Derek Weber

“Soooo, do you sleep?” – the most common response upon hearing what all I’m working on: running marketing and real estate investment companies, launching a not-for-profit, buying/renovating a new house, all while raising two high energy kids and trying to be a good husband. Besides the fact that I don’t spend much time on social media or watching TV, I’m able to produce at a consistently high level predominantly because I have spent the last …

How to Be Just as Productive While Working From Home Keep Reading »

The biggest challenge I’m facing right now with the work from home situation is the lack of contrast. Every day, all day it’s the same scene of trying to juggle the work, the kids, the schooling, the marriage…all in the same house, all the time. Where before “going to work” and “coming home” created separate disparate spaces, now all the same. Dark needs light. Good needs evil. Home needs work and work needs home. Without …

Working From Home: Really Hard Until I Did These Things Keep Reading »

I’ve never been too good at sitting still, a trait that earned me the well deserved childhood nickname of Wild Man, a trait that garners a “paybacks are a b!+<#” from my parents and siblings as my kids literally bounce from wall to wall.    Although I knew I needed to relax and take time off, and recognized how much more clearly I saw problems afterwards, I always felt guilty and wasteful not being productive…until …

Get Busy Doing Nothing Keep Reading »

I love Southern California and try to get out there as often as possible. There’s something about the LA beach towns that invigorate and inspire me. We recently took the whole fam out to CA and did the full kid circuit: Disneyland, California Adventure, LEGOLAND, the beach, the ocean…the whole thing.   As my wife and I watched the kids jumping up and down and running around on the beach and into the freezing cold …

Oh to Be a Kid Again… Keep Reading »

Growing up on a dairy farm, hard work is literally part of my DNA. Early on in my entrepreneurial journey when I’d go home and complain about my 80 hour week, my dad reminded me he did that by Thursday.    As a kid, I’d often remind him my game was working smarter, not harder…at which point he would just shake his head and walk away. What I know now, it is about working smarter …

Easier to Work Hard than to Think Hard Keep Reading »

There’s a big push by some business celebrities promoting just work harder and harder, longer and longer. Don’t have the outcomes you want, put in more hours. Don’t like your life, you’re not working hard enough.   Although I do believe a lot of people don’t understand how hard/long you do have to work to achieve anything of merit, this hustle porn people are addicted to, somewhat misses the point.   It’s not only about …

Do-Do-Do Mindset Will Get You in Deep Doo-Do Keep Reading »

Over the years, I’ve experimented with many different approaches to find a delegation style that works best for me…which means first finding a lot of ways that don’t work along the way:   Delegation ≠ Abdication. It doesn’t work well for them when I just toss it over the fence without direction or follow up.    Delegation ≠ Micromanagement. It doesn’t work for me (or them) to hand it off and then be all up …

When Delegation Disappoints…and Delights Keep Reading »

The beauty of owning a marketing and branding company is when there is no word in the English language to describe a thought or feeling we want to convey…we just make it up.   It took our leadership team many, many hours to succinctly put in words the feelings we had when we were doing things just right, but it all came together with our purpose statement of: “Fostering empowergized leadership to spark transformational change.” …

The Empowergizing Leader Keep Reading »