The Story

I was twenty-five years old when I got my first management assignment. And like a lot of twenty-five year olds, I was certain I knew what I was doing.

I'd studied leadership. I'd watched good leaders and bad ones. I had opinions. What I didn't have — and didn't know I was missing — was any real understanding of what it meant to actually lead people.

It took about five or six months for reality to set in. My office was underperforming. My team was disengaged. The environment I'd created wasn't one anyone was excited to show up to. And when my boss confronted me about the results, I did what a lot of leaders do in that moment.

I blamed my team.

"If I had better players, we'd be doing better."

My boss listened to that. Then he asked me a question I've never forgotten.

"When a sports team isn't performing — what do they usually do?"

He didn't say another word. He didn't need to. I knew exactly what he meant. They fire the coach.

I didn't want to get fired. So I did something I hadn't done yet — I sat down with my team and asked for honest feedback. What came back was candid, uncomfortable, and exactly what I needed to hear.

Then my boss suggested a workshop on coaching. I went, mostly out of desperation. And it changed everything.

Not because it gave me better tactics or a new management system. It changed how I saw people — and more than anything, how I saw myself. The way I was showing up was producing the environment my team was stuck in. The beliefs I was carrying into work every day were shaping everything around me.

So I started practicing. I worked on how I connected with people. On how I handled difficult conversations. On showing up consistently instead of being one person on Monday and a different one on Thursday.

It took time. But the team turned around.

And here's the part I've never forgotten: it was the exact same team. Not one person changed. The only thing that changed was me.

That was the moment I understood what leadership actually is — and what it costs when leaders get it wrong.

The Path Here

I spent the next decade in the corporate world putting that understanding to work. Eventually I became COO of a privately held financial services company.

In 2008, I made the decision to go out on my own.

What I'd seen through that work — and through years of corporate leadership before it — was a consistent pattern in small business: smart, capable owners who were drowning not because they lacked talent or drive, but because leading people was genuinely hard and nobody had ever actually taught them how.

The number one headache for most small business owners isn't the market, or the competition, or the economy. It's the people inside their own organization.

New Work Revolution was built on a single idea: work environments should be places people actually want to be. And the leader — more than any hire, any system, or any strategy — is what determines whether that happens.

That was 2008. I've been doing this work ever since.

What Eighteen Years Produces

I've worked with hundreds of business owners across that time. The ones I remember most aren't the ones who hit a revenue milestone — they're the ones who came in ready to walk away from their business and left with a reason to stay.

Owners who said their team was impossible to manage. Who felt like they were the only thing holding the whole operation together. Who had tried everything external — new hires, new systems, new strategies — and were still hitting the same ceiling.

In almost every case, the ceiling wasn't out there. It was inside the leader.

The work we do together isn't about adding more. It's about getting honest about what's already in the way — the beliefs that haven't been questioned, the blind spots that haven't been named, the patterns that keep producing the same results regardless of what changes around them.

When that work gets done, businesses change. Teams change. And owners stop dreading Monday.

A few things that reflect eighteen years of this work:

• Published author — The Management Playbook and Total Experience Design
• Facilitator, University of Utah Professional Education
• Host of 10+ years of leadership conversations on the New Work Revolution podcast
• Worked with hundreds of business owners across industries to navigate exits, team transformations, and leadership breakthroughs

Outside the Work

I live in Salt Lake City with my wife and four daughters. 

Beyond that — skiing in the Utah mountains, live music, the outdoors, sports, etc.. I'm drawn to things that require presence. I think that's what makes a good leader too — the ability to actually be where you are.

If you've read this far, you have a sense of who I am and how I think. The next step is a conversation.