You go to the gym to get fit, not the other way around. Same for your numbers. Waiting for a good year before you think about exit gets the order backwards. Planning shows you where the business is weak, and working on those gaps is what lifts the numbers.

So does rain. An exit is a decision. "When it's time, I'll know" usually means the exit picks the moment for you: a health scare, a partner who wants out, a key person who leaves. You don't need an exit date to start planning. You just need to decide that you'll choose the moment.

Say "exit" and most people hear failing. Closing in distress is what happens when nobody planned. Plan early, and an exit can be a sale, a handover, a merger or a well-timed wind-down, on your own terms.

Running a business means choosing between good things. Steady income or room to experiment. Tight processes or space to try something new. You can’t sit on both ends of a seesaw at once, so the business tips one way, often without anyone deciding it should.

5 myths about business exits busted.

One day, right in the middle of a WOD, my body just... quit.

My right side seized up mid-rep. Cramped so hard I had to stop, drop the bar, and spend the next twenty minutes trying to talk my own leg out of a knot.

There is a particular kind of frustration that doesn't have a name yet.

It belongs to the founder who risked everything to build a product she believes in, who has done everything the playbook says, and is watching her runway shrink while the numbers refuse to move.

Before your customers are your customers, they take a leap of faith to engage with you to hear you out, click through to your website, or talk to someone to understand your brand a little more.

That leap of faith isn’t random and has a name. I call it Belief at First Touch.

It all begins with an idea.A couple of weeks ago, I met a stylist, let’s call her W. W is a cool person. She’s a yogi and she practices everyday rain or shine, she has an excellent eye for style and colour, she also has an inquisitive mind about life in general.

I took up a new hobby recently – rock climbing. It’s a movement sport, and one that requires you to be training your body up as you practice the sport. What this means is that on top of your climbing practices, you work in training to keep your performance on the walls optimal. Over time, I began to break down my workouts into these three areas:

I’ve always advocate that the head of company take on the role of a pacer for the organisation. What does a pacer do? She sets the momentum for the team. She sets a clear goal ahead, and she gears her team towards it but running alongside them, sometimes leading them, sometimes moving to the back to spur those lagging behind.