Entrepreneurs and leaders say it all the time. “It’s just business.” It sounds clean. It sounds logical. It sounds professional. But what it really does is rank value. In a recent video, I shared a story about ending a long-term friendship after a client told me they could no longer afford my services. We had been friends for years. For the last stretch of that friendship, I was also their vendor. When the work ended, so did the relationship. The phrase they used was familiar.

“It’s just business.”

In business, leadership, and relationships, emotional intelligence has become a buzzword. We praise people who can read a room, name feelings, and understand what is happening beneath the surface. That skill matters. It just is not the whole story. Emotional intelligence is awareness. Emotional maturity is responsibility. In this video, I describe emotional intelligence as having a map of the terrain. You can see where the cliffs are. You know where things are dangerous. Emotional maturity is being able to walk that terrain without pushing yourself or someone else off a cliff.

Many entrepreneurs and leaders live with a quiet, constant question in their nervous system. “Did I do something wrong?” That feeling has a name. Socialized anxiety. In this video, I use a moment from Alice in Wonderland to explain it. The Cheshire Cat tells Alice, “We’re all mad down here.” Alice looks up and says, “At me?!?” That is socialized anxiety in one line.

It sounds harmless. Someone tells you they love apple pie with cheddar cheese. You say, “Ew.” But what you really just said was, “You are wrong for liking that.” That is called yucking someone’s yum, and it is one of the fastest ways to kill intimacy, creativity, and trust. In my recent video, I talk about how sharing something you love is an emotional offering. Whether it is food, music, a hobby, a kink, or a dream, the moment someone says, “I like this,” what they are really saying is, “Here is a piece of me.”

“I’m so blessed.” It is one of the most common ways people express happiness and success. It sounds warm, humble, and positive. But there is something hidden inside that word. “Blessed” suggests that someone or something decided you were worthy. That your family, your health, your home, and your success were somehow earned at a cosmic level. The problem is not gratitude. The problem is implied deservingness. If one person is blessed, what does that mean about the person who is not?

Entrepreneurs and event planners both know this truth. People do not leave companies or experiences because of bad strategy. They leave because something felt unsafe, awkward, or unseen. Most of that discomfort comes down to one simple thing. Boundaries. In my upcoming book The Relationable Toolkit, Tool No. 3 is called The Fence. It is about how we define where we end and someone else begins, and how we navigate those differences with respect. Here is the core idea.

One of the hardest emotional tasks for humans is saying goodbye to someone we love.

As a child, I moved constantly. New towns. New schools. New friends. Over and over again. I also moved between parents, which meant repeated separation from people I cared about. Somewhere along the way, my nervous system learned a workaround. If you pick a fight, goodbye hurts less. This coping strategy is called defensive devaluation. It works by turning someone from deeply valued into temporarily unbearable. Anger replaces grief. Conflict replaces sadness. And suddenly, separation feels survivable.

Chameleoning is an informal psychology term that describes adapting to fit in. And like most relational behaviors, it can be healthy or harmful depending on what is being adjusted. Healthy chameleoning is situational. You read the room. You dress for the event. You adapt your tone or behavior out of respect and awareness. Nothing essential about who you are is lost. Unhealthy chameleoning happens when adaptation crosses into self erasure.

For much of my life, I rejected the word victim. Not because harm did not occur. It did. I experienced abuse from both of my parents in different ways. What I did not understand until much later was that the resistance came from what the word implied to me. Victim felt like complicity. Like weakness. Like I should have been smarter, stronger, or more capable of stopping what happened.

Every culture, whether it’s a company, a family, or a friend group, runs on rules — spoken or unspoken. Rules are the invisible agreements that tell you how to behave, what’s acceptable, and how to move forward together. Some rules live in employee handbooks and contracts, but the most powerful ones live in the air between us.  A strong rulebook doesn’t need to be written in legalese or printed on laminated cards. It lives in the rhythm of your team: How you handle conflict, celebrate wins, and even how you talk to each other when things go wrong. Done right, such rules become a shared promise, a living agreement that evolves as the culture evolves. 

The word “rules” makes a lot of people uncomfortable. It feels rigid. Limiting. Like structure will somehow kill connection. But imagine sitting down to play Monopoly, throwing away the rule book, and saying, let’s just see what happens. That is how many relationships operate. Rules are not about control. They are about clarity. In healthy relationships, rules live inside a simple cycle. A rule exists. Someone makes a mistake. A conversation follows. That conversation generates new ideas. Those ideas turn into agreements. And once agreed upon, they become the new rules. The cycle repeats.

What Does It Mean to Be Relationable? Most organizations do not fail because of bad ideas. They struggle because relationships break down. That realization is what led me to create the word Relationable. Relationable describes the capacity to build, sustain, and repair healthy relationships through self awareness, emotional intelligence, clear boundaries, and intentional communication. This applies to individuals, families, teams, and entire organizations.

Winning the Moment vs. Winning the Relationship Entrepreneurs and leaders are taught to win. Win the deal. Win the argument. Win the room. But leadership rarely fails because someone did not fight hard enough. It fails because someone chose being right over being effective. Every conflict presents a quiet crossroads.

Most people believe they know how to apologize. But many apologies fail, not because the moment was too big, but because responsibility was quietly avoided. A real apology sounds like this: “I’m sorry I hurt you.” A backhanded apology sounds like this: “I’m sorry you got upset.” The difference matters.

Resolutions Are Not About Behavior. They Are About Direction. Every January, we make promises to ourselves. Work harder. Earn more. Be better. And every year, many of those resolutions quietly fade. That is because resolutions are not really about behavior. They are about orientation. The real question is not what you will do differently this year. It is which way you are pointing your energy, attention, and ambition. A helpful framework for this comes from how we relate to work and income.

One of the most surprising moments in leadership is when someone you have supported, guided, or mentored suddenly turns on you. They challenge your decisions. They nitpick your words. They react strongly to advice they used to seek. It feels personal. It feels ungrateful. It feels like something broke. Often, nothing broke at all. What you are witnessing is differentiation.

On the surface, “let’s put a pin in that” sounds reasonable. It sounds efficient. It sounds like good meeting management. Emotionally, it often does the opposite. That phrase usually lands as dismissal. It stops momentum without explaining why. It defers responsibility while quietly telling the other person that where they were going does not matter right now. In leadership, that moment matters more than we think.

Most leadership breakdowns are blamed on ego, control, or misalignment. But underneath many of those issues is something simpler and harder to admit: discomfort when someone finds fulfillment that does not involve us. There is a concept that helps untangle this. It is called compersion. The term was coined in the mid nineteen seventies in a San Francisco commune and is often described as the opposite of jealousy. Compersion means feeling genuine happiness for someone else’s joy, even when you are not the source of it.

Trauma bonding is a term that gets used casually, and often incorrectly. The confusion is understandable, but the consequences of misunderstanding it can be serious. Many people believe trauma bonding means connecting with someone who shares similar painful experiences. Two people who were abused. Two leaders who burned out. Two employees who survived a toxic workplace. That is not trauma bonding.

Infidelity is one of the most feared experiences in a relationship. People talk about it as if it is the definite ending, the moment everything falls apart. But the truth is more nuanced. Many relationships survive infidelity. Some even grow stronger afterward. So why do some couples make it through, and others do not?