Leadership + AI Advice.
Practical business growth ideas from two decades running an agency, raising five kids, and helping other leaders do the same.
12-Month Audit: Who Are You Actually Becoming?
Back in March I wrote about a quarterly audit. The Q1 version was about the business. Pipeline. Receivables. Cash. Working. Broken. Missing. Confused. Most of the questions were external. The numbers tell you the answer.
The Workcation, the Cruise, and Why Culture Is Built Off-Site
Our first company workcation was a beach house in north Florida about fifteen years ago. Five team members. Five spouses. Seventeen kids under the age of twelve. Sand everywhere.
Perseverance Is the Differentiator: The Word That Separates the Names You Know
Abraham Lincoln lost almost everything you can lose in public life. Two business failures. A nervous breakdown. A fiancee who died. Eight elections he didn't win.
Recurring Revenue Saves Your Sanity: It Started at Fifteen Dollars a Month
The first recurring sale I ever made was for fifteen dollars a month.
Juggling Money: The Three Numbers Every Owner Should Know From Memory
I want to start with a number that should bother you.
Automate or Die (2027 Edition): The Five Motions That Shouldn't Be Manual
A few years ago I wrote a chapter in my book called "Automate or Die." It walked through the stack we used at my agency. Proposify for proposals. Pipedrive for sales pipeline. Teamwork for project management.
Q1 Audit: What Your First 90 Days Already Told You
It is the last week of March. The first quarter of 2026 is closing.
The Founder Bottleneck Test: Could You Disappear for a Month?
I sat in a room full of agency owners last month and watched a friend ask one question that emptied the air out of the room.
Hire Slow, Fire Fast, Pay Creative: A 2026 Operator's Guide
I have hired the wrong person more than once. I will probably do it again.
The Customer Is Not Always Right: When to Write the Goodbye Letter
Herb Kelleher ran Southwest Airlines like nobody else ever has. The man understood that an airline is really just a service business with planes attached.
It's OK to Grow Slow: The Discipline Most Founders Won't Hold
Apple did not invent the smartphone. They were not first. They were not even early.
Build a Cornerstone Before You Need One
I have run a business through Y2K, the dot-com bust, the 2008 financial crisis, and Covid. I am running one through whatever 2026 turns out to be.
The Work-Life Blender, Not the Balance
I have five kids. I have been married to Claire for over twenty-five years. I run a marketing agency I started when I was seventeen, which is now twenty-seven years old.
Be Willing to Be Wrong: The Three-Word Sentence That Builds Teams
The most powerful leadership move I watched all year was three words long.
Ignore the System, but Have a System
Somewhere along the way, somebody decided we were all going to operate on the same schedule.
You Are in the Sales Business Whether You Like It or Not
I grew up an introvert nerd. Glasses, books, a kid who would rather read a manual than walk into a room of strangers.
Stop Improving Your Weaknesses: Where Real Growth Actually Comes From
For about a decade, I tried to do my own books.
Your Past Is the Best Predictor of Your Future
A buddy of mine hunts. Not the rifle-from-a-stand kind. The track-an-animal-through-the-woods kind. He told me once that the difference between a hunter who eats and a hunter who hikes is whether you can read what is behind you.
Starting Is Not the Hard Part: Why Most Businesses Stall by October
Eight percent of New Year's resolutions actually stick. Eight. And before you go thinking I'm about to lecture you from some mountaintop of discipline, let me put my own cards on the table.
What I Am Building in 2027: The Verb That Starts a Year
Most people end a year with a prediction. Builders end a year with a verb.
What I Got Wrong in 2026: A Year-End List With No Spin
I read a lot of year-end posts in December. Most of them are victory laps dressed up as reflection.
Own The Outcome: A Year-End Audit for the Operator Who Hates Spin
A few years back we shipped a website project that I am not proud of, even though we delivered everything the contract said we would.
Build a Cornerstone for 2027 Before You Build a Plan
Most leaders are going to spend the next two weeks planning 2027 from a calendar.
Stewardship Over Hustle: A Thanksgiving Week Question for Owners
I worked five straight years before I ever took a full week off the grid. Not five months. Five years. And I told myself the same story most owners tell on Thanksgiving week. The work needs me.
What I'm Thankful For: 27 Years of Owners
Twenty-seven years in, I am supposed to write something this week about strategy or growth or AI. Not this week. The week before Thanksgiving I want to do something different.
Learn to Last: The Quiet Edge in a Year That Will Not Slow Down
I went twelve years into running my agency before I got serious about learning.
Be Willing to Change: The Most Expensive Sentence in Your Business
When I was a teenager, my Friday night ritual was a slow walk through the aisles of the local Blockbuster. I had no idea I was watching the last days of an empire.
The Two-Org Life: What Running an Agency and a Church Taught Me Are the Same
For the last few years I have been running two organizations at the same time.
Lead Your Family Well or You Cannot Lead Your Company Well
The whiteboard hangs in our kitchen. It is not pretty. It is not Pinterest.
Mission, Vision, Values: Written Down or They Don't Exist
I ran my agency for fifteen years before I wrote down what we believed.
Hard Conversations Are a Skill, Not a Personality
I used to think the leaders who were good at hard conversations were just born that way. Built different.
Kind and True - the Conversations You Are Avoiding
I had to let a team member go years ago. By the time I sat down for that final conversation, I knew what I had to say. I had known it for months.
Failure Is Never the Problem
I had the best January my agency had ever had a few years back. Top of the funnel was full. New deals were closing. The team was firing on all cylinders.
The Right Team in the Right Seats
I have been hiring people for almost three decades. I started Design Extensions when I was 17.
Influence, Not Position
I sat in a room with John Maxwell earlier this year and listened to him say something he has said for forty years.
High Ownership, Low Drama
Years ago I worked inside a company where the official values poster talked about teamwork and respect. The actual culture was drama.
AI Will Make You Faster at Being Wrong
A friend who runs a software company called me a few months back. He had just done a postmortem on a project his team had shipped in record time. Beautiful UI. Clean design. Executives loved the demo.
Communicate at the Speed of AI Without Losing the Person
A few months ago I helped a client rebuild a chunk of their HubSpot setup. The before picture was familiar. They had two people on staff working full-time on what their automated system was supposed to be doing.
Mid-Year - What Six Months of AI Just Taught You
It is the last Monday in June. Half the year is gone.
The Adoption Gap Is Wider Than You Think
I sat in on a meeting last month with leaders from a mission-driven network and pulled up a stat that put the whole room on pause.
Speed Is the New Quality
Earlier this year I watched one of our developers build a working version of a website in fifteen minutes that, two years ago, would have been a six-week project for our entire production team.
Small Experiments Beat Big Plans
When I was sixteen, I started knocking on doors in the neighborhood with business cards I had printed at home. They were terrible. The font was wrong. The color was wrong.
Stewardship Beats Extraction
About a year and a half ago I had a meeting with a vendor who pitched me an idea that, on paper, was going to make my agency a meaningful chunk of money for almost no work.
Automate the Tasks, Not the Relationships
A few years back I heard a story about a company that automated their birthday outreach to clients. Pull the birthday field, send a friendly note. Lots of companies do it. They wanted every client to feel remembered.
AI as a Diagnostic Tool, Not a Scapegoat
I sat in on a meeting a few weeks back where a marketing director walked her CEO through a quarter of underperformance. Numbers were down. Pipeline was thin.
Run Toward the Fire
The call came in on a Tuesday afternoon. I was between meetings, half a sandwich in one hand, and one of our biggest clients on the other end of the line. He didn't say hello.
Human First, AI Multiplied: The Kitchen Table Story
There is a kitchen table in my memory that I want to tell you about. It is a long time ago. I am in seventh grade. The lamp is on.
AI-First Doesn't Mean AI-Only: One Question, Asked Every Time
I want to confess what my first month with ChatGPT actually looked like, because I think it is closer to most people's experience than the highlight reels make it seem.
The Curiosity Hire
A friend of mine runs an agency about an hour north of me. Last winter he was hiring a copywriter and got a cover letter that opened with a line he found offensive.
Strong Convictions, Loosely Held
Last fall I walked into a pitch with a client I had been chasing for almost two years. I had the deck. I had the pricing. I had the team behind me.
What If, Not Yeah But: The Phrase That Decides Your 2026
I can usually tell within ten minutes of meeting a leader whether they are a what-if person or a yeah-but person.
The Two Roads That Compound: Highly Autonomous AND Deeply Human
I have been saying the same thing in every keynote, every podcast, every leadership meeting I have walked into for the last six months. The more I say it, the more I believe it.
Two Parallel Roads: The Future Is Highly Autonomous AND Deeply Human
The leaders who win in 2026 aren't picking a lane. They're running both — letting AI handle the production layer so their team can spend the time saved on the in-person, eye-to-eye work that no tool can replace.
How Small Businesses Can Actually Use AI to Grow Marketing in 2026
AI is the biggest leverage opportunity small businesses have ever had. Here is the playbook I am using inside our agency right now — minus the hype.
The 5-Section Website Rewrite That Beat Our Old Site by 38%
Most small business websites are talking about themselves. Here is the StoryBrand-inspired structure we use to make the customer the hero — and how it lifted our own conversion 38%.
Leading in Crisis: How to Stay Calm When Everything Feels On Fire
How to lead with calm, clarity, and conviction when everything around you feels uncertain — and how to keep your team rallied around the mission.
Inbound Marketing Still Works in 2026 — Here is the Updated Playbook
The death of SEO has been greatly exaggerated. Inbound is changing, but the core idea — earn attention by being genuinely useful — has never mattered more.
3 Tips to Protect Your Business from Life's Curveballs
I'm the oldest of 5 children, married 17+ years, with five children of my own. Resilience in business is built before you need it — here is how.
The Work/Life Balance Lie (And What Actually Works for Founders)
Balance is the wrong word. After 20 years running a business and raising five kids, here is the framework that actually keeps both alive.