Dallas resident Randall “Randy” Blum has been president and CEO of Randall Blum Presentation Workshops, a company that assists Fortune 500 companies to improve presentation skills by their senior management. In this role, Randall Blum consults with organizational leaders to provide insights and skill training through interactive workshops and seminars.

Mr. Blum provides CEOs, Board of Directors and Senior Managers the training and personal coaching skills to become outstanding speakers and presenters in their role as leaders of Fortune 500 companies. His accomplishments include a comprehensive Management Presentation Strategic Plan developed for each significant leader involved in his workshops. In addition, he has become a sought-after presentation expert throughout the Middle East, especially throughout the UAB (United Arab Emirates).

Outside his role as a presentation consultant, Randy enjoys reading, professional sports, and volunteering with a variety of national organizations. Some of the organizations he is involved in are the March of Dimes, American Cancer Society, and The Animal Rescue League.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

Begins with travel to meet with a corporate CEO or board Of directors at various corporations in the US. Once there, I attend a meeting where we strategize on various issues facing the corporation or leaders. The day ends in meetings with 10 to 20 employees of the company to check their “temperature” related to various policies and events within their work area.

How do you bring ideas to life?

It always begins with a situation, challenge, or problem that has been identified. Then problem-solving begins by looking at the issue from a variety of angles. Often, research is conducted via interviews with experts with experience related to the issue. From all of this, ideas simply show up as possible solutions of which one or more have a high probability of success.

What’s one trend that excites you?

I am very interested in the long-term ramifications of AI. Will it be utilized more positively or negatively? How will our business lives change as a result of this amazing technology? Will it end up being a positive for the great majority of careers?

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Every evening, whether at home or in a hotel somewhere, I make a checklist in priority order of tasks that must be accomplished the next day. Then, when the next day arrives, I ruthlessly complete tasks in the order of priority. At the end of the day, any tasks that are unable to be completed are listed on the ”to-do” list for the next day. It would be impossible for me to be productive without this daily roadmap.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would strongly recommend to myself that I learn a variety of languages as soon as possible. My travels and consulting have proven to me that rewards come from being able to communicate with senior managers in their chosen language rather than using an interpreter.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

During a walk, while flying, driving, or sleeping, you should have a notepad or recorder nearby and be prepared to use it. Our brain is an amazing provider of ideas and reminders, but we have to have to be prepared to capture these thoughts when they occur. Too often, we forget great ideas because we didn’t write them down right away.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

First of all, this happens to me very seldom because a full schedule does allow ‘downtime’ to ponder my workload. But on the rare occasions that this happens, the daily to-do list as described above is a great reminder of the next thing to get done.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

You absolutely have to love talking to people of all ages. The amount of knowledge that exists in the universe is amazing and can many times only be found by communicating with others. In addition, the business opportunities that show up are in direct proportion to the number of people (networking) that I have met. You just can’t stop introducing yourself and having conversations. This is especially true of young people who have so many older, intelligent people to find and discover.

What is one failure in your career,  how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

Early on I was quick to pre-judge the quality and intelligence of other people. I learned so many times that my first assessment was not accurate and more time with a person gives you a much better perspective of who they are and what talents they bring. The famous line from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee has been a motto of mine since those early days: “You can’t really know another person until you walk in their shoes.” No words were every

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

My business ideas are not generic for general use. They are all based on actual situation, challenges, or problems.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Any of the collaboration software available on the market (Axero OnBoard, Zoho) are extremely helpful when working with a variety of professionals on a topic of issue. It is also very efficient and maintains a record of who offered what idea on any given topic that you are working on.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?/

I bought a personal recorder that fit in your pocket that can be easily carried to and utilized in meetings to capture everyone’s comments and is also amazingly helpful while driving/flying to record thoughts, ideas, and suggestions. I can’t believe how I was able to work without it.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

Conspiracy Of Fools By Kurt Eichenwald is a book I’ve read multiple times—probably once every year. It’s the story of the Enron tragedy and provides amazing insight into how power can implode a career. It also reinforces a variety of processes needed to ensure a corporation is being managed ethically and within corporate values.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

So many. Currently I’m rewatching Succession, which focuses on leadership, corporate governance, and individual responsibility. The characters are outstanding because they are both brilliant and flawed, which is exactly the way all of us are. I recommend this series to anyone who wants to view corporate intrigue from the inside.

Key learnings

• Never stop growing, learning, developing as a professional. Too often people question why their career has stopped evolving, when in fact, it is usually the person that has stopped growing or seeking growth.
• Continuous growth comes from staying curious, learning from others, building relationships, and remaining open to new perspectives.
• Clear priorities, consistent organization, and capturing ideas as they arise help turn challenges into practical opportunities.

A data scientist and generative AI specialist with experience in the health care, biotechnology, and banking industries, Etienne N. Ndedi is currently a data scientist with Anti-Money Laundering (AML). Etienne N. Ndedi previously worked as a data scientist for several other companies, including IQVIA and Gilead Sciences.

A graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a master’s degree in information and data science with a focus on Generative AI, Mr. Ndedi is skilled in three programming languages, machine learning, deep learning, and generative AI. In his previous roles, he led data collection, processing, and engineering, as well as the implementation of technology-based solutions for various purposes.

In addition to a master’s degree in information and data science, Mr. Ndedi holds a master’s in econometrics, a program management certificate from Stanford University, and a certificate in algorithm and data structures from Carnegie Mellon University. In his free time, he is a soccer fan and supports Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) and Real Madrid.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My day begins at 6 a.m. with meditation, followed by tuning in to world news, and then a deep dive into the alignment of my work process area’s tasks with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) corporate initiatives that have been prioritized by leadership. Anti-Money Laundering requires an open mind, teamwork, and discipline to name just a few must-haves.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I bring ideas to life through a thinking process that involves an open mind that includes incorporating tools that are available to me such as teamwork, rigorous conceptualization, my own wall-based processing, and testing. In risk, an “idea” is usually a thesis about a criminal pattern. I conceptualize the idea first, consult with others, make an inventory of the tools at my disposal, find reliable data, do some exploration, and run theoretically sound processes that will be tested in a quest for widespread acceptance

What’s one trend that excites you?

The integration of AI in AML. We are reaching a point where large language models (LLMs) are reading investigators’ narrative, the “who, what, where, when, how” of transactions, as we strive to identify emerging criminal patterns.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Maintaining a “zero inbox” policy and staying engaged.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Care about others, be curious, keep an open mind, and make the world your canvas.

Tell us something you believe that almost nobody agrees with you on.

As a former economist, I believe that there wouldn’t be a north and south demarcation and migratory crises if pricing was dictated more by natural resource owners and less by markets. Not all pests expire after a chemical application; some will migrate elsewhere. Humans are no different.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Meditation and regular exercise.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I step away from the screens, go on a spiritual journey, or go exercise.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Never stop learning.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

Early on in my career, I relied on my education, hard work, and burning the midnight oil to get things done. Unfortunately, that did not get me where I wanted to be. I quickly realized that companies are networks. Consequently, growing my emotional intelligence became a top priority so I could better understand my environment and learn about the common currencies, which help me build great relationships to get things done.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

Creativity, hard work, and relationships in a great environment do the trick.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Microsoft Outlook to communicate and stay connected.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

I recently joined the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital circle of givers. It was my first $100 and certainly not the last. St Jude Hospital is that sanctuary for our little ones who are facing cancer. We should all help.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

The Bible. There is no better book for wisdom and intelligence.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

Sinners. It’s a movie that blends entertainment, creativity, and a sense of history for an unforgettable moment of needed reflection.

Key learnings

• Curiosity and an open mind are intrinsic to professional development and growth.
• Conceptualization can facilitate understanding for better data-driven decision making.
• Emotional intelligence is key to knowing others and getting things done.

Jean-Pierre “JP” Conte is the founder and managing partner of Lupine Crest Capital, his family office dedicated to transforming mid-sized companies into industry leaders across healthcare, financial services, software, and industrial technology.

Conte began his finance career in 1985 at Chase Manhattan Bank in New York before later entering private equity. He has overseen investments in companies including ConnectiveRx, Signant, and Advarra. He is a graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Business School.

A cornerstone of Conte’s philanthropic work centers on educational opportunities for first-generation college students. Through the Conte First Generation Fund, he supports students across a number of major universities. He also partners with Sponsors for Educational Opportunity and 10,000 Degrees to mentor and prepare students from low-income backgrounds for college. His additional philanthropic commitments include a $25 million gift to Colgate University for a new campus social center and a $5 million donation to UCSF to advance Parkinson’s and neurodegenerative disease research, establishing two endowed professorships, following his father’s battle with Parkinson’s disease.

Conte serves on the boards of Colgate University, the UCSF Foundation, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, which houses the J-P Conte Initiative on Immigration. He lives in San Francisco, California with his family.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

I’m up early, usually around 5:30. I like to get a workout in before anything else because it clears my head and sets the tone. By 7:00 or so, I’m looking at deal flow, reviewing materials from our portfolio companies, and checking in with the team. Much of my morning is spent on calls with management teams, portfolio company leadership, and other investors. I’m a hands-on investor, so I’m not just reviewing numbers. I want to understand the operational picture, what the leadership is dealing with on the ground.

Afternoons tend to be more varied. I try to batch similar tasks together rather than bouncing between unrelated things. Evenings are for family. I’ve found that the most productive days are the ones where I protect my mornings for the hardest thinking and leave the administrative work for later.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I start with people. Every good idea I’ve been involved with has come down to finding the right management team and giving them the resources to execute. At Lupine Crest, we focus on companies generating between $50 million and $500 million in revenue, businesses where you can still make a meaningful operational difference if you pair strong capital with strong leadership.

When I launched Lupine Crest Capital in March 2025, the goal was to continue doing what I’d spent my career doing: helping companies close the gap between where they are and where they could be. That’s really the framework, whether I’m thinking about a healthcare business or a nonprofit. Find the right person, give them support, and get out of the way.

What’s one trend that excites you?

Family offices taking a more active role in direct investments. That’s a meaningful shift. It means more patient capital, more hands-on involvement, and frankly, better outcomes for the companies receiving that investment. I started Lupine Crest Capital because I wanted that direct relationship with the businesses we back, and I think more families are reaching the same conclusion.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Follow-through. It sounds simple, but I think it’s the thing that separates people who build something lasting from those who don’t. Consistency compounds. I make a commitment to someone, whether it’s a management team, a student I’m mentoring, or a university partner, and I honor it. That discipline has served me well across decades in business. People want to work with someone they can count on, and the fastest way to earn trust is to simply keep your word, every time.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Start mentoring as early as possible. Everyone has something they can teach someone else, especially someone who is looking to follow a similar path. Watching a young person gain confidence and figure out their path is one of the most rewarding things I’ve experienced.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

Most nonprofits would benefit from being managed more like businesses. These organizations deserve the same rigor in leadership, accountability, and measurable outcomes that you’d expect from any well-managed company. When I’ve gotten involved with educational nonprofits, the single biggest lever for impact has been recruiting the right leader and holding the organization to clear performance standards. The organizations that operate with discipline are the ones that actually change lives.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Mentor someone. It’s often not a huge time commitment on any given day, but the cumulative effect is enormous. Mentoring forces you to articulate what you know, which sharpens your own thinking. And it keeps you connected to the next generation of talent, which is where the real energy and new ideas come from. You don’t have to be running a foundation to mentor someone. Just find one person who could use your perspective and make yourself available.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

Get outside. Hiking, skiing, sailing. Northern California is ideal for that, and also Aspen, where I spend a good amount of time. I also go back to basics: what are the two or three things that actually matter this week? There’s always noise. The discipline is knowing which signals to pay attention to and which to let pass.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Sector focus. Early on, rather than chasing deals across every industry, we concentrated on a few areas where we could develop deep expertise: healthcare, financial services, software, and industrial technology. It’s the same principle I’m applying at Lupine Crest Capital now.

What is one failure in your career,  how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

I’ve failed many times over in my career, but failure is all about learning and growing. I think there was a time early on, when I first started to support a range of philanthropic endeavors with substantial contributions, that I wasn’t as focused with my giving. Giving is such a personal task, and it’s really done best when also applied with discipline. The takeaway was ensuring that I was giving in a focused manner, and ensuring that the supported organizations were operating in a way that positioned them for maximum impact.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

A technology platform that matches first-generation college students with mentors from their intended field of study, not just general career advice, but someone who actually works in the sector that student wants to enter. The information gap between students whose parents went to college and those whose parents didn’t is enormous, and it’s one of the biggest obstacles to upward mobility in this country. Closing that gap with structured, field-specific mentorship would change outcomes for millions of students.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

AI. It’s incredible how AI tools can assist in the deal process. Just the sheer amount of analysis that I’ve been able to do has grown exponentially.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?

Anytime I can have lunch with an up-and-coming professional who is just starting to find their footing in their career. Best money spent. There is something about sitting across from someone at that stage that reminds you why mentorship matters. I try to make time for those conversations whenever I can.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

One of my favorite books of recent was Trespassers at the Golden Gate by Gary Krist. It tells the story of San Francisco at a pivotal moment. My parents came to the United States from France and Cuba, and the American dream is something I think about constantly. Krist is a good storyteller, and the book is a reminder that the debates we’re having today have deep roots.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I went back and rewatched The Godfather and The Godfather Part II — two of my favorite films. Every time I watch them I take something different away.

Key learnings

1. Sector specialization over generalization: Concentrating investment expertise in a handful of industries, rather than chasing deals across every sector, creates compounding knowledge advantages that improve decision-making and long-term returns.
2. Mentorship produces outsized returns: Structured, consistent mentorship, particularly for first-generation students and young professionals, generates impact that often exceeds the value of financial contributions alone.
3. Nonprofits benefit from business discipline: Applying the same standards of accountability, leadership development, and measurable outcomes used in private equity to nonprofit organizations can dramatically improve their reach and effectiveness.
4. Early intervention changes trajectories: Supporting students at the high school level, before they reach college, addresses root challenges that scholarships alone cannot solve and meaningfully improves long-term outcomes.
5. Trust is built through consistency, not credentials: The most durable relationships in business and in life are earned by showing up, keeping your word, and making time for people — repeatedly, without exception.

Michael Cecchini (retired) served as the director of public safety for the Bay City Department of Public Safety, overseeing the city’s integrated police, fire, and emergency medical services. He joined Bay City in December 2006 as its 10th police chief, after retiring from the Phoenix (Arizona) Police Department. Upon the consolidation of the public safety departments in 2013, Michael Cecchini assumed the director position and led the agency for 16 years.

Prior to his tenure in Michigan, Mr. Cecchini spent 20 years with the Phoenix Police Department, where he gained extensive operational and leadership experience across various assignments including patrol, planning and research, professional standards, and the Office of the Police Chief. He also held the role of commanding officer at the Ahwatukee-Foothills Substation.

Michael Cecchini holds a master of science in educational leadership from Northern Arizona University and a bachelor of science in justice studies from Arizona State University. He is a graduate of Arizona State University’s advanced public executive program, earning the Certified Public Manager designation, as well as the FBI National Academy (Session 236), the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar (Session 77), and the Bay County Fire Academy, where he obtained Michigan Firefighter I and II certifications.

Residing in Bay City, Michigan, Michael Cecchini remains engaged in community affairs. During his tenure as the director of public safety, he was an active member of the Bay City Morning Rotary Club and president of the Board for the Antique Toy and Fire Truck Museum. He has served on the boards of directors for the 100 Club of Bay County and the United Way of Bay County, and contributed to the Delta College Criminal Justice/Corrections Advisory Committee and the Michigan Municipal Risk Management Authority Law Enforcement Advisory Committee. Additionally, he has participated in advisory committees for the Literacy Council of Bay County and Saginaw Valley State University’s Certified Public Manager Oversight Committee.

Mr. Cecchini is the parent of three adult children. Two work in the public sector and one is employed in the medical field.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

Time is my most precious commodity. I try to make good use of it. The night before, I go over in my mind what I am going to do the next day. I wake up early and get a cup of coffee and either watch or read the latest news headlines. I then pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am retired from law enforcement and am now a territory sales representative for an after-market auto parts company. Being efficient in my use of time allows me to maximize the number of customers.

How do you bring ideas to life?

In my current profession, I bring ideas to life, which basically means I bring products to life. I sell automotive tools and paint by bringing the products to life and explaining to my customers the usefulness of the tool and how it will save them time and money and increase my ability to sell products and meet the needs of my customers.

What’s one trend that excites you?

A trend that excites me in the automotive tool industry is the use of diagnostic computers that literally provide a diagnosis of what’s wrong with a vehicle and point the mechanic in the right direction to fix the problem. It is basically using AI to not only help the mechanic diagnose the problem, but tell the mechanic the probable fix for the problem.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Starting my day with prayer and meditation helps me focus, set sales goals, and choose products for each customer. This mental preparation boosts my motivation and encourages daily excellence.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Enjoy it while it lasts, meaning enjoy your youth and each day of your life because it passes by very quickly. Enjoy the small things, stop and smell the roses. It’s great advice, but when you are balancing a career and family, sometimes it’s’ hard to slow down but you need to do it.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

I generally hold mainstream beliefs, but one exception is my conviction that I have a singing voice comparable to that of Frank Sinatra or Nat King Cole—a belief that, realistically, no one else shares.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Pray at least twice a day at the start and end of each day and stay focused on your goals. And remember that perpetual optimism is a force multiplier. Constant negativity will constrain you.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I begin with prayer and respond to challenges by working harder rather than giving up or feeling sorry for myself.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

I plan my work and follow through, boosting my efforts when facing setbacks. Success and failure both teach important lessons, with failure often providing deeper insights.

What is one failure in your career,  how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

My career setback was mainly due to being too emotionally invested in my community and expecting support that never came. When I needed backing from colleagues and community members, they were absent. Standing up for what’s right can leave you feeling isolated, so avoid getting emotionally attached to your work. If you’re employed in public service, especially by a municipality, don’t live where you work.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Voice-to-text and AI tools help save me time—typing isn’t my strength, even after taking a high school class. Voice-to-text speeds up notes and emails, but it’s important to review them for grammar and tone. AI streamlines my research on different tools and manufacturers. Always check AI-generated information and links for accuracy before using them.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?/

I bought an espresso machine because nothing beats a good cup of coffee to begin your morning whether you’re heading to work or enjoying the weekend.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

I enjoy reading books and listening to podcasts. Recently, I read Greg Harden’s book Stay Sane in An Insane World, which emphasizes focusing on what you can control with a positive attitude and effort, rather than worrying about things beyond your influence. I also listen to “Daily Strength: A 365 Day Devotional for Men” by Ascension, a Christian podcast offering biblical guidance specifically tailored to men’s roles as Christians.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I enjoyed watching the original Star Trek series. Despite being made in the 1960s, it accurately predicted the technology we use today. The show highlights that while technology evolves, human behavior often remains the same—and technology can amplify both positive and negative traits.

Key learnings

• Humbled and blessed for a 36-year career serving the public.
• Work hard and never give up. Always fight through adversity.
• Optimism is a force multiplier.
• Don’t take stock in your critics and naysayers.
• Be thankful for every day.

Tom Pernice Jr. has spent much of his life learning what it takes to compete, adapt, and stay consistent in professional golf. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1959, he developed an interest in golf at an early age. At Raytown High School, he earned All-State honors before taking his game to UCLA.

From 1978 to 1982, Pernice studied economics and competed on the UCLA golf team. He became a two-time All-American and was named PAC 10 Player of the Year in 1981. Those years helped shape his approach to golf and taught him the value of preparation, patience, and learning from the people around him.

His professional career began with strong regional results, including three consecutive Midwest Section PGA Championship victories from 1984 through 1986. Pernice went on to build a long career on the PGA TOUR, making 317 cuts and winning twice. He captured the Buick Open in 1999 and The INTERNATIONAL in 2001.

After turning 50, Pernice continued competing on PGA TOUR Champions, where he added six victories, including the Charles Schwab Cup Championship in 2014. Remaining competitive through different stages of his career has required a willingness to adjust, keep learning, and continue putting in the work.

Away from tournament golf, Pernice values family, fitness, mentoring, and giving back. He has supported causes including junior golf, Folds of Honor, and retinal disease research. In 2024, he was inducted into the Kansas City Golf Hall of Fame.

For Pernice, success has never been about finding one secret. It comes down to doing the little things well, staying willing to learn, and continuing to improve.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My days are rarely exactly the same. It depends on whether I am competing, traveling, or at home in Scottsdale. I like to start by getting my body moving and having a plan for what I want to accomplish. If I am practicing, I try to give that practice a purpose. It might be my swing, putting, short game, or conditioning. I have learned over the years that being busy and being productive are two different things. For me, a productive day means I got better at something that matters.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I try not to overcomplicate things. I figure out what is most important and start there. Golf has taught me that trying to fix five things at once usually means you do not fix any of them very well. I take one thing at a time, see how it works, and make adjustments from there. I have used that approach throughout my career.

What’s one trend that excites you?

One trend that really excites me is the way technology is being combined with a better understanding of body mechanics. We know so much more now about how the body moves and how that movement affects the golf swing. Technology allows us to actually measure and see things that we used to rely mostly on feel to understand. I think combining that information with good coaching can help players move more efficiently, practice with more purpose, and even improve longevity in the game.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

I try to get one percent better every day. It does not have to be a huge improvement. It might be something in my swing, my putting, my fitness, or even the way I prepare. Over the course of a long career, I have learned that small improvements really add up. I am always looking for that one thing I can do a little better today than I did yesterday.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Be patient and enjoy the journey a little more. When you are young, everything can feel urgent. A missed cut feels bigger than it really is, and a bad stretch can make you question everything. A professional golf career is long. There are going to be injuries, disappointments, great weeks, bad weeks, and plenty of surprises. Prepare the best you can, keep going, and do not let one result define you.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

I think golfers sometimes focus too much on how many hours they practice and not enough on how they practice. More practice does not always mean better golf. Forty focused minutes can be more valuable than three hours of hitting balls without a purpose. I also believe the mental side of golf is just as important as the physical side. You can have a great swing, but if you cannot manage your thoughts, emotions, and expectations on the course, it is very difficult to play your best.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Learn from your failures. Golf gives you plenty of them, no matter how long you have played or how successful you have been. After a disappointing round or tournament, I try to honestly evaluate what happened and what I can learn from it. I have always believed failure can be one of your best teachers if you are willing to look at it that way. You cannot change the result, but you can use it to make yourself better the next time.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I simplify things. Golf can become very complicated when you start thinking too far ahead. I come back to what I can control, which is my preparation, my attitude, my effort, and the shot in front of me. Usually when I narrow my focus back down to those things, everything starts to settle down.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Being willing to adapt has probably helped my career more than anything else. The game has changed tremendously since I became a professional. Equipment changed, training changed, technology became a much bigger part of the sport, and every generation of players brought something new. I have always tried to keep learning from coaches, other players, and people who know more than I do in certain areas. I never wanted to get to the point where I thought I had golf completely figured out. I am still learning today.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

There have been plenty of failures. If you play professional golf long enough, you are going to miss cuts, lose tournaments you thought you could win, and go through stretches where things are not working. I learned not to run away from those moments. I would look at what went wrong and decide what I could do about it. Some of the biggest improvements I made in my career came after disappointing periods because they forced me to make changes I probably would not have made otherwise.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I would love to see more programs that connect experienced professional golfers with younger players for mentoring that goes beyond the golf swing. There is so much about professional golf that you only learn by living it. Course management, preparation, fitness, travel, handling pressure, dealing with failure, and learning how to conduct yourself are all important. Giving young players access to people who have been through those experiences could be incredibly valuable.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

I use GEARS and Onform quite a bit in my training. GEARS gives me detailed information about how my body and club are moving throughout the golf swing, which helps me better understand my body mechanics and where I can become more efficient. Onform allows me to capture and review video, compare swings, and communicate with my coaches when we are not in the same place. Since I travel so much, being able to use technology to get specific feedback and stay connected with my coaches has become an important part of how I practice and continue to improve.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

The Bible. My faith has always been an important part of my life, and the Bible helps keep me focused and accountable in all areas of my life. It reminds me to keep things in perspective, especially through the highs and lows that come with professional golf. It challenges me to look at how I treat people, how I handle adversity, and the kind of person I want to be. At this stage of my life and career, those lessons are more important to me than any golf lesson.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I recently enjoyed Landman. I like Billy Bob Thornton and the way the show combines business, family, and a look inside the oil industry, which is a world I really did not know much about. The characters are entertaining and the writing keeps you interested. With so much of my life revolving around golf, I enjoy watching something that takes me into a completely different world.

Key learnings

• Aim to get one percent better every day. Small improvements made consistently can add up to something significant over time.
• Learn from failure. Disappointing results can become some of your best teachers when you are willing to honestly evaluate them.
• Never stop adapting and learning. Technology, training, and competition will continue to change, and longevity requires being willing to change with them.
• The mental side of performance matters just as much as the physical side. Preparation includes learning how to manage your thoughts, emotions, and expectations.
• Pay attention to the people around you. Success and productivity matter, but so do compassion, faith, perspective, and recognizing opportunities to help someone else.

Dr. Brandice Allen is a pediatric dentist based in Georgia.

Brandice Allen grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, and went to North Atlanta High School. She carried that hometown drive with her through college at Howard University and graduate work at Saint Louis University. Both schools pushed her to think beyond the classroom, and both set her up for the harder work that came next: dental school at the University of Tennessee.

Dental school is where most people would stop and call it a career. Dr. Allen kept going. She finished a pediatric dental residency at the University of Tennessee, choosing to specialize in the patients other dentists sometimes find hardest to treat: kids. That decision shaped everything that followed. Treating children takes a different kind of patience and a different kind of communication than treating adults, and it is the piece of her training she leans on daily.

Outside the practice, Dr. Allen has taken on the role of Dental Director for Hope Mission 360, bringing her clinical skills to communities that need them most. Volunteer work sits at the center of how she spends her time away from the chair, alongside traveling, biking, live music, and catching a play when she can. She also makes room for plain family time, the kind that does not make headlines but keeps a person grounded.

Her path from Atlanta classrooms to pediatric dentistry did not follow a straight line, but it followed a clear one: education first, service always, and a steady focus on the patients who need the most patience.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My days start early because kids’ appointments are best scheduled before school, not after, when they are tired and less cooperative. I block my morning hours for the youngest patients and save afternoons for procedures that need more time. I try to build in a short gap between patients so I am not carrying stress from one appointment into the next.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I test things on a small scale first. If I want to change how we explain a procedure to a nervous child, I try it with one or two patients before making it part of how the whole practice does things. Small tests tell you fast whether an idea actually works with real kids in the chair.

What’s one trend that excites you?

I like seeing more dental practices treat behavioral comfort as part of clinical care, not separate from it. Helping a child feel calm is not a soft skill on the side. It is part of doing the dentistry well.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

I review the next day’s patient list the night before. Knowing who is coming in, and what they need, means I am not reacting on the fly.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would say the residency years feel long while you are in them, but the specific training is what lets you do this work well later. Do not rush past it.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

I think a child’s first dental visit matters more than most adults assume, even when there is nothing wrong yet. Waiting for a problem to show up is not caution. It is a missed head start.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Volunteer somewhere on a regular schedule, not just once. Consistent volunteer work, like the mission dental trips I take part in, changes how you see your own daily work.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I get outside and get on my bike. Biking clears my head faster than almost anything else I have tried.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Saying yes to the pediatric residency instead of a shorter path helped the most. It added years of training, but it gave me tools for treating children that a general practice does not teach.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

Early on I sometimes rushed explanations to nervous parents because I was focused on the clinical steps. I learned to slow down and answer the parent’s fear first, then the clinical question. Parents remember how you made them feel as much as what you told them.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

A simple after-visit text update for parents, letting them know how their child did and what to watch for at home, would ease a lot of unnecessary worry.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

I rely on our practice’s scheduling system to flag which patients need extra chair time based on age or anxiety history, so the day does not fall behind.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

I come back to stories about people doing hard, service-focused work in difficult settings. They remind me why the mission trips matter as much as the clinic does.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I enjoy live theater more than film these days. Watching a play performed live has an energy that a screen does not match.

Key learnings

• Specialized pediatric training shapes how comfort and clinical care are combined for young patients.
• Consistent volunteer commitments, not one-time efforts, tend to have the deepest impact on both the volunteer and the community.
• Small-scale testing of new patient communication methods helps practices improve without disrupting care.
• Simple follow-up communication with parents can reduce anxiety after a child’s appointment.

Shane Stodghill joined Oracle Corporation in Dallas, Texas, in 2015. As a senior regional manager of Oracle’s energy and utilities data platform, he manages an array of strategic investor-owned utilities. He leads a team of eight account executives and collaborates with numerous Oracle divisions, including the cloud engineering, business development, and marketing teams. Shane Stodghill also works with key stakeholders to further technical innovation and generate new revenue growth at the company.

During his time at Oracle, Shane Stodghill has consistently surpassed sales objectives. He has delivered 110 percent remaining performance obligation (RPO) growth and 102 percent Oracle Cloud Consumption growth, among other achievements. During his time at the company, he was selected as one of 100 national leaders (out of more than 1,000 candidates) to take part in the prestigious Oracle Senior Leadership Development Program.

After earning a bachelor of arts in government from the University of Texas at Austin, Mr. Stodghill earned a master of business administration at Baylor University. He has also completed numerous professional certification programs with Oracle University, including programs in Oracle cloud infrastructure.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My day starts with coffee and a few small wins: Making the beds, tidying the house, knocking out the little tasks first. That habit is heavily influenced by Admiral William McRaven’s The Wisdom of the Bullfrog. His philosophy is simple: Small tasks accomplished early in the day snowball into big accomplishments by the end of it. It sounds almost too basic to matter, but as a Marine Corps veteran, I can tell you the discipline of starting every day with a completed task is a force multiplier.

My workday starts at 8 a.m. sharp. First up is a review of my calendar and prep for the day’s meetings. I never want to walk into a conversation with a customer or my team without a clear purpose. From there, I review my team’s forecasted deals for the current and upcoming quarter to make sure we’re spending our energy on the right opportunities, not just the loudest ones.

The mantra that anchors all of it comes from Gary Keller’s The ONE Thing: Identify the single task that makes everything else easier or unnecessary—and start there. Productivity isn’t about doing more things; it’s about doing the right thing first.

How do you bring ideas to life?

For me, it starts with thinking critically about the desired outcome—not the idea itself. Ideas are cheap; outcomes are what matter. Once I’m clear on the outcome, I identify who I need to engage to make it real. Very few good ideas come to life alone.

Here’s a recent example. One of the bottlenecks in our sales organization was illustrating the converged capabilities of Oracle Database. The platform can do an enormous amount—AI, analytics, spatial, graph, transaction processing—but a static PowerPoint was no longer getting enterprise IT executives and application owners excited. Slides tell, demos sell.
So I enlisted Oracle’s product management team to help me build LLM-powered skills that my team could use to rapidly generate working Oracle Database demos for just about any customer use case. Instead of describing what the technology could do, my AEs could show it—tailored to the customer’s industry and data challenges—in a fraction of the time a traditional demo build would take.

The result: We tripled our qualified sales pipeline and, just as importantly, reignited genuine excitement in our customer conversations. That’s my formula for bringing ideas to life—get clear on the outcomes, recruit the right partners, and build something people can see and touch.

What’s one trend that excites you?

AI full stop. The power that AI brings to any organization is outstanding, and we’re still in the early innings. What excites me most isn’t the hype. It’s the practical compression of time between an idea and a working solution.

I see it in my own work every day. As I mentioned earlier, my team uses LLM-powered skills to rapidly build Oracle Database demos for nearly any customer use case. But it goes further than that. I can now personally develop a working application and hand my customers the Terraform scripts and a containerized Oracle Database to deploy it themselves. A few years ago, that would have required a team of engineers and weeks of lead time. Today it’s something a sales leader can do to accelerate a customer conversation. That’s a fundamental shift in what “showing value” means in enterprise technology sales.

The trend right on AI’s heels is quantum computing. I’d describe that one as equal parts exciting and terrifying. Exciting for the computational breakthroughs it will unlock: terrifying from a security standpoint because the encryption standards the world relies on today won’t survive it. Organizations that start thinking about post-quantum readiness now will be glad they did.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

Focusing on the one thing that matters most—and is most time-sensitive—before anything else touches my day.

It’s a simple filter, but it’s harder to practice than it sounds. In sales leadership, everything feels urgent: forecast calls, escalations, customer requests, internal asks. The habit that keeps me productive is pausing before I dive in and asking, “What’s the one thing that, if I get it done right now, makes everything else easier—or matters most before the window closes?” A deal that needs executive engagement today. A team member who needs unblocking this morning, not this afternoon. That’s where I start.

The discipline comes from treating prioritization as the first task of the day, not something that happens to me as the day unfolds. When you lead with the highest-leverage, most time-sensitive item, the rest of the day tends to fall in line behind it.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Three things:

• Work-life balance matters—and family obligations come first. No quarter, no deal, no promotion is worth missing the moments that matter at home. Early in a career it’s easy to believe that saying yes to everything at work is the path forward. The truth is, the people who sustain long, successful careers are the ones who protect what matters most outside of work. Your family will remember whether you showed up. The office will forget the meeting you missed.

• Love what you’re doing. You’ll spend too many hours of your life working to spend them on something that doesn’t energize you. Passion isn’t a luxury—it’s fuel. When you genuinely enjoy the work, the discipline, resilience, and extra effort come naturally.

• It’s a marathon, not a race. Careers aren’t built in a quarter or even a year. Play the long game: Invest in relationships, build a reputation for doing things the right way, and don’t burn yourself out sprinting toward a finish line that doesn’t exist. Consistency over time beats intensity in bursts, every time.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

Sometimes, micromanaging is exactly the right call. I know—”micromanager” is about the worst label you can hang on a leader today. The prevailing wisdom says great leaders hire well, delegate, empower, and get out of the way. And 90% of the time, I agree. My entire philosophy is built around developing self-sufficient teams that don’t need me in the room.

But when a complex, high-stakes deal is on the line—one with multiple executive stakeholders, technical dependencies, and no margin for error—I believe a leader has an obligation to get into the details. Not to take over, but to inspect the plan, pressure-test every assumption, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the team in execution. Admiral McRaven touches on this in Conquering Crisis: In critical moments, leaders can’t manage from a distance. Presence and detail-orientation don’t represent a lack of trust. They’re a form of commitment.

The key is knowing the difference between the moments that call for empowerment and those that call for immersion. Micromanaging everything is a leadership failure. But refusing to ever go deep—even when the stakes demand it—is one, too. The team members I’ve coached through those high-pressure deals didn’t feel smothered. They felt supported. And we won.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Take long walks. No phone in hand, no podcast in my ears—just walking and thinking. It sounds almost too simple, but some of my best strategic thinking happens on foot. When I’m wrestling with a complex deal, a team decision, or how to prioritize a crowded quarter, sitting at a desk staring at a screen rarely produces the answer. Walking does. There’s something about the rhythm of it that untangles problems. Priorities sort themselves, the noise falls away, and the one thing that actually matters tends to surface by the time I’m back at my door.

It’s also my mechanism for protecting work-life balance, which I preach constantly. A walk is a hard break between work mode and family mode, a reset that lets me be fully present at home instead of half-answering emails in my head at the dinner table.

My recommendation to everyone on my team: Build unstructured thinking time into your week, and make it physical. You don’t need an app, a framework, or a course. You need 30 minutes, two feet, and a problem worth thinking about.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I step away and take a walk to clear my head. Overwhelm almost always comes from trying to hold everything at once—every deal, every escalation, every deadline competing for the same mental space. A walk breaks that loop. By the time I’m back, the fog has usually lifted, and I can do the thing that actually fixes overwhelm: Narrow my focus to the single task in front of me and give it my full attention. You can’t do 10 things at once, but you can always do one. Movement clears the mind. Focus finishes the work.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Preparation. It’s not glamorous, but it’s been the single biggest differentiator in my career: proper preparation for every important meeting—internal or external—thinking deeply through territory plans, and relentless attention to detail. Before any customer conversation, I want to know their business, their pressures, and what a win looks like from their side of the table. Before any internal review, I want the numbers tight and the story clear. People notice who shows up prepared, and over time that reputation compounds. Opportunities flow toward the people who are ready for them.

From a leadership standpoint, the strategy has been leading with empathy while maintaining high standards and expectations. Those two things get framed as a trade-off. You’re either the demanding leader or the caring one. I reject that. My team knows I genuinely care about them as people, their families, and their careers. They also know the bar is set high and it doesn’t move. Empathy without standards produces comfort, not growth. Standards without empathy produce fear, not commitment. Together, they produce something special.

That combination has helped turn my team into the standard others look to across the Energy & Utilities organization at Oracle—and I’m more proud of that than any individual number we’ve posted.

What is one failure in your career,  how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

I’ll be honest. I fail every day. Small things, big things. I’ve walked out of customer meetings knowing I didn’t prepare the way I should have. I’ve misjudged deals, mismanaged my time, and given coaching that missed the mark. Failure isn’t an event in my career; it’s a daily companion.

What matters is what happens next. I make a deliberate point of sitting with each miss and asking: What could I have done better, and what correction do I make right now? Not beating myself up—auditing, adjusting, and moving. It’s a habit I trace back to my Marine Corps days, where the after-action review is built into everything: what happened, why, and what changes next time.

My goal is simple: Be 1% better every day. That math is unforgiving in the best way—small daily corrections, compounded over a career, are the difference between where I started and where I am now. The biggest lesson that failure has taught me isn’t any single fix. It’s that the people who grow fastest aren’t the ones who fail the least. They’re the ones who extract the most from every failure and never waste one.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

We live in a brave new world—with AI, just about anything is possible now, and the cost of building has never been lower. So here’s one I believe in enough that I’ve started exploring it myself.

Utility companies run their operations on a collection of powerful, but historically siloed applications: meter data management, customer care, billing, and customer engagement platforms like Opower. Each one holds a piece of the customer’s story, but no single system holds all of it. That’s why resolving a billing dispute, diagnosing the customer impact of an outage, or working an unpaid balance can take a utility’s call center multiple screens, multiple teams, and far too much time.
The idea: Build an AI-powered application on a modern data platform that ingests data from all of those systems and unifies it into a single intelligent layer. Imagine a customer service representative—or the customer themselves—asking in plain language, “Why did my bill spike in July?” and getting an instant answer that pulls from meter data, rate plans, usage patterns, and outage history all at once. Billing issues resolved in minutes instead of days. Proactive outreach on unpaid balances before they become disconnections. Outage impact understood at the individual customer level.

The technology to build this exists today. The data exists today. What’s missing is someone to stitch it together—and the utility industry, which touches every household in America, is one of the most underserved markets in enterprise software. If you build it, call me.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Asking for just one is tough—there are so many. But the big three I use day in and day out are Excel, ChatGPT, and Codex. Excel is the old faithful: forecasting, territory modeling, pipeline analysis. Twenty years into its dominance, it’s still the fastest way to think through a business problem with numbers. ChatGPT and Codex are the newer additions, and they’ve genuinely changed how I work. Drafting communications, pressure-testing strategy, summarizing dense material, writing and debugging code for the demo applications I build—what used to consume hours now takes minutes. Between the three of these tools, I can automate nearly my entire day’s administrative load, which gives me more time to coach my team, engage customers, and think strategically.

The bigger point: The productivity gap between people who have integrated AI tools into their daily workflow and those who haven’t is widening every single month. Pick your tools and get fluent— the compounding returns can be substantial.

What is the best $100 you recently spent? What and why?/

Easy one: a diamond membership to Chess.com. The backstory—I caught myself falling into the same trap as everyone else: wasting the margins of my day, playing mindless mobile games in the morning before getting out of bed or winding down at night. One day I asked myself a simple question: What could I do with that same time that would actually keep me sharp? The answer was chess.

Now those same pockets of time work my mind instead of numbing it. Pattern recognition, thinking several moves ahead, weighing trade-offs under pressure—it’s hard to think of better cross-training for a sales leader.

Here’s the part most people don’t realize: Chess.com is quietly one of the most impressive AI companies out there. After every game, its engine analyzes the entire match—every move across millions of possibilities—and walks you through exactly what you did right, what you did wrong, and what the better move would have been. It’s a personal coach that reviews every single performance instantly. If you’ve read my earlier answers, you can guess why that appeals to me: It’s the after-action review, gamified. Best $100 I’ve spent in a long time.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

Books—many, many books. I’m currently reading Project Maven by Katrina Manson and it’s outstanding. Without spoiling it, it sits squarely at the intersection of my favorite things: the Marine Corps and AI. It’s the story of the Pentagon’s race to bring artificial intelligence into modern warfare, led by a Marine colonel, and it reads like a thriller while raising the questions everyone building or selling AI should be wrestling with.

Beyond that, my shelf of top favorites tells you a lot about how I think:

• The Wisdom of the Bullfrog by Admiral William H. McRaven—leadership fundamentals from four decades of service.
•  The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan—the prioritization framework I use every single day.
• The Dichotomy of Leadership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin—on balancing the competing forces every leader manages.
• Streetwise by Lloyd Blankfein—a candid, funny education in leading brilliant, competitive people through turbulence.
• Chip War by Chris Miller—essential for understanding the geopolitics underneath the entire technology industry.
• Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki—the book that first rewired how I think about money and building wealth.

As for podcasts, I don’t really partake—I’m a radio guy. I’m a longtime NPR listener. Political leanings aside, I genuinely enjoy the BBC World News segments, the random human-interest stories, and the weekend puzzle games. There’s something grounding about long-form radio in a world of thirty-second clips.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

Easy one: House of the Dragon on HBO. It’s become the magical escape my wife and I look forward to every Sunday night, our standing date on the couch after the weekend winds down. It’s the perfect mix of action, drama, and fantasy to unwind with before the week kicks back into gear. And honestly, there’s something to be said for a show you watch together, week by week, instead of bingeing alone—the anticipation is half the fun.
Our daughter isn’t quite old enough to join us yet, but I like the idea that one day we’ll get to rewatch the whole saga as a family. Some shows are entertainment. The best ones become traditions.

Key learnings

• Small disciplines compound into big results. Starting each day by completing small tasks—and identifying the one priority that makes everything else easier—builds the momentum and focus that drive long-term achievement.
• Ideas come to life through outcomes and partnerships, not inspiration alone. Getting clear on the desired results, then recruiting the right cross-functional partners to build something tangible, is what separates ideas that ship from ideas that stall.
• Empathy and high standards are not opposites. Leading with genuine care for people while holding an uncompromising bar for performance produces committed, high-performing teams—comfort without standards and fear without empathy both fall short.
• Conventional leadership wisdom has exceptions. Knowing when to empower yourself from a distance and when to immerse yourself in the details—especially in complex, high-stakes moments—is a judgment skill, not a rule to memorize.
• Failure is a daily practice, not a career event. Treating every miss as an after-action review and aiming to improve 1% each day turns setbacks into the fastest available engine for growth.

Walter Dawydiak is the founder and president of Cars Dawydiak, a luxury, exotic, and collector automobile dealership, restoration facility, and collision repair business based in Northern California. Since establishing the company in 1982, he has built it into a respected name among collectors, enthusiasts, and owners seeking specialized expertise in the sale, restoration, and repair of high-end European automobiles.

Over the course of more than four decades, Walter has worked with some of the world’s most recognized automotive brands, including Porsche, Ferrari, Bentley, Maserati, Lamborghini, Jaguar, and Land Rover. Cars Dawydiak has become particularly well known for vintage Porsche restoration, exotic collision repair, and its commitment to preserving the originality and long-term value of collector vehicles. The company has earned a reputation for meticulous attention to detail and a philosophy that every vehicle should be repaired or restored to the highest possible standard.

In addition to leading Cars Dawydiak, Walter oversees Charles Henry Company, a San Francisco collision repair business with roots dating back to 1922, and Car Storage Marin, a specialized facility serving owners of collector, luxury, and specialty vehicles. Together, these businesses reflect decades of experience across multiple segments of the automotive industry and a deep understanding of the needs of enthusiasts, collectors, and vehicle owners.

Walter is also passionate about helping people succeed. Throughout his career, he has supported employees through difficult life situations, encouraged young people to pursue careers in the skilled trades, and worked to create opportunities for others whenever possible. He is an active supporter of Brady Therapeutic Riding, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, and One More Tree, and believes strongly in giving back to the community.

Outside of work, Walter enjoys mountain biking, road cycling, trail running, and training large-breed dogs. He has a particular passion for vintage Porsche models, including the Porsche 356 and long hood 911, as well as pre-E-Type Jaguars and British military Land Rovers. Through his writing and interviews, he shares insights on entrepreneurship, leadership, skilled trades, automotive history, and the lessons learned from building businesses over the long term.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

I usually start my day around 5:30 a.m. and spend the first part of the morning working through my to-do list before the day gets busy. From about 7:00 to 9:00 a.m., I’m handling texts, calls, and communication with employees, customers, and vendors, followed by a workout that helps me stay focused and energized. By 10:30 a.m., I’m in the office, where I spend the rest of the day working on the businesses, solving problems, and keeping projects moving forward.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I usually start with a simple observation or idea and then begin exploring where it could lead. From there, I look at it from different angles, ask how it might be useful, and consider the various ways it could be applied. The more I expand on the possibilities, the easier it becomes to identify which ideas are worth pursuing and which ones are not.

What’s one trend that excites you?

One trend that excites me is the growing interest in classic cars as part of a lifestyle rather than simply a means of transportation. More people are being drawn to the social side of the hobby through events like Cars and Coffee, where enthusiasts can share experiences, learn from one another, and build friendships around a common passion. I also think it reflects a broader appreciation for things that feel more tactile and authentic, whether that’s classic cars, vinyl records, or other experiences that connect people to craftsmanship and nostalgia in a hands-on way.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

One habit that helps me be productive is my ability to focus deeply on a task once I get started. I tend to become so absorbed in solving a problem or working through an idea that I lose track of time, which allows me to make significant progress without distractions. While that doesn’t work for every situation, it has helped me tackle complex projects and stay focused on what matters most.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would tell my younger self to seek professional advice sooner and more often. A lot of mistakes come from simply not knowing what you don’t know, and there are people who have already solved many of the problems you’re trying to figure out on your own. Experience is a great teacher, but learning from the experience of others can save a tremendous amount of time, money, and frustration.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.

I believe government works best when people with different perspectives are willing to work together. Most of the progress I’ve seen in business and in life has come from collaboration rather than one side getting everything it wants. While compromise can be frustrating, I think the best long-term solutions are often found when different viewpoints are represented and both sides have a seat at the table.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

One thing I try to do consistently is recognize people when they do something well. A sincere compliment or a simple acknowledgment of a job done right can have a bigger impact than most people realize. Whether it’s an employee, customer, friend, or family member, taking the time to make someone feel appreciated helps build stronger relationships and creates a more positive environment for everyone involved.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

When I start to feel overwhelmed or unfocused, I step away for a moment and give myself a chance to reset. Then I go back to my desk, review my to-do list, and focus on accomplishing one task at a time. I’ve found that taking action on something productive, even if it’s small, helps restore momentum and brings clarity to the bigger picture.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

One strategy that has helped me throughout my career is simple persistence. No matter how many setbacks, mistakes, or unexpected challenges you face, you have to be willing to get up one more time than you get knocked down. Building a business over the long term requires resilience, and I’ve found that determination and consistency often matter more than having all the right answers from the beginning. If you stay committed and keep moving forward, opportunities eventually follow.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

One mistake I made early on was keeping people in positions they weren’t truly qualified for, especially in financial and administrative roles. In some cases, I wanted to give someone a chance or hoped they would grow into the position, but I learned that certain responsibilities require the right experience and skill set from the start. The lesson was that hiring decisions have a major impact on the health of a business, and it’s important to put capable, reliable people in roles where they can succeed and help the company succeed as well.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

If I could give away one business idea, it would be that attention to detail is a competitive advantage in almost any industry. Small things that many people overlook—whether it’s customer communication, quality control, follow-up, or the way you treat employees—often make the biggest difference over time. Most businesses focus on the large decisions, but I’ve found that consistently getting the little things right is what builds trust, reputation, and long-term success.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Microsoft Outlook and Excel are probably the two tools I rely on most. I use Outlook’s task feature as my primary to-do list and depend on it to keep track of priorities, deadlines, and follow-up items throughout the day. I’m also a big believer in spreadsheets, so I use Excel regularly to organize information, track projects, analyze numbers, and help make business decisions. Sometimes the simplest tools are still the most effective.

What is the best $100 you recently spent?

I purchased gift cards for clients. After being in business for more than 40 years, I’ve learned that relationships matter, and I never want to take loyal customers for granted. It’s a simple gesture, but showing appreciation for the people who support your business goes a long way and helps strengthen relationships that have often been built over many years.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?

I listen to Joe Rogan’s podcast because he brings on people from a wide range of backgrounds and perspectives. I don’t always agree with everything that’s said, but I enjoy hearing different viewpoints and ideas that challenge my thinking. One book I found particularly interesting was Walter Isaacson’s biography of Elon Musk. Regardless of what people think about Musk, I find his ambition, willingness to take risks, and impact across multiple industries fascinating. In many ways, he reminds me of a modern-day Howard Hughes—a visionary who continually pushes boundaries and challenges conventional thinking.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I recently enjoyed Landman. One thing I liked about it was the perspective it gives on an industry that most people don’t think much about, despite how important it is to everyday life. It also serves as a reminder that every business has its own challenges, and sometimes when you see what people in other industries deal with, it gives you a greater appreciation for the work they do and a different perspective on your own problems.

Key learnings:

1. Following curiosity can lead to unexpected opportunities. Exploring ideas thoroughly, even when they seem unconventional at first, can uncover valuable insights and new directions.
2. Keeping an open mind is essential for learning. Exposure to different perspectives and experiences often leads to better decisions and broader understanding.
3. Mistakes should be acknowledged quickly and addressed directly. Taking responsibility and making things right helps build trust and strengthens relationships.
4. Hiring the right professionals for the right roles is one of the most important decisions a business can make. Expertise, reliability, and qualifications matter, particularly in positions that carry significant responsibility.

Joseph Gradante is a finance professional and entrepreneur based in Lake Oswego, Oregon. His path into finance was not something he planned from the beginning. Growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, as a child, he often imagined becoming a meteorologist due to his affinity for the rain. Instead of meteorology, he opted to move to the PNW where he could live in it. Growing up in New York eventually pushed his interests toward Wall Street and the opportunities around him.

Gradante attended The Beekman School before studying at Hunter College. He later continued his education through programs including the Wharton Fintech Executive Program and the WTIA accelerator. He has also taken sales and coding bootcamps. That mix reflects an approach he has carried throughout his career: keep learning, even when there is no formal classroom involved.

His early career included time at Hennessee Group LLC, Sidoti, and Merrill Lynch. Gradante originally hoped to become a trader. Instead, he discovered that sales was one of his strongest skills. Working around trading desks also gave him a close view of markets, investors, and the way financial institutions operate.

As finance began changing, Gradante decided to build something of his own. He became the CEO and Director of Sales at Allio Capital, a wealth management platform built around artificial intelligence. Building the company required him to move far beyond his original skill set. He helped raise $30 million while learning the realities of creating a financial technology company from the ground up.

His approach to work centers on curiosity, persistence, and self-education. Gradante keeps short-term, long-term, and daily goals. He also makes time for meditation, yoga, and positive affirmations. His career has rarely followed a straight line, but that has become part of how he thinks about progress.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

I start by looking at my daily goals and comparing them with my short-term and long-term lists. That keeps me from confusing being busy with making progress. My workday usually includes sales conversations, strategy, product discussions, market research, and problem-solving around Allio. I also try to make room for yoga, meditation, or a walk, especially if it’s raining outside. Those things help me reset and think more clearly.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I ask a lot of questions first. I want to understand why something should exist before worrying about how to build it. Then I talk with people who know more than I do. Startups are team sports. An idea becomes more useful when other people challenge it, improve it, or point out what you missed.

What’s one trend that excites you?

The changing relationship between artificial intelligence and personal finance interests me. For a long time, sophisticated tools were mostly available to institutions or wealthy investors. Technology is making some of those capabilities more accessible. I think the interesting question is how to combine automation with sound financial judgment instead of treating technology as a replacement for judgment.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

I keep separate daily, short-term, and long-term goal lists. Every day should connect to something larger. That system helps me see whether I am actually moving toward a goal or simply reacting to whatever is in front of me.

What advice would you give your younger self?

I would tell myself not to get too attached to the original plan. I wanted to trade, make enough money to go to law school without debt, and eventually build other sources of income. That did not happen the way I pictured it. Instead, I discovered I was good at sales and eventually helped build a company. A detour can still take you somewhere worthwhile.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you on?

I think failure can sometimes be more useful than success. Success tells you that something worked. Failure forces you to investigate why something did not work. If you are willing to study it instead of hiding from it, failure can give you far more information.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

Never stop asking questions. Questions expose assumptions. They also show you what you do not know. Some of the most useful things I have learned came from being willing to ask a basic question when everyone else in the room seemed comfortable pretending the answer was obvious.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

I step away from the immediate problem. Meditation, yoga, positive affirmations, or even taking a walk can change my perspective. I have learned that pushing harder is not always the answer. Sometimes productivity improves when you give your mind enough room to reset.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Learning how to sell has probably had the biggest impact. I originally wanted to trade, but working around trading desks showed me that I was effective at explaining ideas and building relationships. Those skills became extremely important later when I helped raise $30 million for Allio. A strong idea still needs people who can communicate why it matters.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

One early disappointment was never getting the trading opportunity I originally wanted. At the time, I saw trading as the path that would fund the rest of my plans. Instead of staying stuck on that, I paid attention to what I was actually good at. Sales became my strength. The lesson was that missing one opportunity does not mean you missed your opportunity.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

I would build a goal-tracking platform that connects daily actions to long-term financial and career goals. Most productivity tools tell you what you completed. I would rather have one that regularly asks whether the things you completed actually moved you toward the life you said you wanted.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

I use basic note and task-management software constantly. I do not need anything complicated. I want somewhere to capture an idea immediately, organize priorities, and keep my daily goals visible. The value comes from using the system consistently rather than having the most advanced tool.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast you’ve gotten a ton of value from and why?

I have two favorite books: As a Man Thinketh by James Allen and Principles for Dealing with a Changing Global Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio. For a podcast, I like Dave Smith’s Part of the Problem and Tucker Carlson. I tend to get the most value from books about markets, entrepreneurship, psychology, and unconventional thinking. I like material that makes me question an assumption rather than simply giving me a formula to follow. The best books usually leave me with a new unconventional way to understand a particular issue or pain point.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I recently saw the movie Blackberry. I liked how it showed the rise of a company through a mix of innovation, ambition, strong personalities, and difficult decisions. What stood out to me was that having a great product was only part of the equation. Leadership, sales, timing, and execution mattered just as much. That felt very familiar from my own experience building a company.

Key learnings

• Keep daily goals connected to larger goals so activity does not get confused with progress.
• Treat unexpected career changes as opportunities to discover strengths that may have been overlooked.
• Ask questions often, especially when an assumption seems too obvious to challenge.
• Strong ideas still depend on communication, teamwork, and the ability to earn trust.
• Making time for self-care can improve focus, judgment, and long-term productivity.

Parker McCumber is the owner of Rookery Studios, a podcast and video production studio in Orem, Utah that helps business owners build authority through consistent, high quality content. Rookery Studios handles podcast production, video production, and social media management, giving entrepreneurs and professionals a complete system for turning one recording session into content that works across every platform.

Rookery Studios is the natural extension of Parker’s work as a business coach. Through Mission Ready Systems and his flagship Commanders Club mastermind, Parker coaches business owners on leadership and team development, drawing on his military experience to teach systems that scale leadership, teams, and outcomes. The two go hand in hand. Coaching builds the leader and the team behind the business, and the studio builds the authority and audience in front of it.

Parker’s approach is grounded in over twelve years of service in the United States Army, with active duty assignments in Germany, Afghanistan, and Korea before transitioning to the Utah Army National Guard in 2016. He currently serves as a Captain in the field artillery, where he has led up to 100 soldiers and been responsible for 25 million dollars in assets. He studied business management at Utah Valley University, holds an MBA, and is currently working on a Doctorate of Business Administration with an emphasis in organizational leadership.

As an entrepreneur, Parker launched his first ecommerce company in 2016 and has since built multiple seven and eight figure businesses, generating over 75 million dollars in lifetime online sales. His work has earned ClickFunnels’ Two Comma Club and 2CCX awards along with Shopify’s 100,000 Orders award. He is the author of How the Hell Are You Doing This?, a book on life and leadership drawn from his military and business experience, and the host of the Based Business Podcast, recorded at Rookery Studios.

Outside of business, Parker serves on the Vineyard City Council and coaches football. He lives in Vineyard, Utah with his wife Emmeline and their kids.

What is your typical day, and how do you make it productive?

My day starts in the gym before the sun comes up. That’s not a productivity hack, it’s a non-negotiable. Discipline in the morning sets the tone for everything after it.
From there my days vary. I’m running Rookery Studios and my coaching business, I serve as a Captain in the Utah National Guard, I sit on the Vineyard City Council, I’m working on a doctorate and trying to spend time with my family.

So I can’t afford to wing it. What makes it all work is the same thing I teach my clients. Systems, not hustle.

I run my week on a battle rhythm I borrowed from the Army. We start the week with a mission brief so my team knows what winning looks like and why it matters. We end it with an after action review, what worked, what didn’t, what we change. In between, my leaders have decision rights. They know the intent, so they don’t need me to approve every move. I used to be the bottleneck in my own company. Every order, every email, every decision ran through me. Building a team that runs on my judgment instead of my hands is what freed my calendar, and it’s now the core of what I teach.

The other half of productivity is knowing when to stop. My workday ends around 5. That’s a hard line unless im training with the military or performing city council duties. If the work is done at 4:40, I’m playing Pokemon with my kids. My family is the why behind all of it, so a productive day isn’t one where I did the most. It’s one where the mission moved forward and I was home for dinner.

How do you bring ideas to life?

I move the needle every day. That’s the whole system.

Early on I learned that swinging for home runs is how ideas die. My first business idea was to become a government contractor selling military gear, like the guys in War Dogs. It failed fast. We couldn’t compete on scale. So I pivoted, and I kept pivoting until something worked. That taught me that ideas don’t come to life in your head. They come to life in contact with reality, and reality will change them.

So my process is simple. First I get clear on the mission. What are we actually trying to win, and why does it matter. In the Army we call that commander’s intent, and I don’t start anything without it. Then I take continuous action. Small moves, every day, even when I don’t feel ready. Especially when I don’t feel ready. Then I review honestly. We run after action reviews on everything. What worked, what didn’t, what we change. No ego, just improvement.

The last piece is people. I don’t bring ideas to life alone anymore. I hand my team the intent and the decision rights, and they surprise me with how they get it done. An idea that only lives in the founder’s hands isn’t a business. It’s a job.

What’s one trend that excites you?

The rise of the business owner as a media company. Ten years ago, if you wanted authority in your market, you needed a publisher, a network, or a massive ad budget. Now an insurance agent or a roofing company owner can sit down in a studio, record one honest hour of what they actually know, and build more trust than a decade of billboards. I’ve watched it happen. One of our clients came in with no audience and a failed podcast attempt, and within two months of doing it right he had twelve new clients. That’s the trend. Trust at scale, available to the little guy.

AI makes it even more interesting. Everyone can produce content now, which means the internet is about to drown in generic noise. That doesn’t scare me. It excites me, because when everyone sounds the same, the person with a real face, a real voice, and real stories wins bigger than ever. The tools got cheap. Authenticity got expensive. That’s a trade I like.

What is one habit that helps you be productive?

The after action review. It’s the highest leverage habit I took from the Army.

Every week, and after every event, launch, or drill, my team and I ask the same three questions. What worked. What didn’t. What do we change. No blame, no ego, no spin. Just an honest look at the gap between what we planned and what actually happened.

It sounds simple, but most people never do it. They finish something, feel good or bad about it, and sprint to the next thing carrying the same mistakes. The AAR forces the lesson out of the experience while it’s still fresh. It’s the difference between ten years of experience and one year of experience repeated ten times.

It works because it compounds. One review doesn’t change much. Fifty-two of them a year changes everything. It’s also how I get my team thinking like owners instead of waiting on me. When the guy who did the work is the one telling you what to fix, you don’t need to micromanage him. The system improves itself.

And I run it on myself too. My workouts, my faith, my marriage, my time with my kids. Am I better than I was last week, and if not, what changes. Constant improvement isn’t a poster on the wall. It’s a meeting you actually hold.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Two things. Invest in yourself earlier, and find mentors faster.

When I started, I treated investing in myself like a luxury I’d earn later, once the business made money. So I spent two years grinding alone, working for free, trying to figure out everything through trial and error. Some of that struggle built me, and I don’t regret the work ethic it forged. But a lot of those problems had already been solved by somebody else. I just didn’t know it, because I wasn’t in the rooms where those people were.

The proof came later. Since then I’ve invested well over a hundred grand into coaching, masterminds, and mentorship, and every dollar came back multiplied. Not because the information was magic, but because a mentor who’s already been through the wall can walk you around it in a conversation. What took me two years of grinding, the right mentor could have compressed into two months. In the Army nobody expects a private to figure out war on his own. You get NCOs, training, doctrine, a whole system of people pouring into you. Then we get into business and try to be self-made. That’s just slow learning with extra ego.

I actually got a taste of it early and didn’t fully appreciate it. My first mentors were the guys at the warehouse where I worked for ten dollars an hour. They saw my work ethic, offered to help me start my business, and let me use their equipment after hours. That generosity changed my trajectory. Younger me should have taken the lesson and gone looking for more of that, immediately and relentlessly.

So the advice is simple. Your business can’t outgrow you, so you are the investment. Pay to be in rooms with people ahead of you. Ask for help before you think you’ve earned the right to. The tuition for a mentor is always cheaper than the tuition for a mistake.

Tell us something you believe almost nobody agrees with you.

Your work ethic is probably the thing holding your business back.

That sounds like heresy, especially in the entrepreneur world where everyone wears their eighty hour weeks like a medal. But I believe effort is not the answer, and I believe it because I lived the opposite.

There’s a lie running most owner led businesses, and it sounds like virtue. If I want it done right, I do it myself. Nobody cares the way I care. I just need to push harder this quarter. I call it the Operator’s Lie, and the reason it’s so hard to kill is that it used to be true. Being the best at the work is exactly what got you off the ground. It built the business. It closed the deals. It’s your superpower, and that’s precisely why it becomes your ceiling. Every time you personally save the day, you train your team to wait for you. Every rep of being the hero deepens the dependency. You end up with a company that can’t move without you, and you call it dedication.

The version of this that really gets pushback is when I say being gone is not how you provide for your family. Guys tell me the grind is their sacrifice, the price they pay for the people they love. I tell them the grind was never the sacrifice. The grind is the trap. It’s the thing they’re avoiding fixing.

I run my company on the opposite belief. My workday ends around 5, and I push my team out the door too. People hear that and assume we get less done. We don’t. Judgment beats hours. A leader who transfers intent to a team beats an operator who carries everything, every single time. I learned that in the Army, where the mission has to survive the loss of any one person, including the commander. Most owners have built a business that can’t survive a two week vacation, and they’re proud of the work ethic that built it.

Hard work matters. But past a point, more effort from the owner isn’t dedication. It’s a leadership failure with good PR.

What is the one thing you repeatedly do and recommend everyone else do?

The mission brief, paired with the after action review. They’re two halves of the same habit, and I run them on everything.

The mission brief happens before the work. Every Monday my team gets clear on three things. What we’re trying to win, why it matters, and who owns what. That’s it. It takes minutes, and it changes everything downstream, because when people know the intent, they can make decisions without running everything through me. In the Army we’d never send soldiers out without knowing the mission and the commander’s intent. Most businesses do it every single day and wonder why their team keeps waiting for instructions.

The after action review happens after the work. What worked, what didn’t, what we change. No blame, no ego, just an honest look at the gap between the plan and reality. The brief points the effort, the AAR sharpens it. One habit aims, the other adjusts.

Anyone can run these. A ten person roofing company, a solo insurance agent, a family. You don’t need software or a consultant. You need a recurring meeting and the discipline to actually hold it.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?

Overwhelm, for me, is almost always a position problem, not a workload problem. I’m standing too close to the thing.

So the first move is to use the same three skills we just talked about. Serenity keeps me thinking instead of reacting. Detachment lets me step outside the situation, including outside my own emotions about it, and look at what’s actually happening. And ontological humility reminds me I don’t have to solve it from where I’m currently standing. I adjust my position and my scope of view. I zoom out to the end state and ask what we’re actually trying to accomplish, or I zoom in and ask what the next single action is. Sometimes I change position by bringing in someone who sees the problem better than I do. Getting better informed is usually the whole cure. Clarity produces calm, and calm produces focus. Overwhelm is what it feels like to fight a problem you can’t see clearly yet.

What is one strategy that has helped you grow your business or advance in your career?

Consistent long-form content, turned into an omnipresence system. I call it the Authority Engine.

The strategy is simple. Every week I record at least one long-form podcast episode, an hour or more of real conversation where I actually teach and tell stories. Then my team at Rookery Studios clips it into fifteen or more short pieces, and we post across every platform, multiple times a day. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, YouTube, TikTok, all of it. One hour of recording becomes a week of presence. So by the time someone gets on a call with me, they already know who I am, how I think, and whether we’re a fit. I’m not cold to anyone anymore.

But here’s the part that matters, because I got it wrong first. When I started making content, I optimized for views. Chasing numbers, chasing the algorithm. And the views didn’t pay me. The fix was realizing the goal isn’t views, it’s the right conversations that lead to the right conversions. A video that gets eight hundred views but starts three conversations with owner operators beats a video that gets eighty thousand views from people who will never buy. Once I rebuilt the engine around that, it generated six figures. Content isn’t a megaphone. It’s a filter and a handshake, running while you sleep.

What is one failure in your career, how did you overcome it, and what lessons did you take away from it?

We’d grown to the point where we needed a more robust CRM system, and instead of doing the hard work of defining exactly what we needed, I turned to a leading CRM company in the market and just threw money at them. Big name, big promises, big contract. What we got back wasn’t useful to us, but by then we were locked in, and it cost the business tens of thousands of dollars. One of my greatest Ls in business, and the worst part is that it was completely avoidable. I bought the brand instead of defining the mission. In the Army I would never have accepted that. You don’t sign off on equipment without knowing the exact requirement it fills. But in my own business I skipped my own process, because the vendor was doing what vendors do, selling the contract. Nobody scrutinizes your money like you do.

The second one is more recent and it stings more, because I broke my own rule from the other direction. I tried to outsource work that I could have done very effectively myself, work I was genuinely good at. It cost me tens of thousands of dollars and made an event unprofitable. The lesson wasn’t that outsourcing is bad. I preach delegation for a living. The lesson was that I outsourced my zone of genius. The thing that was actually working, the thing only I could do at that level, I handed to someone else and paid a premium for a worse result. Delegation is supposed to buy back your time on the things anyone competent can do, so you can double down on the things only you can do. I got it exactly backwards, and the market invoiced me for it.

Overcoming both was the same process. Run the AAR without flinching. No blame, no story, just what happened, why it happened, and what changes. Detachment helps here, because I can call my own decision a bad one without it becoming an identity crisis. I was wrong. Wasn’t the first time, won’t be the last.

The lesson I carry now is a filter I run before any significant spend. What exactly am I paying for, why am I paying for it, and is this inside or outside my zone of genius. If it’s outside, delegate it, and define the end state before a vendor defines it for me. If it’s inside, protect it. Some lessons you can read in a book. These two I paid full price for, so now they’re load bearing.

What is one business idea you’re willing to give away to our readers?

A placement agency that turns transitioning military NCOs into operations managers for home-service companies.

Here’s the model. Every year, roughly two hundred thousand service members leave the military. A huge chunk of them are sergeants and staff sergeants who’ve spent years running teams, managing millions of dollars in equipment, executing logistics, and holding standards under pressure. Then they get out, and most companies can’t read a military resume, so these proven leaders end up underemployed in jobs way below their capability.

Meanwhile, there are hundreds of thousands of plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, and landscaping companies stuck at one to three million a year for one reason. The owner is the bottleneck, and he can’t find a second-in-command he trusts. He doesn’t need another technician. He needs someone who can run the schedule, hold the standard, manage the crews, and make decisions without him. That is literally the NCO job description.

The business sits in the middle. You recruit transitioning NCOs, run them through a short translation program that converts what they already know into business language, mission briefs become weekly team meetings, AARs become job debriefs, property books become fleet and inventory management. Then you place them as operations managers with trades companies and charge a placement fee, or better, a monthly retainer for the first year while you coach both sides through the transition. The veteran gets a career worthy of his skills. The owner gets his life back. You get paid to connect two groups that desperately need each other and speak different languages.

What is one piece of software that helps you be productive? How do you use it?

Honestly, Google Workspace. And I know that’s the least sexy answer I could give.

I run plenty of software. ClickFunnels for funnels and offers, Stripe for payments, Claude and ChatGPT and Manus on the AI side, Meta platforms for reach, and a whole stack of video tools in the studio. All of it earns its keep. But the one I touch every single day, for everything, is Google Workspace, and I think it’s totally underrated. Most businesses use maybe twenty percent of what it can do and then go pay for five other tools that duplicate the rest.

My email runs on it. My calendar runs on it, including appointment scheduling and call booking, which most people don’t realize is built right in. File storage, file transfers, shared drives with my team, docs and sheets we collaborate on in real time, event budgets, speaker lists, content calendars. When we planned our last live event, the whole operation lived in a shared Google folder. My event planner, my sales ops, and I all worked out of one master schedule and one budget sheet, no extra project management software required.

Here’s the principle underneath it, and it’s the same one I teach in business. Before you add a new tool, ask whether you’ve maxed out the ones you have. Most owners have a software stack like a garage full of unused exercise equipment. Every subscription is another login, another place information hides, another thing your team has to learn. Simple and fully used beats fancy and half adopted every time.

What is the best $100 you recently spent?

Taking my team out to lunch.

Not a strategy session disguised as a meal. Just lunch. Phones away, no agenda, real conversation. And for about a hundred bucks, I got things money usually can’t buy at any price.

My people felt seen and heard. That sounds soft until you understand what it produces. In the Army we say trust precedes disciplined initiative. My whole leadership model depends on people making decisions without me, and people only do that when they trust that I know them, I’ve got their back, and a good-faith mistake becomes a coaching moment instead of a public execution. You don’t build that trust in a weekly meeting. You build it over tacos, hearing about someone’s kid, their goals, what’s actually going on in their life.

It also creates organizational alignment in the most natural way possible. Around a table, off the clock, people tell you things they’d never bring up in a status update. What’s frustrating them. Ideas they’ve been sitting on. Where the friction really is. I learn more about the health of my business in one lunch than in a week of dashboards.

It’s a win-win in the most literal sense. They win because they’re valued as humans, not headcount. I win because trust, retention, and initiative all compound, and turnover is one of the most expensive problems a small business can have. A hundred dollars against the cost of replacing one good person isn’t even a rounding error.

If you have a small team, do this more often.

Do you have a favorite book or podcast from which you’ve received much value?

My favorite book is Atlas Shrugged. I know it’s a doorstop, and I know it’s polarizing, but there are so many lessons tucked into that story that are invaluable for anyone in business. It’s been valuable to me on two levels. Philosophically, it makes the case that production, competence, and the people who take responsibility for outcomes are what actually hold the world up, and that you should never apologize for building something excellent. Practically, the story is full of patterns I’ve watched play out in real life. What happens when the competent carry the incompetent indefinitely. What happens when people want the rewards of ownership without the responsibility of it. Who keeps things running when everything gets hard. For a kid who grew up poor watching good people feel powerless, the idea that you can produce your way to freedom, that your mind and your work ethic are assets nobody can take, wasn’t just a philosophy. It was a battle plan.

On the podcast side, outside of Based Business with Parker McCumber, and yes, that’s shameless self promotion, it’s either The Joe Rogan Experience or Modern Wisdom with Chris Williamson. Same reason for both. They bring on experts and interesting people from wildly different fields and walks of life. Scientists, athletes, comedians, historians, philosophers. That diversity is the value. Those shows expand my thought horizon, challenge my biases, and force me to form new perspectives as I’m exposed to more. Most people consume content that agrees with them, and their thinking calcifies. I’d rather sit in on a three hour conversation with someone who sees the world completely differently than I do. That’s ontological humility as a listening habit. I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room, and podcasts like those keep putting me in rooms where I’m definitely not.

What’s a movie or series you recently enjoyed and why?

I’ll go with my favorite movie of all time, Tombstone, because I never stop rewatching it. First of all, I love the one-liners. I’m your huckleberry. Say when. Half the reason to watch is Val Kilmer delivering lines like he invented the English language.

But the real reason I keep coming back is that underneath the gunfights and the mythology, Tombstone is secretly one of the best leadership movies ever made. It’s about identity, loyalty, courage, competence, restraint, and what happens when circumstances force a man to decide what he actually stands for. The movie keeps putting characters into situations where reputation, livelihood, friendship, and life itself are on the line, and then you find out who they actually are. That’s the truest thing in the whole film. Character isn’t built under pressure. It’s revealed there. Anyone can look confident when nothing’s at stake.

And Doc Holliday might be the most interesting character in it, because he’s a walking case study in the exact skills I try to live. He’s surrounded by enormous volatility, and he rarely lets the volatility around him determine his internal state. He’s dying, outnumbered, underestimated, and completely composed. That’s serenity as a competitive advantage. Add competence, because his confidence is backed by genuine skill, and loyalty, because he rides for Wyatt when he can barely sit a horse, not for money or glory, just for a friend. Composure, capability, self-awareness, and a strange detachment from fear, all in one character. That combination is very difficult to destabilize, on a dusty street in 1881 or in a boardroom today.

If I boiled the movie down to a leadership philosophy, it would go something like this. Remain serene, because emotion is information, not your commander. Know the mission, decide what’s actually worth fighting for. Become competent, because confidence backed by capability is hard to intimidate. Build your posse, because great missions require trustworthy people. Establish non-negotiables, because what you tolerate becomes culture. Confront reality, because avoiding a problem rarely eliminates it. Detach from ego, because you can be wrong without becoming less valuable. Act decisively once the facts are clear. Be loyal, because relationships are worth more than transactions. And remember you’re mortal. Build something worthwhile, but don’t forget why you’re building it.

Not bad for a western.

Key learnings:

• Perhaps I have some recency bias here. I love that I just got to talk about Brahmin and Naruto. I really love that simple evening.
• Relating the movie Tombstone to leadership development, also something that I’m a little bit proud of.
• But I think one of the best things I was able to share was that I shared some kind of unique skills and superpowers regarding serenity and detachment. Those aren’t things that people normally think of. Additionally leadership, but not just generic leading through ontological humility. I think those are things that people could really read and learn from and understand and become better with that knowledge.