I was in my early 20s when my best friend Matt told me to get a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen. He was right. I tore through the book. And I’ve read or skimmed my highlights at least 100 times since. (Matt's reading advice is always on point.) It’s not hype. It’s practical. And it changed the way I manage nearly everything. One idea from that book still guides me every single day. It’s strange at first, but once it...
For years, I held back. Early in my career, I taught, coached, and wrote about leadership. I led college student teams, consulted for organizations, and even wrote a regular business column on leadership and collaborated at USC with Dr. Warren Bennis and the Leadership Institute there. It was real work, not theory. But after launching my own marketing company 15 years ago, I slowly convinced myself I no longer had the right to teach or speak into leadership again. So why did...
I posted this story earlier this week on linkedin as a short post, but it's worth repeating here as an intro to this article. About 15 years ago, I was sitting in my tiny office, staring at numbers that made me feel like a loser. Cash was tight. Stress was high. I was in the early days of building Expio, and it felt like every invoice was a problem, every spreadsheet a judgment. I remember pacing the room, questioning everything— Did I make...
The year is 1940. The British government is losing the war. Nazi U-boats are destroying Allied supply ships. Every plan is being intercepted and decoded by Germany’s “unbreakable” machine: Enigma. So the UK assembles a team of brilliant minds at Bletchley Park to break it. Alan Turing builds a machine that becomes the prototype for modern computing. But the movie (The Imitation Game) doesn’t end there. What most people forget: The machine didn’t win the war alone. A team of people operated...
In 2011, Mel Robbins gave a TEDx talk that went viral. In 2017, she wrote The 5 Second Rule and turned it into a best-selling book. The idea? Simple. Count backwards—5-4-3-2-1—and act before your brain talks you out of it. It was marketed as a breakthrough. Branded as her invention. Packaged for the masses. And it works. I use it often in combination with this specific breathing hack. Win the moment, win the day. But let’s be honest: It’s not new. The Real Problem → Reinvention...
The future of AI, leadership, and personal development still comes down to a handful of timeless principles. I was home for the summer when I found The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People on my dad’s bookshelf. He didn’t hand it to me. Didn’t mention it. Just left it there—spine cracked, notes in the margins. That was the first real framework I ever saw for how to live, lead, and grow with purpose. No hype. No fluff. It changed everything. That day sparked...
I talk to dead people. Not literally—but close. I’ve asked AI to help me think like Carl Jung, Emerson, Teddy Roosevelt, or Peter Drucker. I use AI to summarize old blog posts. Punch up headlines. Tighten strategy decks. So —if talking to a machine trained on the ghosts of the internet counts as talking to dead people, I’m guilty. But there’s a line. And this is it: I don’t let AI write my emotional responses to people. Ever. The Real Problem → Outsourcing the Most...
I once got arrested for swimming when I was 17. Not streaking. Not fighting. Not drunk driving. Just… swimming. In a pool. Here’s what happened: It was one of those hot Amarillo nights where your brain melts and you think, “You know what would really solve all my problems right now? Trespassing.” So my buddy and I jumped the fence of an apartment complex pool after hours. No big deal — we were staying with someone who lived there. We made a verbal contract:...
In 1914, George Herman “Babe” Ruth entered Major League Baseball as a pitcher. And not just any pitcher—he was elite. In 1916, Ruth posted a 1.75 ERA and won 23 games for the Red Sox. He was one of the best arms in the league. But something didn’t sit right. Because even then, when he wasn’t on the mound, Ruth was crushing balls in batting practice. He knew he had more to offer. Not just as a good pitcher, but as a...
"THINK." The word that built IBM's early culture. And right now, it's what small businesses need to do more than ever when it comes to their marketing. A few days ago I finished reading Making Numbers Count by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. The subtitle is “The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers.” Like most people, I don’t naturally love numbers. They feel abstract. Cold. Easy to misunderstand—or worse, easy to ignore. Turns out that's normal. “Numbers are like foreign language. You need to translate...
