Life's About Experiences

Life's About Experiences Life Is About Experiences Not Things is about sharing travels and insights from the neighborhood and

06/11/2026

Last year, my business partner and I drove up to Lake Tahoe for a charity golf tournament at Edgewood Resort.

We hadn't sponsored the event. No meetings were lined up. No clients to impress. We registered because it was a good cause and — honestly — because any excuse to spend a weekend at Tahoe is a good excuse.

The last evening, we ended up at the bar with a few guys we'd crossed paths with on the course. Someone suggested dinner. We said yes.

Over the next few hours, we talked about everything and nothing — golf, life, business, the usual. Then someone asked what are you working on. Turns out a few of the men at that table were major investors in our industry.

By the end of the weekend, we were driving home with five new business deals in the works.

No pitch deck. No cold outreach. No hustling for business cards.
Just two guys who showed up, let go of the agenda, and were present enough to recognize an opportunity when it walked through the door.

I've spent a lot of years believing that results come from relentless effort — from grinding harder, staying later, and squeezing every hour for output. And effort matters. But some of the most significant opportunities in my career have come from the moments I gave myself permission to step away from the machine.

The dinner I almost skipped. The trip I almost postponed. The weekend I finally stopped optimizing and just showed up.

You cannot manufacture presence. You can only put yourself in the room.

If you're a founder or executive reading this — when was the last time you went somewhere with zero agenda and let something unexpected happen? I'd genuinely love to hear it in the comments.

(My book Permission to Unplug launches September 8. Pre-order link in bio — and if you want the first chapter right now, drop UNPLUG in the comments.)

06/09/2026

I've worked with enough leaders to know what's actually stopping them.

It's not time. You can make time.

It's not money. You've spent more on things that mattered less.

It's one of these three:
1. You believe the business will fall apart without you.
It won't. And if it will — that's the real problem you're avoiding.
2. Your identity is so fused to the work that rest feels like failure.
The hustle badge has a cost. You're paying it every day.
3. You're waiting for a good time.
I've been in business for 20 years. That date has never appeared on my calendar.

Which one is actually stopping you?

1, 2, or 3 — drop it below.

06/07/2026

Here's the thing nobody tells you about the work: it will always be there.

The emails, the decisions, the fires to put out — they don't stop. There is no finish line after which it becomes safe to step away. No revenue milestone that makes the business quiet enough to justify a real break.
I spent twenty years waiting for that moment. It never came.

What did come was a health crisis that yanked me out of the business without my permission — and a realization lying in a hospital bed that I had spent most of my life chasing things that didn't matter nearly as much as I'd convinced myself they did.

Life is about experiences, not things. Go escape the work. Go see the world. Bring the people you love with you.

The work will be there when you get back. But this moment — right now — won't.

Permission to Unplug — September 8. Pre-order link in first comment.

06/06/2026

There is somewhere in this world calling you.

Maybe it's a place you've dreamed about for years. Maybe it's somewhere you haven't even thought of yet. Maybe it's just somewhere that isn't here — isn't the office, isn't the to-do list, isn't the version of yourself that's always available and always producing.

For most of my entrepreneurial life I filed that feeling under "someday." Someday when the business was ready. Someday when the timing made sense. Someday when I'd earned it.

What I know now is that someday is a lie we tell ourselves to stay comfortable. The business will never be ready. The timing will never be perfect. And the people you want to bring with you won't always be available when someday finally arrives.

Take a breath. Book the trip. Bring the ones you love.

That journey together is irreplaceable.

Permission to Unplug — September 8. Pre-order link in first comment.

05/30/2026

For most of my entrepreneurial life, I only invested in things I could measure.
Ad spend. Conference fees. New hires. If I could build a formula around it, I'd write the check.
So when it came to a real vacation — a true unplug, no laptop, no check-ins — I'd run the same math. And when I couldn't draw a straight line from "trip to Maldives" to "business outcome," I'd put it off.
What I eventually understood is that experience math isn't linear. The return might show up in two days or two years. It might be a breakthrough idea, a conversation that changes your strategy, or simply the energy to lead your team the way they deserve.
In 2024, my wife and I spent a month in the Maldives for our 25th anniversary. I came back transformed. Not because of what I figured out on the beach — but because of who I was when I got back.
Permission to Unplug comes out September 8. Pre-order link in first comment.

05/28/2026

For a long time I wore my perfectionism like a badge. Nothing left my desk unless it was right. Every proposal, every system, every hire — it all ran through me because I was the one who could do it properly.

What I didn't see was that I was also the reason nothing moved fast enough.

Projects stalled waiting on my approval. Good people got frustrated and left because they were never trusted to own anything. And I was exhausted — not because the business was growing, but because I'd made myself personally responsible for every detail of it.

The shift that changed everything: an 80% job that's actually finished will always beat a 100% job that's waiting on the boss.

Permission to Unplug comes out September 8. If the perfectionism trap sounds familiar, this book was written for you. Pre-order link in first comment.

05/26/2026

There's something that happens when you stand next to the ocean.

The inbox stops mattering. The approvals can wait. The thing you've been turning over in your mind for weeks either becomes clear — or stops feeling urgent.

Both are wins.

I spent years telling myself I'd slow down when the business was ready. I was wrong about two things: the business is never ready. And slowing down is actually what makes it grow.

Permission to Unplug — pre-order link in bio.

05/23/2026

There's a line in my new book that took me years to be ready to admit:
"If your business relies on you to succeed, it's already a failure."

Not because you haven't worked hard. Not because you don't have good people. But because a business that can't function without its owner isn't a business — it's a dependency.

The shift from boss to leader is the shift that changes everything. A boss holds all the cards — every decision, every approval, every answer flows back through them. A leader sets the direction, builds the systems, trains the team, and then gets out of the way.

When your team is truly empowered — not just permitted to work, but actually authorized to make decisions — that's when your business starts to grow without you instead of because of you.

Permission to Unplug comes out September 8. Pre-order link in first comment.

05/21/2026

Here's what nobody talks about with hustle culture: the real cost.
Not the financial cost. The other kind. The marriage that got quieter. The kids who stopped asking. The health warning you filed away because there was always something more urgent.

I wore my availability like a badge of honor. And for a long time I thought that meant I was winning.

It took a serious wake-up call to show me what I was actually losing.

Permission to Unplug comes out September 8. Pre-order link in first comment.

Throwback to my favorite Christmas photos ever. That little kid is now 21, but will forever be my little boy. We need to...
12/04/2025

Throwback to my favorite Christmas photos ever. That little kid is now 21, but will forever be my little boy.

We need to repeat this shoot.

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