As a kid, rebellion looked like rock music, late nights, middle fingers to the system, and living life on my own terms. It was doing the opposite of what I felt "the system" or my parents or school expected of me. Now? It looks like waking up early, drinking a gallon of water, hitting two workouts, eating clean, taking cold showers, reading and learning, stacking and attacking high priority tasks, and doing it all again the next day, every day. Why? I...
I grew up watching the ‘90s Bulls like they were a religion. Michael Jordan was unstoppable. Pippen was smooth. Rodman was wild. And in the middle of that controlled chaos was Phil Jackson: the calm one, the Zen master, the coach who somehow got all these alpha personalities to play as a championship team. I didn’t realize it back then, but Phil Jackson was teaching leadership. His book Eleven Rings is one of the best guides I’ve read on managing people, aligning...
I’ve been reading three wildly different books lately. Charlie Munger’s Poor Charlie’s Almanack, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethic, and Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces. One is a billionaire investor’s collection of mental models. One is ancient Greek philosophy about virtue and the good life. One is a Nobel Prize–winning physicist explaining the foundations of reality to undergraduates. Not exactly a normal business reading stack. But taken together, they provide some great reminders and ideas. Good outcomes require visible thinking. Failure is usually predictable. And progress depends...
If you run a services business, you’ve probably heard this before:“We trust you. Just keep doing what you’re doing.”At first, that feels great.No micromanaging. No constant questions. No second guessing. Just freedom to do your work and deliver results.But here’s the uncomfortable truth I’ve learned the hard way.Trust without reciprocal effort is not a strategy. It’s a delay. And eventually, it becomes a problem.A successful client relationship is not built on blind trust. It’s built on shared understanding, clear expectations,...
The AI revolution in marketing is here. And it's making everything worse. Not because the technology is bad. Because we're using it wrong. Walk through LinkedIn right now. Post after post of AI-generated "insights" that say nothing. Open your inbox. Email after email that's clearly templated, personalized with your name but obviously mass-produced. Visit competitor websites. Blog after blog that reads like it was written by the same algorithm. The technology got better. The marketing got worse. This is the paradox we're living in...
The last five years broke every marketing playbook ever created. 2020: A global pandemic emptied offices overnight. In-person events vanished. Sales cycles stretched. Budgets evaporated. Marketing teams scrambled to figure out virtual everything while wondering if their jobs would survive the quarter. 2021-2022: The pendulum swung hard. E-commerce exploded. Digital ads got more expensive. Everyone became an "expert" in short-form video. Then came the algorithm changes (weekly, it seemed) making yesterday's winning strategy today's wasteful spend. 2023: Layoffs swept through tech. Marketing departments...
