As I’ve wrapped up each step in this process of Making the Best of YOUR Bad Situations, I’ve closed with five questions geared at challenging you to mine your similar experiences for the seeds of equal or greater benefit - and I’m about to do that here as well. Before that, though, I’ll detail one o...
From late 2005 to late 2007, Cindy and I dedicated nearly every waking hour that we weren’t working in our day jobs and invested every spare dime we could scrape up into the MLM business that had provided us with a glimmer of hope that we could someday climb out the ridiculous scarcity we had been b...
As much as I wish I could say that I learned to display empathy and earned cooperation quickly, I can’t. The adversities Cindy and I were working through during Matt’s elementary school years proved to be some of the toughest I had experienced to that point. While I have since been able to find the ...
Leading up to this point, I’ve referenced how consistency in the things we can directly influence through our daily actions can build self-control, courage, and definiteness of decision. Even the minor adversities I was faced with through my late teens and early twenties served as a foundation for t...
During a recent conversation about an idea for a chapter in a book she’s working on, Cindy shared how she often hears folks confuse explanations with excuses. She detailed how someone she coached was hesitant to go into any specifics about a particular issue because they knew “leaders didn’t make ex...
As I think back on Matt’s first few years of elementary school, I can point to far more things I did wrong than I did right. In complete transparency, I continue to sift through those scenarios today for seeds that can help me continue building the empathy I just didn’t understand at the time. And w...
In Leading With A Clear Purpose, I shared about the only time in my professional career where I remember feeling completely exhausted. I was routinely working 50+ hours each week in what ended up being my last full time job and nearly as much in our new (at the time) business. I stressed that sharin...
When I threw my name in the hat for the 5S implementation role, it was far more about getting anything that resembled climbing the company ladder and had very little to do with improving the productivity or profitability the process was geared at achieving. Truth be told, my interests in behavior-ba...
Through sheer work ethic, I was able to build some solid career momentum in my late teens and early twenties. Never one to pass up an opportunity simply because I didn’t have the qualifications listed as required on a job posting, I took some chances that I was far from capable of - at least in the ...
I chose not to go to college for two primary reasons, with a third that could arguably make that list if I’m being honest with myself. I hated sitting still during class all through high school and had zero interest in paying for the opportunity to do more of it at the next level. Since my natural b...
Not long after making the decision to stop drinking completely, Ron (who I now reported directly to in my 5S implementation role) decided to step away from the behavior-based safety facilitator role and return to a manufacturing supervisor position. I don’t remember why but I distinctly remember bei...
Making the pivotal decision to give up drinking completely was one thing, backing it with action required far effort and commitment. I can’t point to any specific leisure activities in the decade prior to that where I didn’t consume a tremendous amount of beer. That said, I never viewed it as a prob...
