ONE STORY


("The Gold Wing." 2025)

Soichiro
His name was Soichiro.

Born in 1906 in rural Japan to a poor blacksmith, he dropped out of school to become a mechanic. A few years later, he applied for a job at Toyota, where he was immediately turned down.

Not with a polite "maybe next time"—he was flat-out rejected. They told him his designs weren't practical. That he didn't belong.

Most people would've taken that as a sign to move on. Not Soichiro.

(Soichiro, 1928)

Instead, he started a small c...

Many cultures, across history, had rites of passage.
Not for ceremony.
For identity.

A moment that marked the shift from one life stage to another.
Child to adult. Outsider to insider. Observer to leader.

But today?
Most of us skip the ritual.
Even so—we still feel the shift.

A rookie walks into the locker room for the first time.
An entrepreneur signs the lease.
A new executive realizes everyone’s waiting for her call.

These are modern rites.
Unspoken. Unsanctioned.
But identity-altering.

The best ...

We've worked with a lot of entrepreneurs this year.
Visionaries. Builders. Gutsy as hell.

And yet—every single one of them?
Needed encouragement.

Not a business tip. Not a shortcut.
Just one more person in their corner.
One more whisper of belief.

That’s what we can be for each other.
A reminder. A spark. A steady hand on the back.

Because sometimes, courage just needs a little company.

So here’s the point:
Let’s believe in one another.

Let’s give away what’s rare,
what’s heavy to carry al...

One stays on the surface.
They talk systems. Frameworks. Schemes.
Plug and play.
Do this, then that. Simple.

And it kind of works.
Especially when the goal is speed.
Especially when time is tight.

But not everything worth building runs on speed.

The other goes much deeper.
They work with things you can’t just slot into a 5-step plan—
Beliefs. Values. Identity.

They’re not asking, What should you do?
They’re asking, Who are you becoming?

One path is about helping someone do something.
The other is about helpin...

There’s a strange phenomenon in sport:
Bronze medalists are often happier than silver medalists.

It’s called counterfactual thinking.

Bronze thinks, “At least I made the podium.”
Silver thinks, “I almost won.”

I once coached an Olympian who won gold… but in a relay.
"So it didn’t count", or so he told me. (Really?!)

Just last week, a current NFL player told me he feels embarrassed to talk about his job.
Why? He’s never taken a snap on Sundays.

Never mind that three franchises have paid him to w...

One of the most powerful conversations I’ve had was with a head coach a few days after an awful season.

He didn’t just lose games—he lost the fans.
The media piled on.
The stress around the program was palpable.

I remember walking into his office. We sat down.
Pleasantries, sure. But we both knew why I was there.
Not to talk about next steps.
Not off-season plans.

We talked about grief.

And let me tell you—grief is NOT a topic that comes up very often in head coach or senior leader offices.

I told him the...

Courage isn’t the absence of fear.
It’s the presence of vision.

This is one of my favorite cognitive reframes. I come back to it often—especially with clients who feel overwhelmed.

Because sometimes they’re buried in doubt.
The challenge feels too big.
The odds too narrow.
The leader above them seems impossible.
The NIL landscape is chaotic.
The timing, the market, the pressure—none of it ideal.

When these stories come up, I let them finish. I don’t rush to solve or redirect. I just listen.

I think a lot about the work people do that no one assigned.

The other day, I (Kevin) was listening to Hamilton in the car with the kids, and I couldn’t stop thinking: No one asked Lin-Manuel Miranda to write this.

He just did it.
He read a biography on vacation and followed the spark.

This morning, I was drinking coffee from Cometeer—a company that flash-freezes great coffee into little frozen pucks. It’s delicious. (They sell Intelligentsia—my favorite).

Anyway, I kept wondering: Who asked ...

You don’t pick a shirt based on who you want to become.
You pick it based on how you feel.

Cold? Grab the hoodie.
Confident? Maybe the black one.
Lazy Sunday? Hello, stretched-out tee with the mystery stain.

Shirts are for moods.
Identity is not.

The problem is, most people treat their commitments like shirts.
They wear them only when they feel like it.

But if you only write when you feel inspired...
Only lead when you feel confident...
Only train when you feel motivated...

Then your future is alw...

ONE STORY

("The Last Great Race." Image by Martin Schneekloth. 2019)

 "He Didn’t Ride the Horse. He Became One."

THE LONG RUN
For most of human history, running far wasn’t a sport. It was survival. A necessity. A test of spirit wrapped in the ordinary.

The Greeks had Pheidippides (a messenger who ran 150 miles from Athens to Sparta—on foot and without rest—to rally help before a Persian invasion). The Rarámuri ran for days through desert canyons. The messengers of the Incan Empire sprinted...

(this piece is written by our founder, Kevin Knox)

When I was a kid, I had a kind of superpower.

I’d have a dream—something big.
Play in the majors.
Fly a fighter jet.
Become a dad. A speaker. A leader.

Not tomorrow dreams.
Someday dreams.
The kind that require time, effort—
and growing into someone new.

Anyway, here's the superpower:
I’d find a quiet spot.
Sit real still.
Close my eyes tight.
Clench my fists.
And then I'd whisper to myself:

“From now to then.”

That phrase became a portal—
...

I can picture this all falling apart.
I can see the failure. Hear the critics. Feel the embarrassment.
Oh wow. Let’s not do it.

But I can also picture this working.
I can see the through line. The lives changed. Why it must be done.
Oh wow. We have to do this.

Funny, isn’t it?
It’s never the good outcomes that keep us up at night—only the bad ones.

The stories you tell shape the future you live in.
It's your choice which ones get airtime.

You don’t have to take it personal.
You don’t have to get stuck in your hurt feelings.
You don’t have to turn every slight into a story.

There was this running back we worked with a few years ago—buried on the depth chart. So far down, his own position coach once blanked on his name in a team meeting.

But, you know what? The kid didn’t flinch.
He didn’t pout. Didn’t make a scene.
He just kept showing up.
Got lost in his process.
Stacked daily gains.

And here’s the mindset:

“What you think a...

 You want to know a secret?

Well, it was never a secret.
But it will help you. And you’ve been looking for it in so many other places.

Here it is:

Action.

Go. Get started.
Stop waiting and start moving.

You don’t need another credential.
You don’t need another class, that book, or more research.

The clarity you seek is waiting for you in the work.

While everyone else waits for the perfect conditions, the perfect plan, the perfect moment. You can choose to start. Today.

In fact, the only ...

ONE STORY

 
(The Brooklyn Bridge. Image by Sam Amil. 2018.)

"Don’t Argue with Fear. Crush It with Proof."

THE PANIC
In May of 1883—just six days after the Brooklyn Bridge opened to the public—panic hit.

A rumor swept through the crowd: the bridge is collapsing. Chaos followed. A stampede. Twelve people were crushed to death.

Confidence in the bridge evaporated overnight. Commuters stayed away. Engineers issued statements. Experts gave reassurances. But no one believed them.

That’s when Ph...

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...