We salute you.

You’re not crazy.
You’re not lost.
You’re just ahead.

You’re writing before the deal.
Training before the call.
Working while nobody’s watching.

People might not get it.
Not yet.
Too early. Too bold. Too much.

But that’s exactly why it matters.

You didn’t wait to be picked.
You chose yourself.
You don’t need a green light.
You’re already moving.

You’ve got vision with calluses.
Belief with receipts.
Ideas backed by motion.

The absolute moxie—
we salute you.

It’s lonely som...

Casting the vision is the easy part.
Big words. Bold dreams. Applause.

But then comes Tuesday.
Then comes complexity.
Then come the good ideas.

Not the bad ones—those are easy to spot.
Easy to decline.

The real test is this:

Can you say no to something smart?
Something profitable? Something popular?

Can you look someone important in the eye—and turn down an opportunity that would look great on paper but pull you off course?

You see—vision doesn’t vanish.
It drifts.

One well-meaning yes at ...

 Your brain is obsessed with the future.

It’s not your fault—it's built that way.
It loves to guess.
It loves to build worlds that don't exist yet.
It loves to conclude, and then over-conclude.

This is Prospective Bias at work—the itch to leave the moment you're in and live somewhere else.

You imagine the next disaster.
Replay the last mistake.
Rehearse a conversation that hasn’t happened yet.

And in the process, you lose the only thing that's real: 
Now.

It feels useful, all this mental forecasti...

It’s easy to obsess over what it means.
Harder to focus on what needs to be done.

We’ve got a client on his third NFL contract.
Most players don’t make it through their first.
The average career? Just 3.3 years.

But he’s still here.

Then came draft weekend.

His team added two more players at his position.
Now there are eight guys in the room.
They’ll keep four.

This is the moment when most players spiral:
"What are they trying to say?"
"Do they think I’m done?"
"What does this mean for me?"

But no...

ONE STORY

"When Pressure Builds, Presence Wins"

In August 1974, highwire artist Philippe Petit stepped into thin air, 1,300 feet above Manhattan. A quarter-inch cable stretched between the Twin Towers—his only connection to safety.

No net. No harness. Nothing but focus.

For 45 minutes, Petit moved from one tower to the other in an unauthorized walk while police waited to arrest him at either end. Crowds gathered far below, necks craned. Some officers wept at the sight of such impossible be...

Most metrics chase more.
More wins. More revenue. More reach.

And yes, those matter.
Gains are essential.

But there’s a different kind of metric—
Rarely tracked. Almost never celebrated.

It doesn’t measure what you’ve added.
It measures what’s already here.

A culture that holds.
A vision that still resonates.
People who trust you—and still answer your call.

Easy to overlook.
Not shiny. Not urgent. Not tweetable.

But here’s the paradox:
What you appreciate? Appreciates.

Gratitude is a growth strat...

A question I’ve been asking clients lately:
Who are your heroes? And why?

Is it their income?
Their impact?
The way others see them?

Or is it something deeper—
The quality of their relationships?
Their courage?
Their character when no one’s watching?

We’re shaped by more than we think.
Availability bias says we gravitate toward what we see most.
Mere exposure effect says we prefer what’s familiar.
Memetic theory says we want what others want—because they want it.

Which means:
A lot of our dr...

We've worked with head coaches.
First-round draft picks.
Olympic medalists.
Fortune 100 CEOs and their teams.
NYT bestselling authors.
Founders who exited to millions.

Sounds flashy.
Maybe it is.
But here’s the truth:

They’re just humans.
Humans who did the one thing most people won’t.

They refused to stop.

In failure.
With critics.
On the good days.
And on the ones where everything in them wanted to quit.
They refused to stop.

When they didn’t win the starting job. When the launch bombed. When the mar...

For those of us in the storm, the fight, not quite "there" yet—but still believing.

Every pursuit has two signals: inputs and outputs.

Inputs: what you bring—time, focus, energy, intention.
Outputs: what you get—wins, revenue, recognition, results.

We obsess over outputs because they're visible and validating. They let us keep score.

But if you're in the trenches building something that matters, you already know: the scoreboard always lags behind the work.

By the time results appear, they're already h...

ONE STORY

"When Impact Went Invisible"

In the 1960s, NHL teams—including the dominant Montreal Canadiens—had a problem: They were building rosters and rewarding players based on stats that didn't always lead to wins.

Goals. Assists. Penalty minutes. Easy to track—but incomplete.

The players with the most points weren't always the ones who made the team better. Sometimes, the biggest names disrupted chemistry more than they created momentum.

Teams noticed something frustrating: You could los...

People don’t like it when you change lanes.

A career pivot.
A relationship shift.
Stepping away from a vice others still enjoy.

(Heaven forbid you change political parties, sports teams, or faith communities.)

Suddenly, people are uncomfortable.
Not because you’re wrong—but because you’re new.
And new requires them to adjust.

You see, we built a story around who you were.
It made sense.
It fit our world.
And, now you’ve gone off script.

But the truth is this:
Who you were isn’t going to get y...

Who decides?

Your coach?
Your boss?
The GM?
The board?
The transfer portal?

Feels like they do.

They hold the pen.
Call the shots.
Dictate the path.

But they don’t.

The trajectory of your life has less to do with your circumstances—and everything to do with your character.

You’ve met someone like this.

Someone who, no matter the situation—bad boss, market crash, unfair treatment—you just knew they were going to make it.

What do they have?

Unshakable belief?
Remarkable skill?
More talent?

Maybe...

There’s a fallacy we fall for when a door closes. 
That this was it.

The best shot.
The one path.
The only version of success that mattered.

But here’s the deeper fallacy: Believing there isn’t something better ahead.

Not just a better opportunity.
A better YOU.

The truth is, the future didn’t shrink when that door closed.
It got more specific.

It eliminated a path that wasn’t meant for the person you’re still becoming.
That’s not a dead end. It’s a clearing.

The best doors don’t swing open.
They’re built....

Convention is comfortable.

It tells you to wait your turn.
Follow the proven path.
Don’t fix what isn’t broken.

Blend in, improve slightly, and repeat. It rewards predictability. It protects the system. It keeps things running—until the system stops working.

Unconvention, on the other hand, is rarely comfortable.

It’s messy.
Uncertain.
Often invisible at first.

It doesn’t wait for permission. It doesn’t ask, “What’s allowed?” It asks, “Why is this the only way?”

“What problem are we actually s...

ONE STORY

Jean-Dominique Bauby had it all.

Editor-in-chief of Elle magazine in Paris. Cultural maven. Fashionable. Connected. At 44, he’d mastered the game most of us are still trying to figure out how to play. His first book deal was just the beginning.

Then suddenly, the rules changed: A stroke.

Bauby awoke in a hospital bed—fully conscious but completely paralyzed. Locked-in syndrome trapped his sharp mind and vivid memories inside an unresponsive body. He couldn't speak, move, or even no...

I’ve given away hundreds of dominoes over the years.
Lately, I’ve been carrying one around in my pocket.

Why?

Because every domino is a promise.
Not of strength. Of possibility.

An upright domino stores potential energy—quiet, invisible, waiting.
And if it stays upright, all that energy stays locked inside.
But tip it over, and the story begins.

Here’s the physics most people miss:
A falling domino can topple something 1.5 times its size.

The first one knocks over something the size of a dec...

The best athletes I’ve worked with all have one thing in common:

They believed before anyone else did.

That belief converted directly into action.
Not performance—preparation.

Extra work no one assigned.
Pilates. Recovery routines.
Massages. Mental reps.
Road habits. Food discipline.
Books. Self-talk. Silence.

What’s remarkable isn’t the work itself—it’s this:

No one asked them to do it.

They didn’t wait for coaching approval.
They didn’t seek team validation.

They carried an unshakable b...

Your real work begins the moment you stop asking for permission.

Let me be clear: Doing your work is not the same as going to work.

Your work is personal.
It matters more—and costs more.
It’s the thing only you can give the world.

Let me be clear again: permission is the obstacle.

It’s the invisible barrier most people never question.
We wait for someone to notice us. To pick us.
To validate our idea, our calling, our gut instinct.

But that moment rarely comes.

The truth is—and no one tell...

ONE STORY

Walt Disney wasn’t born into success. He wasn’t handed credibility. And he definitely wasn’t told, “You've got our blessing.”

He was reportedly fired from The Kansas City Star for not being creative enough.

He created Oswald the Lucky Rabbit—only to have the rights stolen and his animation team gutted.

That betrayal? It led directly to the birth of Mickey Mouse. And, again, when he pitched this new idea—a talking mouse with heart—he was told it wouldn’t work.

When he dreamed of Di...

On the one hand, this is awful.

That person’s a jerk.
We got screwed.
We don’t have what we need.
This is hard.
All could be lost.

On the other hand, this is exciting.

That person’s not our problem.
We’ve got a challenge.
We’re going to figure it out.
This is an adventure.
Anything is possible if we bring the best of us.

Both hands are available.
Only one builds something worth holding.

What’s the most important meeting of the day?

Most of our clients—professional athletes, coaches, high performers—are always in demand.

Their calendars are full.
Their margins are thin.
And their attention is everywhere but inward.

So we work on something unexpected:
A meeting. With themselves.

Even for 15 minutes.
Perhaps a hot drink. A journal.
And a wisdom text—something that centers or challenges.

Not for output.
Not for optics.
But for perspective.

Because when they don’t make space to think their own t...

The fastest way to feel smart is to decide who’s not.
Label. Dismiss. Move on.

He’s lazy.
She’s entitled.
They’re arrogant.
Karen.
Woke.
MAGA.
Liberal.
Uneducated.
Out of touch.

Sorted. Boxed. Gone.

Why do we do this?

Kierkegaard said, “You label me so you can negate me.”

Also…It saves us time. Nuance takes effort. Curiosity requires humility.

The fallacy in it all?

What we label, we stop learning from.
What we dismiss, we can’t understand.
What we reduce, we never fully see.

If your job is to grow—y...

It values what we can measure quickly over what matters deeply.

When we judge our investments by their 90-day returns, we're selecting for the ordinary, the incremental, the safe bet.

Transformation doesn't live on that timeline.

The early-morning lift feels like a waste—until you’re the one still strong in the fourth quarter.
The career move makes no sense until it positions you for an opportunity nobody else saw.
The product laun...

 Limits feel real—right up until someone proves they aren’t.

Take the four-minute mile.

For decades, it was considered impossible.
Physiologically unsafe.
A boundary too bold for the human body.

Experts said the human heart and lungs couldn’t sustain the effort needed for that speed.
They said the strain on muscles and joints could lead to breakdown or injury.
That it was at the very edge of human capability—if not beyond it.

But Roger Bannister didn’t buy it.

Bannister wasn’t paid.
He trained d...