth-telling friend reaches out and your first instinct is to disappear. If you’ve got an e...
Clarity Is The Gift
Clarity is one of those leadership moves that feels almost too simple, until you see what it fixes. We talk about the kind of generosity that doesn’t show up as praise, perks, or pay: giving your team actual, specific, repeatable clarity about ...
Say No To Save Your Weekend
Friday at 4 p.m., you can see the finish line. Your mind is already at dinner, the game, the couch, whatever freedom looks like for you. Then it hits: an email, a text, a “quick question” that somehow never stays quick. I talk through the most ...
Let Them Take The Shot
The fastest way to keep things “under control” is to take the shot yourself. It’s also one of the fastest ways to cap the people around you. I’m talking about that tense leadership moment when you can see the opportunity, you suspect they’re re...
Build The System
You know the feeling: you see the mistake coming, you wave your arms, you try to stop it, and the damage happens anyway. The frustrating part isn’t just the mess, it’s the belief that it all could’ve been avoided if people simply listened. We s...
The Five-Second Pause
You don’t fall because you’re careless. You fall because you’re moving fast enough that the warning signs blur into the background. We tell a quick story about climbing a ladder that feels familiar: you’ve done it a thousand times, you’re compe...
When Your Business Becomes Your Boss
Monday can feel like a clean slate until you open your calendar and realize you are already behind. We start with a blunt question that cuts through the noise: are you working for your company, or is your company working for you? If you built a...
Fri-yay!!
A quiet Friday can feel like a myth when you are leading a growing company. The week ends, your inbox is still on fire, and you carry twenty unresolved problems into the weekend. We want something else: a Friday where the business behaves, the ...
Competence Is Not Character
You can like someone, trust their intentions, and still end up with a role that keeps failing. We dig into the leadership blind spot that causes so many hiring and delegation mistakes: assuming good character equals job competence. I’m Aaron Ha...
The Quiet Drift
Things don’t fall apart with fireworks. They fall apart quietly, one “tiny” decision at a time. A shortcut that saves five minutes. A standard you loosen because it doesn’t seem necessary today. A detail that stops mattering because nobody is c...
Cash Flow Truth
You can have a growing business, solid revenue, and “profit” on the books and still be one bad stretch away from missing payroll. That is why we get blunt about the only number that tells the truth: cash. Real cash in and out, week by week, not...
Leave Better Than They Arrived
If someone on our team quit tomorrow, would they walk away better than when they arrived or just relieved it’s over? That question sounds harsh, but it’s one of the clearest mirrors a leader can look into. We dig into what it really means to de...
Break The Pattern
The same challenge keeps circling back, and it’s starting to feel personal. We lean into “message 555” as a simple but powerful metaphor for repeating patterns in life and leadership: the same mistakes, the same stress points, the same wall you...
They blame themselves
The most common reason we avoid writing processes has nothing to do with time. It’s guilt. That inner voice that says standards feel controlling, documentation feels corporate, and if we truly trusted our people we wouldn’t need structure at al...
Yes?
Every leader has a moment where the calendar looks full, the brain feels loud, and progress still feels strangely slow. That’s usually not a discipline problem. It’s a clarity problem. We dig into the quiet force that derails great people: sayi...
You and the team
The most tempting leadership move is also one of the most expensive: stepping in to fix what someone else is struggling with. When we see the answer, we jump in, solve it fast, and tell ourselves we’re being helpful. But there’s a line between ...
Set up for success
Crises rarely come out of nowhere. Most of the time, they show up right where we have been procrastinating: the missing checklist, the unwritten standard, the “we’ll fix it later” process that never gets documented. I talk through a leadership ...
What If Slowing Down Is The Fastest Path Forward
Momentum can be a trap. We talk about the leadership pattern that looks like productivity from the outside but feels like spinning your wheels on the inside: waking up, grabbing your phone, and sprinting through emails, calls, decisions, and pr...
You or your company?
You can be doing “everything right” and still end up building a life you don’t want. If your business was supposed to create freedom but now feels like a cage, this short message is a direct gut check: what are you actually building right now w...
Behave
The most underrated milestone in leadership is not growth or hype, it’s reliability. We’re talking about the moment the business you built starts to “behave”: the team knows what to do without chasing you down, the systems hold when pressure hi...
Your Name Is Not A Logo
Your name is doing work even when you’re not in the room. The question is whether it’s working for you or against you. In Message 547 of the Growth Instigators Hotline, we dig into the difference between being known and being trusted and why a ...
