Rich Gee Business Coaching

If you are doing the work of five people, you don't have a team. You have dependents. Tom Hanks credited the great stage director Dan Sullivan with teaching him the absolute, non-negotiable baseline for professional ex*****on.

He didn’t talk about art, nuance, or finding motivation. He stripped the job down to its mechanical core:

"You got to show up. You got to be here on time. You got to know the text and you got to have an idea cuz I can't do this all myself."

Hanks wasn't describing excellence. He was describing the operating minimums required to have a seat at the table. Yet, in companies everywhere, owners are burnt out because they treat these basic tenets of employment as stretch goals for their team.

Read the full breakdown: https://www.richgee.com/articlesold/2026/7/3/the-tom-hanks-standard-stop-negotiating-the-minimum-requirements-of-the-job

The Tom Hanks Standard: Stop Negotiating the Minimum Requirements of the Job — Rich Gee Business Coaching If you are a manager negotiating with your team, you do not have a team. You have dependents. Here is how the Tom Hanks standard translates directly to business performance - and how to enforce it.

There’s a specific moment in my early coaching sessions when the defensiveness finally drops. I know it when I see it, and it's always a relief.

Recently, the owner of a local construction firm was sitting on Zoom with me. For weeks, it was all smiles and "we’re having a record quarter."

Then, the room got quiet. He leaned forward and admitted he felt completely trapped by his own success. He was doing $6 million in revenue but working 70-hour weeks, missing family dinners, and covering for an underperforming management team. He was exhausted.

That’s the moment the real work began.

It’s incredibly isolating to run a growing business. You feel like you have to have all the answers for your employees, your vendors, and your family. But you don't. Once this business owner realized he wasn't alone in feeling overwhelmed, we could actually start fixing the structural cracks in his business. We made the hard calls, restructured his team, and got his life back.

You don't have to carry the entire weight of your company by yourself.

Sound familiar? DM me.

Your best client is about to fire you.

The one you brag about because they "never complain." The one who just pays the invoice, doesn't ask for meetings, and stays completely hands-off.

You think silence means they're thrilled with your work. It doesn't. It means they have completely given up on you.

Friction is engagement. When a client stops demanding your time or pushing back on your ideas, they've already checked out.

They are quietly looking for your replacement.

Stop celebrating your quiet accounts. Take control, force the friction, and save the contract before they walk.

I just broke down exactly how to do this in my latest article. Read it here, then go fix your business: https://www.richgee.com/articlesold/2026/6/30/the-client-whos-quietly-leaving

That's what she told me. Arms crossed. Calendar jammed. Dead certain that one more commitment would be the thing that finally broke her.

So I made her a deal. Don't give me an hour. Don't give me your weekend. Give me 30 minutes. Every morning. Before the chaos kicks in.

That's it.

Two weeks in, something shifted. She stopped reacting and started leading. The fires that used to torch her afternoons? She saw them coming. The decisions she kept kicking down the road? Handled before 9am.

Thirty minutes a day didn't cost her time. It bought it back.

Here's the truth she didn't want to hear: she wasn't too busy for a coach. She was too busy because she didn't have one.

Most leaders think they can't afford the time to step back and think. Reality check - they can't afford not to. The work will always be there. The clarity won't, unless you build it.

So here's my challenge to you. Block 30 minutes tomorrow morning. Phone down, door closed, before the noise starts. Spend it on the one decision you've been avoiding.

Then DM me "CEILING" and tell me what came out of it. I'll show you what those 30 minutes can do when you run them with a coach in your corner.

The leaders who win don't find time. They take it.

If you're a business owner who's been stuck at the same number for more than a year, your Ceiling Score will tell you why. I can probably identify the bottleneck in 30 minutes. https://calendly.com/richgeegroup/chat-with-rich-gee-2026

Ten minutes into my first session with a new client this week, she said a sentence that broke my heart a little - because I hear it all the time from hard-working business owners.

"It’s just faster if I handle the final approvals myself."

We hadn't even finished the onboarding paperwork. But right then, I knew exactly why her business had been stuck at the exact same revenue mark for four long years.

She cares deeply about her company and her clients. But by trying to carry the weight of every final decision and every minor crisis on her own shoulders, she was completely exhausting herself.

Worse, she was unknowingly holding her capable team back from stepping up to the plate.

We all want things done right. But true growth requires trusting the people you've hired to do their jobs. You can't scale a business if you're still doing the heavy lifting of a middle manager. It’s time to step into real leadership and reclaim your life.

Are you trapping yourself in the weeds of your own business? Sound familiar? DM me.

Burn your 5-year plan. It’s completely useless if your daily operations are drowning you.

A second-generation service contractor recently handed me a "Strategic Vision" he paid a consulting firm five figures to build. Meanwhile, he was grinding 70-hour weeks, missing dinners with his family, and staring at flat revenue.

I told him to throw it in the trash. He didn't need a vision. He needed oxygen.

Instead of a massive overhaul, we instituted a targeted 90-day reset:

- Addition by Subtraction: We audited his roster and fired the bottom 15% of his clients—the energy vampires eating his margins.

- Smashing the Bottleneck: We stripped away his need to control every $50 purchase and permanently transferred that authority to his lead techs.

Within one quarter, he took back 20 hours of his week and profitability jumped 14%.

You don't lack work ethic, you lack focus. Stop confusing activity with progress and start taking massive, determined action on the friction points that are holding you back.

One quarter is enough time to completely change the trajectory of your business—if you know what to touch first.

Read exactly how to execute your own 90-Day Reset here: https://www.richgee.com/articlesold/2026/6/22/burn-your-5-year-vision-the-90-day-reset-that-will-save-your-business

Hustle culture is the biggest scam ever sold to small business owners. Working 70-hour weeks isn't a badge of honor. It's a warning sign.

The business owners I've seen grow the fastest work fewer hours than they did three years ago - not more. They just stopped doing the wrong things.

Hard work got you here. Strategy gets you to the next level. These are two completely different skills. Most people only develop one.

Agree? Disagree? Tell me where I'm wrong."

This is what happens when a business owner starts trusting their instincts and stops being a bottleneck. If you're curious about your own Ceiling Score, let's talk.