Work wasn’t something my family talked about… it was our life. My parents owned a car dealership and a farm. My maternal grandfather farmed five thousand acres. Long hours and hard work weren’t virtues. It was our identity.
I started working at nine years old. I’d walk to my paternal grandfather’s carpet and upholstery shop after school, and work. A few years later I was working in the farm fields of central Michigan. At sixteen I secured my first loan to buy a truck to resell, and turned that into a side business, while continuing to work in the family business until college.
From college I went straight into full-time ministry. Survived an explosion. Rebuilt. Returned to ministry. Then crossed into the corporate world: first marketing, then directing a team managing twelve magazine titles, then leading a group of brand managers working with nearly three hundred celebrities and influencers, building affiliate and ambassador programs that generated millions.
By every external measure, it was a remarkable run. But somewhere in the middle of all that success, I learned the hardest lesson: no amount of achievement, influence or momentum can substitute for the internal formation that sustains it. The outside was growing. The inside was not keeping pace.
That gap is what I now give my life to closing in the leaders I coach.
First and foremost, a child of the Most High. My non-negotiables are daily prayer, reading, growth and serving. I’m dad to three remarkable sons. My favorite hours are spent fly fishing, on a dirt bike or with leaders doing serious work on serious things.
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