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One of the greatest morale boosters in business costs absolutely nothing. A genuine, specific, and thoughtful compliment. Making your people feel seen, heard, and valued. And don’t wait for the annual review to tell someone they did great work 10 months ago. Morale tanks because people do hard work and feel invisible. The fix is free. Use it.

"There is a cost to ambition." That line from Meryl Streep in the new Devil Wears Prada has been looping in my head for a week. From the outside, ambition looks a certain way. Titles. Growth. Visibility. Bigger opportunities. People see the highlight reel. What they don't see are the trade-offs. The long hours. The uncertainty. The sacrifices. The stress. The risks. The social life that quietly thins out while you're building. The part where you fail, pick yourself up, fail a

"You're dumb." I look up from my math problem. It's my teacher. "Dhana, you've mixed up the numbers again. You're not going to amount to anything." I am 14. I believe her. What nobody knew, including me, was that I had dyslexia. I wouldn't discover that until years later, after moving to the West. The school system wasn't built for how my brain worked. I just thought I was the problem. Fast forward a decade. "You're brilliant." I look up from my computer. I'm deep in a comple

Dhana Kannan, London, around the time the empty room was waiting. London. Fresh out of business school. Sleeping on a friend's floor. I am scanning Gumtree, which is the British version of Craigslist, looking for a flat on one hand and a job on the other. This is not a glamorous chapter. I call about a listing. The girl on the other end tells me that room is gone. But she has another one. Not quite finished yet. I say I'll come look anyway. I walk into an empty room. Complete

I was 24, perched on a thrift-store couch, clutching a navy flip-phone like a lifeline. The New York area code on the caller ID felt like a golden ticket. I’d already picked out the apartment I couldn’t afford. This role was the cornerstone of my imaginary Manhattan life. I had prepared until my eyes were bloodshot. Notes filled every inch of my legal pad. I had answers for questions they hadn't even formulated yet. The interview was a rhythm. A dance. I was hitting every bea

Last Friday. My desk. 11am. I open my content calendar and stare at my list of topics for this week. I start scrolling. Too basic. Skip. Everyone knows this. Skip. Why would I even post that. Skip. I get to the bottom of the list. I have skipped everything. I close the laptop. I get up and find something, anything, to do that is not writing. I stare out the window. I come back to the desk. I open the laptop again. Same list. Same feeling. I scroll through my old Kindle highli

11:00 PM. Back seat of an Uber. One earbud in. I was half-listening to Jason Calacanis on This Week in Startups, mostly zoning out from exhaustion. Then I heard it. A coffee brand with one item on the menu. A flat white. Order anything else and they will tell you to leave. The brand name? "Flat White or F**k Off." I laughed out loud. My Uber driver glanced at me in the mirror. But then I could not stop thinking about it. Most brands study their competitors and ask: "What are

I had 10 minutes to prepare for a role I'd never done before. It was 5:25 PM. My speaking club meeting started in five minutes. A senior member walked up to me. "Dhana, you're the grammarian today." "I've never done that before." He handed me a folder. "Read this. You're up in ten minutes." I panicked. But also... I love a good challenge. Ten minutes later I was at the podium, explaining the role as if I knew what I was doing. Then I sat back down and carried on as grammarian

The first time I launched a business, I spent weeks obsessing over my logo. Not weeks building my customer base. Not weeks refining my value proposition. Weeks on a logo. I was tweaking colors, adjusting spacing, and agonizing over font weights that no customer would ever notice and no sale would ever depend on. When I finally showed a few friends and family, one of them looked at two versions side by side and asked: "Is this one of those puzzles where you find the six differ

The concept for the modern Starbucks coffeehouse did not come from a coffee industry conference. It came from a trip to Italy. Howard Schultz walked into an espresso bar in Milan in 1983 and saw something that did not exist back home. He brought it back anyway. Hero Cosmetics was born the same way. Co-founder Ju Rhyu was living in Seoul as an expat when she discovered acne patches, which were standard in Korea but completely absent in the U.S. She saw the gap and filled it. N

I used to believe leadership belonged to the loudest voices in the room. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight was the first thing that cracked that open for me. I read it about 11 years ago while working on my first side hustle: a book I was writing. What struck me most wasn't just the story of Nike. It was the personality of its founder. Phil Knight describes himself as deeply introverted and shy. Yet he built one of the most iconic brands in history. Today, when people meet me, they oft

I used to think trust had to be earned. Then I ran a business across three time zones. And I realized: in global operations, "Trust Earned" isn't a leadership style. It's a cash flow problem. When my warehouse manager in Taiwan needed to make a call and had to wait for me to wake up in North America, that shipment was already late. Every "let me check with Dhana" costs: - 8-12 hours minimum, sometimes 24 - One frustrated partner - One more thing I was

Some of the best COOs I've ever met don't have the title on their LinkedIn, or a LinkedIn at all. No C-suite title. No executive salary. No corner office. They’re running "organizations" we just happen to call families. Their daily to-do list is a masterclass in operations: Meal planning = Supply chain management Emotional regulation = Culture leadership Remembering everyone's birthday = A fully operational CRM Managing the calendar = Complex logistics coordination. They are

I was the biggest threat to my company's growth. Early days of my last company. Hard truth. My business was my baby. I touched every decision, every detail, every email. I told myself: - No one cared as much as I did. - That it was faster if I just did it myself. - I’ll delegate when things "calm down." Newsflash: things never calm down. I wasn't a CEO. I was a bottleneck wearing six job titles. There's nothing wrong with being a solopreneur. But building something scalable,

The wedding I almost missed and what it taught me about rest I thought taking a break would slow me down. It did the opposite. Last week, I attended a dear friend's wedding. The timing felt impossible. My calendar was full. My brain was full. My to-do list had its own to-do list. I was working right up until the moment I had to leave the house. Laptop open. One more email. One more “quick thing.” Translation: I was probably flirting with burnout. But I went anyway. For a few

Stop spending $1,000/hour energy on $20/hour problems. Some CEOs treat a 20% retention drop and choosing office snacks with the same intensity. By noon, their decision capital is bankrupt. Mark Zuckerberg wore the same t-shirt every day to protect his brain power. Michele Romanow states that after 100 decisions a day, even choosing from a dinner menu feels impossible. That's decision fatigue. And it's costing you more than you think. I learned this the hard way, so I built th

Best negotiation tip? Say what you need to say… then stop talking. Humans fear silence more than taxes. Give it a few seconds and the other person will confess their budget, discounts and possibly their childhood trauma.

As a founder, you are the best influencer your business will ever have. Pre-revenue or $500M, it doesn’t matter. No agency, no creator, and no ad spend can compete with your level of obsession. No one will ever sell your vision with the same fire. But that’s also the problem. Passion is a great sales tool, but it’s a terrible scaling strategy. -- As a fractional COO, I help founders build companies that don’t require their soul as collateral. I turn your "founder magic" into

I am trading my comfort zone for a microphone this year. Goal: get better at public speaking. In January, I joined Toastmasters International. So far, I have tackled three impromptu talks. Every time I walk to the front of the room, those few seconds of silence between the question and my first word feel like an eternity. My mind immediately spirals: What if I freeze? What if I have nothing to say? What if this is painfully awkward? Then the adrenaline kicks in and I just sta

Saying "No" to a $50k deal was the best thing I did last year. Not every customer is worth winning. Not every deal is worth closing. In SaaS, some customers demand endless custom work, eat up your support team, and then churn in 30 days. The math never works. In services, some clients drain your team, disrespect boundaries, and delay payments. No revenue number makes that sustainable. Growth doesn’t come from saying "Yes" to everyone. It comes from serving the right ones exce