The best compliment I’ve ever gotten came from my friend Steven, who said, “Whatever Craig puts his hands to grows.” I’ve been thinking about that since he said it. My whole story is really just having a knack, and an interest, for helping something reach its unique potential.
It started with music. A friend loaned me a guitar (a lot like the one I still keep next to my desk for between meetings) and we started writing songs and thinking, what’s the next step? That meant an album. Then playing shows. The band I was in got signed, and I spent a stretch on the road, recording, meeting other artists, wondering what it would take to help this band reach its potential.
Then we got to the point where the next step was just hitting the road hard, and I realized this wasn’t my sweet spot anymore. Not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. So I left, went back to school, graduated, and got the opportunity to start a daily devotional called First15.
The question there was: how do we help people wake up and start their day better, with more peace, more connection to God, a richer spirituality? Helping people reach their spiritual potential. That led into strategy, how do we get more people into this, then marketing, then leadership, and ultimately the CEO role. We grew the organization a lot over a few years.
And then I realized I was no longer the right fit. My particular version of being a green thumb wasn’t what that organization needed anymore. So I raised my hand and said I think I should exit and find what’s next.
That led me into consulting. Now I get to work with really large companies, $250 million organizations, and with Pat Lencioni and The Table Group as they launched Working Genius, all the way to startups and local nonprofits. Helping them get a sense of the potential for the business and for themselves as people, and building a good roadmap for scaling to it.
What I’ve realized is that consulting the last few years has been a sandbox for scratching an itch: how do you scale a company in a meaningful way, a good way? What does good growth look like, as opposed to shortcuts that get you faster revenue or a faster audience but don’t lead to real success for the company, don’t lead to health, and don’t help it reach its potential in a way that lasts? Sustainability is a huge facet of something reaching its potential. Otherwise it’s a flash in the pan.
That’s why I started Green Thumb Consulting. It’s the idea of having a green thumb for helping businesses and organizations scale, and wanting to help other people develop a green thumb for their own.
A few years in, I’m still in the sandbox and loving it. But this fall I had a sense that I’d like to start sharing some of these ideas with anyone who wants to be a green thumb for their own business, or inside the organization they work at, or who just wants to know how to help something grow to its potential, even outside of work. So I’m shifting some of my time away from client work and toward documenting what it looks like to help something grow.
If you’re in that place, where you’ve got something in front of you that can scale and should grow, and you’re trying to figure out how to do it in a healthy, sustainable way, not just by pouring in dollars and time and energy, that’s what I want to talk about. The lessons and case studies from the last few years: organizations with email lists over a million, revenue growth, teams that needed to grow, executive teams that needed to become cohesive. There’s a whole host of things that go into a healthy, growing organization, and I think people can develop a knack for it themselves.
I’ll share insights and lessons as often as I can, answer questions that come in, and hopefully have some real conversations about scaling organizations well. If that’s you, subscribe. Let’s explore what it looks like to become green thumbs for our organizations together.
— Craig