Category Archives: Uncategorized

Boys without dads don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.

I could steal from my mom, cheat on tests or fight at school. I could treat people how I wanted.

My behavior wasn’t my fault. I’d been abandoned by all the fathers I’d had. I was damaged goods.

That was how I saw things most of my life. It wasn’t until my 30’s that I realized I had been telling myself the wrong story all along. I wasn’t a fatherless child. I’ve had three fathers who have each given me a gift which helped me grow into the man I am. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

As if there weren’t enough people holding my feet to the fire, now my grade-school aged kids are doing it.

I asked them to.

The other day I was driving from the gym home and I started noticing how many people were texting while they were driving. I counted. In a seven mile drive I counted 15 people typing on their phones or reading while they were driving. There was a 16th woman who appeared to be watching a video her friend was holding for her as she drove. I didn’t count her.

I am not judging these people. I do it all the time..

My wife calls me out on it. She pointed out that the kids see me do it and soon they will be driving. They are learning by watching. I decided I wanted to change my behaviors. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

Would your team march across a scorching desert to help you reach a goal?

One of the most important and most difficult things we must do as leaders is to motivate and create loyalty in the people we lead.

Many leaders try to solve this through talking. But pep talks are the five-hour energy drinks of motivation. They fire people up for a bit, then wear off. And as with caffeine, your team builds up a tolerance to your “come-to-Jesus” talks. They get less and less effective.

But there is another way.

Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

My five-year-old nephew beats me at cards sometimes. We play “War.” We face off and flip cards. The player with the higher card wins. We keep going until one of us has all the cards. It is completely random and involves no decisions, and therefore no strategy. He wins sometimes. I win sometimes.

Contrast this with chess. Chess is all decisions and no random chance. In fact, each turn a player might have to choose from six good moves.. That means over the course of a typical game, a player would make 10⁷⁷ decisions. That is roughly the number of particles in the observable universe.

Where there are decisions, there can be strategy. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

When I was a police officer, I had a partner. She came from another agency where she had been the first female member of their SWAT team and a detective. By the time I met her, she had done way more as a cop than I ever would. She was one of the three or four people in my career that really wanted to teach me how to be a better cop. When we worked together, I often deferred to her knowledge and experience. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

You say “yes” way too often.

One of the reasons Americans lead busy lives, running from one thing to another, stressed out, doing just enough to get the job done but not really excelling at anything, is that we say yes too much.

I fall into the same trap. Between client work, business development opportunities, time with my wife, fitness, friends, oh and sleep, my life can get full in a minute. I can tell it’s happened when I wake up in the middle of the night, remembering something I was supposed to do or a meeting I missed. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

A few weeks back, I was in the doctor’s office waiting room with one of my children. I heard a father talking to his young daughter. She was teary-eyed because he had told her she had to get a shot. “It won’t hurt at all,” he told her. “You won’t even feel it.”

I wasn’t sure what kind of shot she was getting but I remember thinking to myself, “Bullshit!! Shots hurt.” Especially for a kid. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

I don’t remember the first divorce. I was three-years-old. All I knew was that my dad left and I missed him.

The second divorce is burned into my memory. Well maybe not the entire thing, as a ten year old I missed all the behind the scenes stuff. But I remember the night they told me. I remember them coming into my room as I was going to bed, their long shadows in the hallway light.

I remember that I didn’t understand any of it. All I knew was that I was losing something special. I was losing another dad.

Over the last decade, I’ve paid attention as friends and acquaintances started divorcing, and I’ve found a pattern. In just about every case, the husbands weren’t leaders in their family. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.

When I was working as a cop, it seemed that there was a time when everyone I ran into claimed to be an MMA fighter. “I’m a pro fighter,” they’d tell me. The problem was, that I was a fighter. I had about 20 fights. I wasn’t great — I was on TV once and no one saw it, besides I lost so I am glad — but I knew who the local fighters were. I’d never heard of any of those guys. Read More

LIKE IT? SHARE IT.