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Leading Through Uncertainty
As I sat in the room with 25 other business leaders having real conversations about what’s really going on in each of our businesses, I noticed something. Different topics. Different industries. Different challenges. Same thread running through all of it. Uncertainty. Not the “we have a tough quarter ahead” kind. The deeper, more elusive, harder-to-identify kind. Hearing these…
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Frustration to Transformation: How to Use AI in Your Business
Frustration to Transformation How to Use AI in Your Business Keynote
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Between Points: Finding Sustainable Excellence
I came up for breath after being in the zone for quite a while. It’s one of those stretches where time melts away and each next step magically appears clearly and confidently in front of me. Skipping across the surface, bounding forward huge chunks of progress at a time, weeks of work knocked out in hours. But as…
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Can I Use AI in Compliance-Driven Roles?
A practical AI guide for HR, IT, and Accounting leaders One of our Lead With AI members recently asked: “The roles that report to me are HR, IT, and Accounting. Since these have to stay legally compliant with Federal regulations from the DOL and GAAP, can I still use a Role Sidekick and be legally compliant? I’d like…
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Finding Purpose in the Present
We’d been circling for almost an hour. The same ideas, reworded. The same challenges, examined from all different angles. That particular flavor of frustration was settling in. The one where you can feel the answer is close but remains elusively just out of reach. And underneath the frustration, a quieter voice: This shouldn’t be this hard. Why can’t…
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Gratiosity: The Gift I Couldn’t Give Myself
Walking block after block around my neighborhood, taking my monthly Zoom call with my EOS Implementor and Culture Index consultant. But not at my desk like usual. I can’t sit still. Sitting still feels impossible. My voice catches. Tears well up in my eyes. And it all just pours out of me. “Everything I thought I was building…
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AI | Leadership
What I Learned From My First Viral LinkedIn Post
I woke up to my phone buried in notifications. The post I’d published the day before was performing exactly as expected when I went to bed: 10-15 engagements, a handful of comments, around 1,000 impressions. Typical Tuesday content. Now something had shifted. Comments were piling up. Impressions climbing. I’d check back every couple hours to respond to the…
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The More You Read About AI, The More Lost You Feel. Here’s Why.
There are so many tools. So many approaches. You don’t have time to become an expert in all of it, and honestly, you shouldn’t try. It’s no wonder you’re confused. And here’s the thing: a lot of what you’re reading doesn’t make sense…because it doesn’t work. We’ve all sat in the software demos over the years for project…
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Should I Use Claude or ChatGPT?
Struggling to decide if you should invest in Claude or ChatGPT? Ultimately, there’s no “right” answer, just what is most aligned and works best for your use case. In this video, I walk through the decision criteria we used in my company, talk through the specific advantages and trade-offs, and the differences between Claude Projects and CustomGPTs.
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This Feels More Uncomfortable than Sharing My Failures
For the last two years, I’ve shared one story after another about the challenges and struggles of life and leadership. I hope you will indulge me as I pause to celebrate a moment of gratitude for the other end of the spectrum, when things actually go well. Which ironically, I find unbelievably more uncomfortable to share than the…
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10 Life Lessons from Hiking 100km of El Camino
“There’s a trail that goes up the coast where you walk from one small town to the next. Wanna do it?” Such a potentially cool and interesting experience…it was a quick and easy yes for me. My roommate all through college and best man in my wedding has worked internationally for the last 15 years and I’ve visited…
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AI | Leadership
AI Failure to Launch: The 5 Real Reasons Leaders Stay Stuck (And It’s Not What You Think)
The conversation started like so many others I’ve had with successful business leaders over the past six months. “I know we need to be doing something with AI,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “I read the articles. I’ve watched the demos. I even signed up for a ChatGPT account months ago.” He paused, and I could…
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AI | Leadership
From 0 to 1: How to Find Your First Win With AI
The Resistance No One Really Talks About Earlier this week I walked out of yet another conversation about AI feeling…flat and frustrated. I had just shared some of the most exciting ways I’ve been using AI as Partner, how it’s helped me think bigger, move faster, create at a higher level. The people I was with nodded, even…
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AI | Leadership
The Hidden Walls Between You and AI Mastery (And How to Break Through Them)
Leading with AI isn’t about mastering the tools — it’s about mastering yourself through every wall you face. The Fog Before the Climb I didn’t start my AI journey from a place of excitement. I started from a place of resistance. Fear. Doubt. Overwhelm. The quiet, reasonable voice whispering “You don’t have time to figure this out right…
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Build the Business You’ve Always Envisioned — A Personal Invitation
I’m guessing you’re like me that you’ve got a pretty clear picture of the kind of business you want to build: one that runs smoothly, supports your team, creates real impact, and gives you more time (and profit) to focus on what matters most. The hard part? Finding the time and headspace for the building blocks you know…
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Leverage AI to Lead Smarter—3 Sessions to Transform Your Strategy
Stop Wondering Where to Start Are you hesitant to dive into AI because you’re unsure where to begin? Many leaders feel the same—they’ve dabbled or held back, unsure if AI is relevant to their industry or worth the time investment. Here’s the truth: AI isn’t just for tech experts or specific industries. It’s for leaders like you, ready…
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AI | Leadership
How I Used AI to Create a More Compelling Strategic Vision in 7 Steps
“Does this really even matter or am I just wasting my time?” Strategic planning, even in somewhat stable times, often felt like a mix of hopes, dreams, wishes, tea leaves, and spreadsheets. Now, with so many more things changing more quickly than ever, I found myself spinning and flailing, the sound of the ticking clock counting down to…
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AI | Leadership
The Hardest Part of AI Isn’t the Tech—It’s Getting Started
5 Industries About to Be Turned Upside Down There was an audible gasp across the room of 70+ entrepreneurs, not the easiest cohort to knock off-center. John Sinai, a futurist who worked with NASA to help develop plans for a self-sustaining lunar city and an AI expert at both Duke and Singularity University, had just shared his prediction…
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The Hidden Trap of Resilience: When Pushing Forward Holds You Back
The Battle Unknown As the amount of change and volatility continues to accelerate, being a leader today requires more resiliency and adaptability than ever before. My resiliency, certainly like yours, was built one piece of hard-earned armor at a time until I became fully plated, fully confident I could power through to the other side of any situation….
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Finding Opportunity in Uncertain Times
The King’s Challenge In an ancient kingdom, a skilled jeweler with modest roots longed to elevate his standing and become the royal jeweler. When the king announced a search for a new master craftsman, the jeweler seized the opportunity. Summoned to the palace, he with hundreds of others, faced the king. “Craft me a piece of jewelry that…
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The Dark Side of Your Strengths: Overcoming Burnout and Stress
Achievement: A Complicated Beast “Why do I do this to myself?!” I desperately asked my high school girl friend. The pressure and stress of trying to take on and excel at everything were reaching a boiling point. My high school resume was one to be proud of. Each area of success (academics, athletics, leadership, social) was robust enough…
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When Stars Fade: Lessons from an Unexpected Loss
Even amidst billions of others, when even a single star burns out, the night sky will never be the same. Earlier this month, we lost so bright of a star so quickly it still doesn’t seem possible that our sky has been forever changed. John Ruhlin was one of the good ones, one of the best ones. So…
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Health | Leadership | Meaning
From ‘Oh Sh!t’ to ‘Thank You’: 3 Leaders Reveal Their Transformative Moments
What if your biggest challenge became your greatest catalyst for growth? Three accomplished leaders open all the way up and share how they turned their ‘Oh Sh!t’ moments into powerful ‘Thank You’ realizations. As leaders, we all face similar struggles, doubts, and opportunities, but we rarely if ever actually talk about it. The goal of these articles and…
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The Comfort Zone Paradox: When Growth Actually Destroys You
“You only grow outside of your comfort zone.” I became so adept at pushing myself outside my comfort zone that comfort itself became my greatest discomfort. I became uncomfortable being comfortable. Sound familiar? If you’re a driven leader constantly chasing growth, this might be your story too. Whenever I created a little extra time, energy, or money and…
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The Power of Pause: A Year of Reflection, Growth, and Gratitude
Gratitude. Immense gratitude for my wife, partners, leadership team, doctors, therapists, friends, mentors, and coaches – all those who have played parts both large and small, volunteer and voluntold, free and paid. Today marks the one-year anniversary of my sabbatical, a period that has profoundly altered my understanding of myself and the world around me. Over the last…
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The Art of Entrepreneurial Balance and Vision: Elite Achievement Podcast Interview
Ever feel like the problems and obstacles just keep piling up in your business? Like it should be easier by now? I was thrilled to join my friend Kristin Burke on her Elite Achievement podcast to share a powerful mindset shift that may help reframe: The point and purpose of having a business is to solve problems. If…
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Stop Wishing for No Problems – Hope For New, More Interesting Ones
Did you ever believe that once you reached a certain level of success, all your problems would simply disappear? I know I did. I believed, really believed, once the company grew, the problems, the challenges, the frustrations would just go away…they’d go “poof!” and vanish into the air. If I could, I’d go back and pat my 10-years-ago…
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Embracing Life’s Uncertainties: Finding Peace In Perspective
Visionless and Questionful As the screen began to blur, I surveyed my cramped room, now cluttered with my desk shoved into the corner alongside a futon that doubled as my couch by day and bed by night. My dog’s bed covering what little carpet still visible. Just a few months prior, this tiny space morphed into both my…
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The Truth About ‘Effortless’ Success
The Misunderstood Compliment Have you ever received a backhanded compliment that made you rethink your achievements? That’s exactly what happened to me the other night when my wife and I were out to dinner with another couple. As the waiter dropped off our drinks, we were all talking about the pressures of trying to be great at everything…
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What I Do Now Instead of New Year’s Resolutions
The Challenge of Conflicting Goals When it came to setting goals, I would apply all the best practices of splitting my life into categories – personal, professional, family, relationships, health, etc – creating 3-5 SMART goals for each…which worked for me until it didn’t. I consistently found this traditional approach often led to goals in direct conflict with…
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Reduce Stress by Tuning Into Your Body’s Cues
Lost In the Eye of the Storm Not knowing what else to do, I just sit down on the kitchen floor, my back pressed against the cabinets, my head in my hands, the storm swirling around me, overwhelming my ability to do just about anything else. Waves crashing down on me again and again, my body vibrating, hands…
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Navigating Uncharted Waters: A Captain’s Tale of Trust and Transformation
As my friend and I jogged through the tree-lined streets of Barcelona, the warm Mediterranean sun on our faces, our conversation pierced deeply into our dreams, desires, and struggles. I shared my internal conflict about taking a sabbatical amid shifting company dynamics and uncertain economic conditions. My friend listened intently, then shared a personal story that completely reshaped…
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Embracing the Grind: How Adversity Shapes Stronger Leaders
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” –Rumi The Unseen Strength in Adversity “You seem pretty put together for everything that’s going on” as I finished laying out to one of my entrepreneur friends, all of the challenges opportunities in the uncertainty we’re currently going through in both my marketing and real…
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Red Light Revelations: The Stoplight That Started My Surprising Health Journey
The Wake Up Call I’m driving home, sitting at a stoplight. My eyelids are getting heavier, my blinks getting longer…and…longer…until finally, I’m out. Could’ve been 2 seconds or 2 minutes but as the sound of the horn behind me jolts me awake, although a little disoriented, I drive the rest of the way home without issue. And all…
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Walking into Clarity: How Getting Lost Helped Me Find Myself
As John Maxwell once said, ‘Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.’ You might find as I did, the value and power of unlearning in order to relearn differently. I went into my sabbatical with the mindset and approach of “do the opposite of everything I would normally do.” Normal for me… Strategy: what’s the big goal that I’m…
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How My 3-Month Sabbatical Changed Everything – and What’s Next
Perhaps, like me, you’ve had dreams that seemed almost too big to achieve. Dreams that, despite the odds, you’ve held onto. As I looked at my daughter with her head resting on my shoulder, the evening streets of Barcelona passing in the window behind her, two powerful realizations washed over me: “We are here. We actually made it…
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To Lead Your Team, First Lead Yourself
Your team’s performance directly reflects the energy you lead them with: Are you creating and elevating or destroying and depressing? In order to lead your team/family/community with energy, you must lead first with your own. The energy you lead with directly reflects “the work” you are doing on you; small daily choices determining if you are living a…
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Why I took a 3 Month Sabbatical
Upon returning from my 20 year sabbatical, many people made a point to let me know this was the best email auto-responder they ever read, so sharing here for you to use in whatever way you would like, while also explaining the purpose of my sabbatical. <> I will be out of the office for 3 months until…
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Perpetuating Virtuous Cycles
The flood and strength of emotions I experienced giving away the first ever Empowergizing Leadership Scholarship caught me a little off guard. One question I always ask potential employees in interviews is, “When you look back at your life, when was a time when you felt totally fulfilled, when you stopped, looked around and said, “yeah, this is…
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Are You Becoming a One-Dimensional Boring Human?
On a recent Zoom call with a few of my favorite entrepreneurs from around the world, we talked through one person’s concern about everything in his life becoming about work, or at least seen through that filter, and his fear of becoming a one-dimensional, boring human (which I’ve also long suffered with)…by the way, if you couldn’t tell…
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How to Be Just as Productive While Working From Home
“Soooo, do you sleep?” – the most common response upon hearing what all I’m working on: running marketing and real estate investment companies, launching a not-for-profit, buying/renovating a new house, all while raising two high energy kids and trying to be a good husband. Besides the fact that I don’t spend much time on social media or watching…
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Working From Home: Really Hard Until I Did These Things
The biggest challenge I’m facing right now with the work from home situation is the lack of contrast. Every day, all day it’s the same scene of trying to juggle the work, the kids, the schooling, the marriage…all in the same house, all the time. Where before “going to work” and “coming home” created separate disparate spaces, now…
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Leading Through Coronavirus Chaos
“But Daddy, I’m scared” my daughter said as I held the back of her bicycle seat about to push off without training wheels for the first time. To which I responded, “It’s ok to be scared, but what does it mean to be scared and act any way?” “To be brave.” “…and who’s my brave little girl?” “I…
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Get Busy Doing Nothing
I’ve never been too good at sitting still, a trait that earned me the well deserved childhood nickname of Wild Man, a trait that garners a “paybacks are a b!+<#” from my parents and siblings as my kids literally bounce from wall to wall. Although I knew I needed to relax and take time off, and recognized…
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Oh to Be a Kid Again…
I love Southern California and try to get out there as often as possible. There’s something about the LA beach towns that invigorate and inspire me. We recently took the whole fam out to CA and did the full kid circuit: Disneyland, California Adventure, LEGOLAND, the beach, the ocean…the whole thing. As my wife and I watched…
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Unexpected Learnings from Posting 60 Straight Days
Not gonna lie, I was really nervous agreeing to the challenge issued to the group of entrepreneurs: post some piece of content every business day for two straight months; $50 per missed day collected in a pot to be donated to charity. The hesitations stemming from a few very legitimate restraints and a few very illegitimate self-doubts. That…
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Easier to Work Hard than to Think Hard
Growing up on a dairy farm, hard work is literally part of my DNA. Early on in my entrepreneurial journey when I’d go home and complain about my 80 hour week, my dad reminded me he did that by Thursday. As a kid, I’d often remind him my game was working smarter, not harder…at which point he…
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Do-Do-Do Mindset Will Get You in Deep Doo-Do
There’s a big push by some business celebrities promoting just work harder and harder, longer and longer. Don’t have the outcomes you want, put in more hours. Don’t like your life, you’re not working hard enough. Although I do believe a lot of people don’t understand how hard/long you do have to work to achieve anything of…
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When Delegation Disappoints…and Delights
Over the years, I’ve experimented with many different approaches to find a delegation style that works best for me…which means first finding a lot of ways that don’t work along the way: Delegation ≠ Abdication. It doesn’t work well for them when I just toss it over the fence without direction or follow up. Delegation ≠…
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The Empowergizing Leader
The beauty of owning a marketing and branding company is when there is no word in the English language to describe a thought or feeling we want to convey…we just make it up. It took our leadership team many, many hours to succinctly put in words the feelings we had when we were doing things just right,…
