You can’t pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

There was a period in the last ten years, I quoted that phrase often.

I knew what it meant, but I wasn’t sure how it really felt until I was with my brothers and sisters burying my mother.

The days and weeks leading up to the actual burial were filled with varying emotions as we progressed through settling her estate.

I had accepted my mother’s passing as “she is with the Lord.”

It seems nice, pays respects, and honors her lifelong pursuit of being a good and faithful believer.

Except my siblings and I knew who she was. We just didn’t know why she was who she was.

For sixty years with kids, she remained an impenetrable vault of her past. Her deflection game was at another level. Avoidance was the norm.

I said to my wife, “It is sad to say, but I never knew my mother. I knew her character, I saw her flaws, but I don’t know what she did at 5, 10, 15 or 20 years old.”

This made me sad. For the past many years, I had been trying to reconcile in my mind why she did the things that she did, knowing how detrimental those things were to her own mental health.

She had a switch and that switch was evil. Not the woman who listened to Charles Stanley every day for sixty years, took notes on his sermons, and prayed she could be a Southern Baptist with her Bible study friends. That was the façade.

The good qualities were great, but the bad painted her into a different realm.

We buried her near my dad. The side humor was that he may not have wanted her there. He has been gone for over ten years now, and he was probably leading a dance party, sliding across the dance floor on his knees after having thrown salt on it wherever he was.

My siblings and I were together for two days. It was pleasant.

I was surprised by some reactions and concerned about others. It was clear after so many years; we had all grown apart.

There was love between us, but it was a love that was created by survival.

Each of us had our own scars that the others did not earn. Even my mother’s siblings wore similar scars they earned from their parents.

The generational pain was a living, breathing monster. It validated my decision to teach my children to love their family without conditions and be supportive of them, but understand they may see the world differently than I see it.

I stayed away from having a lot of friends. It was that surface living my mother developed for herself that she passed on to me.

It was her survival mechanism. Although I am comfortable being alone, having children has changed my thoughts on that.

Watching them grow in healthy relationships allowed me to see how having deep friendships is good.

The thrill of getting to know our friends over the many years has been a soul-satisfying experience for me.

The husband has been my closest friend for the past many years, and Rebecca has been best friends with the wife. We have traveled together often, even bringing them into our former friend groups from other towns we lived in over twenty years ago.

We spend holidays together, celebrate birthdays, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company at any time.

All the kids are best friends. They all started out as childhood friends, and now that they are adults, they remain as close as ever.

There is a refuge in honest discussions about each other’s families, and we do it without judgement.

Recently, we have had more in common than we would have liked. Each of our families has lost a parent. We have been there for them and they have been there for us.

Our families have chosen to be friends with each other.

This does not diminish my blood family. I think it has allowed me to see them in a different light.

We have chosen to be family.

We are different but we are all human trying to make our way through life.

coltjennings.com

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There are a few things I remember wanting to be growing up more than anything.

A real cowboy. A lottery winner. And a good man.

I still want to be those today but for different reasons.

The cowboy I want to be is the steward of land, animal, and resources.

Maximizing my talents God entrusted to me to encourage my family, my friends, and my sphere of influence to become stewards is my ultimate lottery win.

Reading the Bible every day, immersing myself in the word, and living a life in fulfillment of the principles of Christ will challenge me to be a good man.

The winning the lottery part tends to throw people off because it is a chance, unlike faith in Christ. Or is it?

Much like being a cowboy, my lottery is creating an atmosphere of doing hard work. But some hard work is different than others.

Throwing trash into a hopper of a 25 yd rear loader is different from thinking through the outline and execution of writing five novels in one year. Or writing movie scripts with no knowledge of how to do it.

Writing is not sweat pouring off your forehead, muscles aching from bending over at 400 houses after jumping off the back of a truck for eleven hours a day.

It is also not the anxiety of driving in traffic for eight hours avoiding maniacs who can’t stand being behind a high-profile truck on a two-lane country road methodically picking up trash so there are no customer complaints being phoned in.

Different stressors – different perspectives.

Management and leadership are two bullets fired from the same gun but produce different results.

I was raised by a manager. A business executive who translated the trials of professional sports into a business acumen. He applied coaching principles to a non-athletic event and built a legacy in an industry by it.

The man drilled down into the performance metrics of his industry and found the smallest single unit to measure.

He decided that was the component every employee knew everything about. He decided to measure each employee by that unit.

He knew that to win he must pay his employees by that unit of work. His thought was that his people must feel vested in the value they create, they must see that value simply and maximize the value they create with a formula.

It changed this industry back in the 1970s and exists today as the gold standard of pay scale.

Being a sports minded manager, he knew people. It was his superpower.

It was not something he could teach or train people to do, it was simply who he was.

As an adult, I had many conversations with him as we traveled together building a business.

I was different from my brothers. They were wrench turning, gritty operators who knew the business. They forgot more than I knew in the business.

But like my father, I looked for small details to produce big results. Unlike my brothers who know everything to produce the consistent results.

This was the tension. I knew executives. They knew line workers.

The world needs both of us and all of them.

For example, my oldest brother created a tension between a CEO my father both admired and trusted. When I met this CEO years later while I was running my public company as CEO, the scenario went differently.

The meeting in his boardroom in Texas was more than a meeting; it was the beginning of a journey for me.

Within minutes, I instantly understood why my father admired this man. Why my father trusted this man.

I had begun to form calluses on my skin from the wall street bankers, lenders, private equity, and basic vipers I had to deal with.

I did not realize that there was another way.

I left that meeting inspired and with a change in direction of how to run my company.

The words were never said in that boardroom in Texas. I later began to talk to some of his employees to understand more about who he was.

It was then I realized he was much further on the journey than I was. He had implemented his leadership into this enormous company, and it was working.

The phrase I learned was Servant-Leadership.

This wasn’t taught in college, nor was it taught in management seminars around the globe.

It was Biblical and I was inspired by this executive from that moment on.

The more I read, the more I strived to become this kind of leader.

This CEO was calm and focused. He spoke with reassurance and an unusual positivity.

His decisions were firm and yet inviting debate. His offer was simple, “Here it is, if you can make this happen, I will make sure I honor my commitment to you. If you can’t, life will go on.”

This is how I wanted to approach life.

This man also hired well.

In the end, my company failed because I did not hire well. I brought vipers into my company, not Servant-Leaders.

It is not their fault, I own it. Managing and leading people are my kryptonite.

Vision and execution are my strengths.

I will never forget the day I met that CEO in a boardroom in Texas. Despite my setbacks, it changed my way of thinking. It brought me to the realization that being a servant to the people you employ is true leadership toward salvation.

Managing people for results is great for the world’s gain, but not long-lasting for the soul.

It makes sense to me now. As I watch Todd Pierce, train his horses while preaching the gospel. I found my life has resembled those horses.

When all this time I thought I was a cowboy, I was really the horse learning how to be led.

My crazy, out-of-control journey trying to be an entrepreneur, was really me trying to find my peace. As Todd says, “sometimes we don’t know what to do other than just run to the Father.”

I started my entrepreneurial journey in the back of a church listening to God tell me what to do, but unfortunately, I have also heard Him tell me as I sat in my truck in front of a Gate station that I should buy a lottery ticket because I was going to win.

There is a chance I was hearing what I wanted to hear. But God is so big, I think He was playing with me. Either way – I enjoy the peace of running to my Lord.

Although I am not running the ranch I always wanted yet, or stewarding the hearts I feel compelled to build, I do believe I am on the right path to becoming a good man.

@toddpierceridinghighministries

coltjennings.com

stewardship-project.org

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Growing up a Miami Hurricane fan, I knew I would live in Florida.

But I never thought I would try to raise or harness three hurricanes.

Now before you say hurricanes are bad because of their destructive force, you are only seeing half of the picture. And the picture is never always bad.

Let’s take it step by step.

Destruction.

When things get destroyed, there is a chance of rebirth.

Rebuilding.

I know where I come from and the things I have done.

Having made it to my fifties, I have had many rebirths.

And I have rebuilt myself several times.

I credit that to my Lord.

Early in their young lives, I gave them my truth.

It was cold, dark, and harrowing.

I have been haunted by the words from Exodus 20:5, “You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me.”

They heard it all. I lived in the shadows of deceit and manipulation. It hid in the shadows and brought about destruction at every turn.

Like a storm, it had beauty, but it held a destructive force that could last generations unless dealt with head on.

I dealt with it head on.

They deserved better from me, and they deserve a better life than a life hidden in the shadows.

I believe this full-frontal attack has prepared them for their lives.

They may not always win, but the goal was not about winning.

The goal was about experiencing the rebirth after the storm.

I have always seen hurricanes as a natural system. They stir and recharge water.

The outside variable that make hurricanes bad are past mistakes and societal pressures.

The past mistakes and societal pressures are like pavement everywhere, construction so close to beach heads, fertilizer in all our fields, and sewage that is pointed toward our oceans.

These are what society sees strewn everywhere after the destructive force of a hurricane.

The hurricane is not bad itself; it’s those outside variables that get destroyed because humans try to do things their way, that makes them look bad.

Applying this to my kids is straightforward.

Their lives are natural systems existing on the earth.

Outside forces like social media, peer pressure and competition anxiety are variables that should be controlled. However, in the same breath, determination, pursuit of excellence, mastery of craft that can be considered outside forces in the way of a natural state as well, and those must be ordered too.

The trick is teaching my children the proper order of things.

Try living with, “Much is given, much is expected,” from your father all the time.

It must be painful. But I know it is the right message.

If they hear it enough, it will absorb.

Maybe not today or tomorrow, but it will have a lasting effect.

Each of them is much smarter than I am in ways that are valuable.

My version of smart is overthinking or 360 degrees of thinking.

Every angle is a possibility for me. It is not textbook, nor is it something I desire for my kids to retain, but that’s not up to me.

Facetiously, I view them as hurricanes because they tend to dominate things they are involved in.

They may not be the number one pick, but they will be the pick you will want to have to win.

So, when Jesus calmed the storm and Peter experienced his first lapse of faith, Jesus carried Peter through his doubts.

It challenged Peter to rebuild his faith.

The hardest rebirth continues every day.

It continues as I step outside that boat in my own storm of non-belief trying to do things my way.

Life becomes difficult, but from destruction, comes rebirth.

As the disciples were playing the long-game with Jesus, I have been focusing on my long-game harnessing three hurricanes.

The goal is about seeing the Son in every situation, regardless of whether He is hidden in times of trouble, they will always know He is there. Just as the sun is after a storm.

I view fatherhood as I do Stewardship.

The mastery of Stewardship is not about money. It is about the treasures you have in your life.

Faith. Friendships. Marriages. Children. Health. Skills. Patience. Love. Smiles.

Stewarding three hurricanes through life has been the best journey I have taken.

My own will or selfishness is my Hevel, my vapor, I constantly continue to grasp at, when instead I should be focusing on His will.

I say, “Harness the storm to create better hurricanes.”

Do everything imaginable.

Fail fast.

Love lots.

Say I am sorry often.

Have as many hurricanes as the Lord gives you.

coltjennings.com

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Snapchat. I understand it. I don’t like it.

Instagram. I don’t know how to use it. I am sure it is useful.

Facebook. Never had it. Won’t get it. I will leave it up to my marketing team.

Tik Tok. As if. Funny – can’t do it.

LinkedIn. Come on. It stopped being a business platform fifteen years ago.

YouTube. Until Google let every bot make AI videos – awesome. Now. Variable.

Substack. Beginning to like it. I love to think deep. Writing around memories is good for me. The features may exceed my abilities. Despite my love to hunt pigs from helicopters, I don’t hunt followers. I write because I love to write.

My favorite. The Photos app.

I wish I were better at using its features as well.

A picture inspires my stories, develops context, and tracks every adventure.

It is simple. That is my favorite feature.

Picture. Map it. Put it in chronological order. Share it with my family. Edit it. Turn a scene into a chibi scene. Create an AI short video. Celebrate a memory without much work.

I love to open the app and scroll through pictures.

Anytime of the day. Any location. When most people are death scrolling socials, I am remembering the people in my life as they were captured in my life.

When I want to send a memory to someone, I select it and put it in a message.

I send it then.

It is my way of telling someone I am thinking about them without telling the whole world, getting deep in a timeline, or being missed because we are not following each other.

For those of us who have lived both in the analog world and the digital world, I have been blessed to have a beautiful wife who loved to take analog pictures.

She is amazing. She has gone through all of them for the past thirty plus years and categorized them and stored them.

Having moved many times over the past thirty years, her system has gotten good.

From time to time during the year, she will venture out to the storage units and go through the pictures.

I will get pictures sent to my messages.

I instantly store them. Generally, she will send the pictures to all of us.

The boys will make a funny comment (at least to themselves), and then all of us will pile on.

It’s not on an app for someone to hack and see.

It’s in what should be secure, my messages app and my photo app.

It’s a beautifully simple process. It brings me great joy.

I have told each child to take a picture wherever they go. It doesn’t have to be good. Take something you can see. The photos app stores your location. Soon, you will go back and remember where you were on a particular day. It will bring back a memory you maybe didn’t think you had.

I find it peaceful to let that photo find a thought I had at that moment or illuminate how my life has changed since that timestamp, or better yet, taking a minute to Thank God for that moment in my life.

My mind captures life in cinematic themes.

Just writing this the reel in my mind is stepping out of the dugout, turning to the stands, and handing a baseball to a beautiful brunette who came to my game that night.

I handed her a baseball inscribed with, “Do you want to go out with me?”

She still has that baseball. It is not film, but the scene is captured in my mind and I will never forget.

I feel the same way about music.

I find myself in a reel listening to Hootie and the Blowfish tearing up I95 with Rebecca. In that scene, I am late getting to the field, and I am singing “Only want to be with you,” as she races through traffic.

Unfortunately, we did not have camera phones then. No captured moment.

But it makes me think, if I could match those things together, how it would transport me back to that Ford Taurus, laughing and smiling at that beautiful woman sitting next to me. I would love to be transported back to that exact moment.

I think I would call it “Transported.”

The essence would be transporting its users emotionally to a certain time. Placing them in the scene like it is a movie.

Rebecca and I have lived a movie.

She enjoys the socials. I do not.

She thrives on stability. I am a variable cost.

We are both independent. Yet, we have never been apart.

My memory of Rebecca was always forever.

I am a challenge at best but I am hers despite my faults.

I don’t need to tell everything to everyone.

I prefer to show it to her. Every day.

coltjennings.com

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Somewhere in the halls of video moments in Arkansas, there is video of four or five men in their fifties standing in waist deep water with waders on singing in the middle of a flooded forest.

The words coming out of their mouths would make you choke on your own protein shake.

From the cinematic view of my camera – I see the whole scene playout, not only in my mind today, but more importantly on the film I took then. Let me paint the cinematic picture for you.

The crackling of the ice on the thin tree branches echoes through the trees.

Water is faintly moving, but it is making enough noise to beat a low bass drum with the high-pitched icicles scratching the sides of the boat seen tucked away behind a thicket of trees in the distance.

The eighteen degrees in the air has found a way to linger just above the water making the ability to breathe while walking in waders just a bit harder than normal. It is almost as if you can see the temperature sitting on the water in a dense fog.

Scattered throughout the trees, there seem to be ducks on the water, but as the sun begins to break through the tree top canvas, you can see the ducks are decoys floating in a circular perimeter.

As the camera spans around the scene, there are few movements detected near various trees.

Absorbed in the tree bark you notice those movements are men, in camo, clinging to the tree so not to be discovered.

The panning of the camera is long enough to notice noises in the distance but then the same noises coming from behind one of the trees.

A man is belting out a duck call toward the sky. His left hand holding the base of the ivory caller and his right hand over the exit hole of the caller while opening and closing his hand in a maestro type fashion.

A quiet clinking is heard. Faint noises coming from the lanyard holding his duck caller. You notice it has several cylindrical bands attached to his lanyard and they are hitting each other with each movement as the caller goes from his mouth to hanging on his chest.

The sound is rhythmic and rehearsed to perfection. You notice the hunters next to the trees begin to look up slowly towards the sky.

The anticipation is drowned out by the movements of the hunters, which are now steadied, as if performing a dance to stir the water near the decoys.

The pace of things in motion and creating the calls begins to accelerate in tempo.

Then suddenly quiet.

The caller abruptly stops calling the ducks.

All the hunters’ heads are down. The whites of their eyes can be seen for a quick second as the hunters look for the ducks in the air.

They begin motioning to each other, whispering the basic question.

“Where are they?”

The questions become giggles. Older men, smiles as big as the Grand Canyon, but giggling like school children anticipating their kill.

But they have not seen the ducks yet.

The only person who has seen them is the guide with the duck caller.

His head has turned a hundred ways, but he never locked on to a certain location in the sky above the tree top canopy.

Then you see him put the caller to his mouth again.

This time, it is small faint noises. Short bursts.

Silence.

Short bursts.

Silence.

Suddenly, a feeling comes through the trees. It’s a breeze that hits your chest.

You can feel it. And then you know.

The ducks are beginning to light down into your perimeter.

One last small burst from the guide.

Silence.

“All right now, you boys get’em!”

With that, the anticipation explodes.

The next sound destroys the tranquil rhythmic sounds of the water flow and the quiet perfection being in the middle of the woods.

Shotguns ring out. The long-awaited crescendo begins its flight.

One shot – becomes ten shots quickly, as in unison the men become rabid killers in a scene that’s once so tranquil, it is often depicted in great art on walls throughout the world.

Ducks become limp in the air, turning 180 degrees as they fall to their final resting place in the water.

Splash after splash, the thrill of being a man becomes adrenaline coursing through the veins of men who would otherwise be focused, dedicated accountants, engineers, safety supervisors, executives.

The morning that started at 4:15 a.m. with breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausage, sausage gravy, coffee, and stories from the previous night’s card game, has suddenly become victory.

The water becomes a torrent now.

The dogs hit the water to chase any ducks that are injured and start to swim away. The guide directing their every movement with hand signals.

Men come out from their hiding to retrieve the dead ducks on the water near them.

Laughter fills the air. Then the first words since the declaration of war by the guide are heard.

“I shot that one”

“I think I got two. Maybe three.”

“I know I got that one over there.”

“No you didn’t. I shot that one as it was about to sit right on me.”

The men begin to drift toward the guide.

They are careful where they walk because they can’t see under the water.

Trees are down. Holes are deep. They are careful but steady.

Then the moment happens that goes down in the archives of funny moments.

It is barely 8:30 a.m. when a cap can be heard popping from its white, long bottleneck.

Frozen and exhilarated, the men begin to drink rum in celebration of their first kill of the day.

Twenty minutes later – the next dead soldier is the fifth of Malibu Rum.

Thirty minutes later, the peach and peppermint schnapps bottles are clinking in toast to the victory.

By 9:30 a.m., the sounds of five older huntsmen can be heard.

It is the now infamous chorus of, “Malibu. Malibu. Malibu – bu – bu.”

This was only one of the hunts with my father, my brothers, and my father’s friends.

I not only see this scene as if it were yesterday, but I can also see this scene as it might be on film.

Stay tuned for more hunting stories.

coltjennings.com

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It seems like a lifetime ago when my brothers and I would meet my father and his staff to play golf at a private club in Jonesboro on early Saturday mornings.

I guess it kind of was; it was over thirty-seven years ago the last time we played on Saturdays together.

Thinking about it now, the last time we all got together to play golf was his sixtieth birthday party in Arizona.

It was an amazing weekend to celebrate his life with all his kids and grandchildren. What truly made it spectacular was the golf I arranged for everyone.

We played a few rounds around the Phoenix Metro area first.

My home courses were in North Scottsdale.

The final round, the pinnacle of the golf outings for the weekend, was at Silverleaf.

My family was in for a treat. The course was just built, perfect, and on a piece of property in the desert, only the owners and designer, Tom Weiskopf, could have ever imagined.

We warmed up on the range. I introduced my brothers and other family members to all the staff. We had hot chocolate, a few muffins, and headed out about 7:45 a.m. before the rest of the members teed off.

The dew was still on the ground, and the cool temperature made you feel you were back in Scotland when golf was invented. It was amazing how the allure of this club and the ability of the staff to maintain its immaculate beauty only enhanced the outing itself.

We were in the middle of the most beautiful desert in the world.

The sun was peeking out from behind some clouds. The rays of the sun were hitting the desert plants on every side of McDowell Mountain Preserve making the vibrant colors of the desert seem alive.

We had three groups. And despite the need for etiquette at this premier club, the staff learned to appreciate my ability to be respectful and loud, disorienting yet reserved on a golf course, all at the same time.

They liked me. And therefore, they put up with me.

They noticed all three groups on the first tee-box to start the day. Their faces were wary with half-smiles and half-steely eyes as they took in the scene.

It was twelve knuckleheads laughing, telling stories, and poking fun at each other loudly. The staff knew it was going to be a long day trying to keep us moving.

As we teed off, the weather was over-cast and around 67 degrees. Before we got to the third hole, it was sleeting.

By the seventh hole, it was seventy-eight and over-cast again. After the turn, as we were up in the canyon, it snowed with a mix of massive hail.

It was only about three and a half hours later, as we hit our tee balls on eighteen, that the sun showed up with clear skies and eighty-something degrees.

As we literally rattled between the canyons for that four hours of golf, we all felt as if we had been beaten up in a cage match from the weather and the tall task of playing this course from the tips.

I remember the head pro calling me during the round telling me she could hear us throughout the canyons. Our only saving grace was that there were less than ten houses built at the time, and I was good friends with the owners of the development.

She was laughing but so graciously and delicately asked me to keep it down. We complied (mostly).

The family was between my sister’s house and our house.

We showered and got ready to celebrate with the grandchildren and wives at our club, DC Ranch.

Rebecca had planned a big party at the clubhouse. Think of an old Mexican stone plantation house with a beautiful courtyard in the middle, with a warm, rich feel kids could relax anywhere in the confines. This is what DC Ranch brings out of you the minute your valet helps you out of your car.

We had a private party that night, open bar and amazing food. We celebrated my father’s birthday with stories and gifts.

After all the existing grandchildren, children, and in-laws had talked, Rebecca jumped up in the room’s front and told a story.

The culmination of her quick story resulted in letting my father know she was pregnant with our third child.

Although we were celebrating his birthday, my father was quickly overwhelmed. He loved his grandchildren. He wanted us all to have many more.

He was ecstatic. He smiled so big; he laughed so hard, the roomful of twenty-some people could not drown out his laughter. It was a beautiful sight to see.

My father has since passed; one brother is sixty, the other fifty-eight.

We played golf at a wedding lately. It was not the same.

Time has created bruises, but hopefully time has not destroyed great memories.

The competition on those Saturday golf outings was fierce. There was always gambling.

We were young, athletic, and my father spurred on the competition between all four of us.

He did the same on that last golf outing.

The four of us thrived in that environment.

It’s now many years later, and because of challenges we have each faced on our own, we haven’t been able to celebrate that love of competition together in a long time.

The world changes every minute. It is my prayer, the future brings the perfect chaos of that trip back to life, whether we do it to celebrate our father. Or we simply do it to celebrate our brotherhood.

We just need to do it.

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Professional sports magnify the act of measurement.

It is clear in baseball.

Teams draft kids once they have completed either high school, turned 18, completed junior college, or turned 21. This is the clear, documented path for young baseball players.

A MLB team selected me in the top twenty rounds of the amateur draft in the early 1990s.

God was good to me, and I continue to thank Him every day for that opportunity.

MLB measured me and defined my expectations quickly.

I was 6’5” (having grown 1.5 inches since leaving high school), could throw hard, but lacked any historical data points to validate my ability to pitch.

They pulled my draft card in the top twenty rounds. Not great, but decent.

With that, God allowed me to be front row to two of the best athletes of my day playing in the same leagues for four years.

In their separate draft years, they ranked as the best high school athletes in the country. It was not just baseball, but over all athletes in all sports.

Both signed and played baseball after being drafted as number one picks.

Their MLB team gave them a lot of money to sign.

Whereas the expectations for me to get to the big leagues were low, their expectations were high and came with a tremendous amount of pressure and sensitivity.

Of all the statues of all the Greek gods in Greece, carved in marble and limestone or cast in bronze, these two athletes could have been the artist’s inspiration for those sculptures.

Watching them hit baseballs in batting practice in the twilight hours of a North Carolina summer night was the most incredible spectacle I had seen in baseball.

A novice scout, a baseball fan, or coach could validate these two guys’ positions in the draft quickly by watching that night.

Except it was already too late. The team had already set expectations by their draft number; now they were being judged against that pick.

They were being judged not having seen professional pitching before but were required to travel on a bus with 24 new friends for 132 games and while trying to eat on a $15 per diem.

They were expected to be great.

This happens every year after every draft.

MLB and other sports leagues hand kids all that pressure, all that money while at the same time telling them to mature, get stronger, stay later, and make the teams look like they are the smartest people on the planet by drafting these kids number one.

Do some of these kids handle all that pressure? Absolutely. Some do it with so much grace and composure, most fans would never know until they do an AI search to find out what happened to them thirty years later.

These guys were my friends in minor league baseball. I truly enjoyed sitting with them on buses, in the locker room, and living with them during instructional leagues.

They were amazing people. We came from different parts of the world and were different in skill sets. Yet we were good friends when we were together.

By year three, the low bar for me was now as high as every other major league prospect.

Until I got hurt. The bar broke. Fell to the ground. Shattered.

When I left baseball, I left baseball.

My friends, they were number one draft picks. Their bars were always higher than mine, which also meant they would stay around longer.

They had athletic skills, power, and speed that would be considered among the top 50 in MLB.

One of my friends never made it to the big leagues. He got hurt. He spent a few years chasing his expectations only to retire in obscurity like me.

The other, made it to the big leagues. He not only flourished for a few years, but he achieved the ultimate goal of being in major league baseball.

The three of us were measured every day and judged by our position in the lineup or the league we were playing in.

We were in the papers and scouting reports every day. The organization spent hours evaluating us.

Over time, people forgot about us. They stopped measuring our athletic ability and started measuring our character.

I have not spoken to either of them in thirty years.

I would bet anything, those guys remain gentlemen of tremendous character and amazing work ethic.

I feel like even though we may not have hit our expectations in baseball; we were made men of character by meeting those expectations head on every day.

Measuring man did not start with baseball, it started in a garden when time began.

In Elohim’s first breath to man, He set out the first expectations.

He told Adam that he had dominion over all the earth.

Elohim created Eve in His image and told them to be fruitful and multiply.

Enjoy the earth, for it is good; enjoy your partner and create life, for it is good.

With that, Yahweh established expectations.

Then came judgment.

Expectations first, measurement and judgment second.

From the very start of time, we have been measured against the perfection of the Garden of Eden.

The further we get away from creation, from the original request by Elohim, the easier we find it to be our own judge and jury for mankind.

Yahweh gave us measurement and judgment, mercy and grace.

Just as athletes fall short of expectations, it is more important what is being built inside the heart of those who fall short.

Is it men of character? Is it men of faithfulness?

God will measure us. He will judge us.

Let us all look back and understand that His salvation is all we need, and another chance to be the man He wants, or rather, expects us to be.

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I won’t lie. This has been building for a couple of days.

The expectation is that this will be the most fun walk in my memories this week.

It is about one great musician, one great friend and how they intertwined in a short period of time.

In high school, my best friend was a guy named Ethan. He is Filipino, a foot shorter than I am, is brilliant and one of the kindest people I have ever met.

I call him my best friend, but he has always been everybody’s best friend.

We would occasionally go to Memphis and hang out on Beale Street in high school and in college during breaks. Jonesboro was great but it was not the Memphis Blues scene.

One night during a summer break, Ethan and I headed out to BB Kings. It was a new joint on Beale Street that year. We arrived late so we went upstairs to watch and listen to the music.

The scene was eclectic, it was Ethan, me, and a few beautiful black women we did not know. At the time, I was 6’4”, barely 185 lbs., white as Christmas snow, and someone most people would not think to be in BB Kings on a late Friday night. Yet I fell in love 10 times with the sweetest women we were hanging out with that night.

No matter. I felt more at home that night than I had anywhere in my life. The five or six of us were smiling, laughing, flirting, and singing the whole time.

I played air guitar with Lucille, while BB played it on stage.

Ethan kept laughing and getting us more beers for our little crowd. Nobody was drunk – but we were sweating so much, you would have thought it was raining inside.

It was epic. The lights were low and focused on the stage where BB King was. The smoke lingered at the lights and drifted up to the balcony.

I swear it was surreal, but it only furthered my love for Blues and Jazz music.

Six months later, back at University of Arkansas, BB King was playing a venue in town.

George’s was a live music joint in Fayetteville and where the athletes from school would work as bouncers during off seasons.

Knowing BB King was coming to George’s, I along with what seemed like the entire athletic department showed up early to meet and talk to BB King.

It was an honor but also humbling at how gracious this man was. I knew I had to be beaming from ear to ear.

Everyone had pictures with him holding Lucille while he was on stage and by the time the other students arrived, we thought the night would never end.

It didn’t. The night turned into morning and about 3:30 to 4 a.m., well past closing time, I think the entire athletic department finally said goodbye and wished him well.

Before he left, I told him the story about Ethan and me in the balcony.

He laughed a little laugh and told me he remembered seeing a young white kid hanging from the balcony while all the women that ran his tour dates and band were hanging on the poor kid.

He could have been telling the truth, or he could have been just being the kind gracious person he always seemed to be.

My guess is it was the latter.

These two nights were over 35 years ago. If you asked me, I feel like it was yesterday. I am not trying to be nostalgic. These were two great nights and stories I have often used in my repertoire.

But as I am thinking about these nights and the people who surrounded me on those nights, I would be remiss if I didn’t make a comment about where I see myself in the world today.

I was raised country. To be more specific, I was raised southern. I have seen and immersed myself in different cultures around the world.

Unfortunately, I have traveled the world literally by myself. I have had business associates who have become friends in those parts of the world, but when the lights are out – it has been me alone.

I find confidence in those moments. It is a simple pleasure to find time to pray and apply scripture to my daily decisions. In fact, nothing tells the story like the Bible telling me I was wrong, while I ask the Lord for forgiveness, begging for mercy, and praying for grace.

That said, my thesis remains, you must do to understand. You must apply to appreciate. You must love all before you dismiss.

The world despite all the negative static is good. The night on the balcony proves it all. The world is a good place, as God said in Genesis. We should think more like this than our current environment.

The anticipation of meeting BB King and listening to his music in a small venue was overwhelming. Being able to hang out with a best friend and then a whole department of friends while doing that thing is amazing.

I wish you all could have been there. The Blues are something you must feel in person. It is a spiritual gift for all of us to experience.

The Masters like BB King, John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, WC Handy, Son House and the Father of the Delta Blues - Charley Patton, they created music as we know it. The world misses them all and when BB King passed we lost both him and Lucille.

When you feel something this good, you never want that feeling to go away. Not even after 35 years.

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There is no such thing as an off-season for a hockey dad in the South.

I was entrusted with three brilliant, athletic, compassionate children.

My oldest, a daughter, is the leader of this band of savages.

The two boys that followed were created to let me know what jealousy feels like.

Their natural instincts, their athletic skillsets, as well as their ability to bounce back in adversity is a whole new level of envy for me.

They have taken my single life lesson I gave them and multiplied it to the nth degree.

“I only ask that you be better than I am,” I have often told them, even to this day.

In everything they do from school, sport, friendships, honesty, and being peacemakers, they are each amazing in their own way and better than I am.

All things daughter related are cute and polite.

The boys, however, are boys and I make sure they harness that feeling every day. In the same breath, I preach from the pulpit about respecting women, honoring women, and listening to the women in their lives. This is an absolute and non-negotiable in my eyes.

We stuck our boys on the ice when they were 6 and 8.

Growing up in the south, neither Rebecca nor I knew how to ice skate, let alone play hockey.

The oldest boy spent about 5 minutes with an ice walker and has been skating laps around everyone since.

The youngest spent weeks getting his footing. When the ultimatum came – skate on your own or we find you something else to do – he was suddenly was skating backward and forward like Ovechkin.

It was a simple life before.

Hockey camps in town, early morning skates, and practices, made up our weeks when they were younger.

Then came travel hockey. It was the price of improvement. Weekend jaunts to cities mostly drivable and to random places worthy of a family trip.

From there, it was summer tournaments with teams from the north and camps in faraway places, because the nostalgia of being in Canada, where nobody has ever heard of or ever goes earns story credit with all the hockey dads back home.

These are all self-induced battle scars to tell all your non-hockey dads.

But they aren’t scars themselves, they are the most incredible times spent with your young sons that never come back.

It’s an all-inclusive journey of fatherhood.

It starts with the flights followed by the rental car excursion with tons of equipment. This is followed by the hotel check-in, waiver for no-knee hockey in the hallways and the first night dinner to give them energy – like they need it. It is more for us dads.

The kids settle in the hotel room and by the time they begin to nod, an urgent text is received which the dads need to be drinking in the lobby.

Of course we tell the small lie to our boys, I will just be down there for an hour or so, before the staff kicks us out of the lobby while asking us to clean up because breakfast is in an hour.

Following the early morning nap and subsequent wakeup call for first games all the fathers get together in the lobby of the rink to laugh and tell stories about the stories we told in the lobby at the hotel.

This happens for two days and nights straight before it is time to go home.

The goal is to not get thrown out of games and celebrate the boys’ efforts when they come off the ice.

Except effort doesn’t win games and we didn’t drive all this way to lose. Yes, the journey is mostly the goal, but winning tastes so much better when you thank the Lord for the gifts He gives you versus crying over a lack of effort.

Hockey life is not a liberal’s sport.

We teach accountability, determination, pursuit, defense, celebration, and humility – all rolled up in a 60-to-90-minute game of work.

Those kids get knocked down, knocked against the boards, and fall on their own while most every father in the stands is telling their boy to get back up.

NCAA D1 Hockey, Juniors, Minor-League Hockey, and the NHL are full of kids who got back up on their own, bloodied, broken, and shattered. They continued to play through the pain.

In every challenge that young hockey player experienced, the hockey dad felt every blow to the head, hard check in the corner, and every cross check in front of the net. There was never a day off.

While Rebecca was mostly traveling with our daughter for lacrosse, the boys were making their memories together over long weekends.

There was no off-season for me in travel hockey. I was constantly learning new ways to tell my stories, experience my boys growing up, and celebrating their journey to being a man of God.

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I wrote an ending to the fifth novel of my series based on the way I wanted it to end.

In doing so, the Colt Jennings series had no place to go after the ending.

For a series that is in its final stages of being published, knowing an ending could be better and isn’t would be a death knell in my eyes.

Colt Jennings is a person you have met but did not know their story. Colt takes challenges in life the way he eats mint-chocolate-chip ice cream from Mayfield’s dairy – he savors every scoop. There is not a place he would not go, a person he would not meet, or a company he would not buy, to build his vision. Colt is the country boy who played in every city around the world.

Having creative license on a fictional series inspired by true events allowed me to reimagine the ending, in some ways better than the actual events.

I have sat on that ending for the better part of six months, as I work to publish the first five novels of Colt Jennings.

The problem for me is that creative license or not – truth is a better finishing product than lies.

In Ezekiel 36:26–27 — “And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes…,” I realized God had given me the Holy Spirit to write the novels. The novels were his idea. It was His words using me as an instrument.

But as the ending began to evolve, I bowed to the sexiness of “the ultimate win.” On screen it seemed like it would be what everyone would want.

However, I was an “n” of 1, and the ending came off selfish, and shockingly boring to me, the author.

The new ending does two things; it tells a better truth and allows Colt Jennings to live on in perpetuity.

The author in me emerged victorious. Selling books is the goal.

Colt Jennings belongs on screen.

He is written, grounded by the books he reads like Og Mandino, Dr. Seuss, and the Bible. He is portrayed like the character he envisions himself, such as Walt Longmire, John Dutton, Colt Seavers, and Thomas Magnum.

He is not a villain, but he is a man with flaws.

Colt is not the hero, but he is focused on doing good.

While trying to capture Colt, I realized how much hard work went into life as Colt. The lasting moment was when I realized how much prayer Colt internalizes just to get through every day.

It is no wonder Colt’s wish is for God to reach down to pick him up and tell him, as he told Jesus in Matthew 3:17: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Colt realizes that is an impossible dream – but he strives each day to make that the goal.

There is not one person who can be Colt Jennings and live the life Colt Jennings has.

Colt writes. He tells the stories he lived, not as shiny trinkets but as lessons learned and a journey lived.

He tells of the misadventures and the adventures he lived.

In the middle, he began to develop his calling. Stewardship.

The Stewardship Project Colt developed is the framework of his next mission. He developed it because he was entrusted with so much that it became overwhelming to put in proper order.

People Colt trusted became the same pariahs that ultimately destroyed his city on the hill.

Like Hezekiah who let the Babylonians in the gate to see all that was in his realm, Colt lost Elohim Industries to the hasatans of the world who posed as friends and advisors.

Colt continued. He began to thrive. He vindicated himself. He persevered.

Cullen Bohannon comes to mind. Hell on Wheels. He is broken from the Civil War and has moments of gray moral character – but in the end he endures because it is the right thing.

He built the single greatest thing across this country that helped to heal the nation of its sins.

It is this that is not lost on Colt. He has a vision to matter.

Having the wrong ending to his series could kill him off before he even started to multiply his value.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’” (Matthew 25:21)

This was not Colt’s time. It will come.

But the series must continue with a small rewrite.

It is done.

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A steward of what has been entrusted has an enormous responsibility.

I have dedicated my whole adult life under the premise that I am “the United Nations, but better.”

My trust is to have a friend in and from every country around the world.

This doesn’t mean an acquaintance; it means a pick up the phone and begin a conversation like we had just gotten off the phone an hour ago kind of friend.

I approach every new event as an opportunity to make new friends.

The unlucky few who are not looking to meet new people will most likely be the first target.

It’s like a sixth sense, I see them, and I want them to know that someone sees them.

My offering is a smile, a hello, and a welcoming engagement.

For those who try to overlook my gestures, I will wear them down.

My intention is for the good, but until those people understand that, I feel like I am their bad habit.

They don’t want that habit, but they love it. They want to get rid of that habit, but they enjoy how it makes them feel.

It’s not until they change the lens on how they look at the situation that they realize I am the good habit they always wanted but were too scared to find.

It certainly sounds overbearing, and I know, it is. It seems most people choose to ignore engagement until they feel offended.

It too should be the reverse; we should be engaging more so that we do not get offended.

For me, no matter how many times I tell myself not to take over a room, it happens.

Funny thing is, I will get frustrated as well. If someone is coarse with me, I will give it right back.

That is on me. It’s not always. But it happens.

What usually gets in my way is context, tone, and perceived intention.

A loving steward would see past his own expectations and stay with the greatest expectation of being present in the interaction.

Focusing on my craft will lead me down rabbit holes of OCD and obnoxiousness.

Years ago, when I traveled three or four nights a week locally throughout the state, I focused on staying present in learning.

I hate bars, do not like sitting in hotel rooms, and dislike sit-down restaurants when I am alone.

This left me to my own devices at a time I was trying to learn my craft.

Negotiating with car dealers for cars I liked but would never buy.

I would frequently visit car dealerships at night and find the unassuming sales rep that probably didn’t want to be there on the late shift and strike up a conversation about a particular car.

I would listen to his benefits and wait for his pitch.

I focused on his methods and absorbed his craft like that of a grade schooler.

In the end, I would spend one or two hours with the sales rep and use tactics to earn his trust, while at the same time watching how he reacted.

I never bought a car on these nightly trips. Based on my own development plans, it was something I felt I needed to do to learn.

Looking back, it may seem harsh without full disclosure to the salesman, that’s probably what I regret most. But I was hoping he was getting something out of it as well.

I liken it to the United Nations building in New York City. It is big and on one of the most expensive pieces of property in the world.

Diplomats from all over the world come together to debate what is right and what is wrong.

The expense is enormous. The political theatre is pageantry. The effectiveness is purely lip service.

The reality is, it is a place to learn how to be a diplomat on the world stage without ever being a transformational steward in their own lands.

Academically, saying I am the United Nations means my first charter would be to keep world peace by becoming a peacemaker, build good friendships by respecting everyone, solve big problems by ending global human rights atrocities, and work as a team by being the unifier of shared goals.

Except the world does not move mountains without an economic engine.

In theory, these are noble pursuits, but the context of the mission is the one that most get corrupted by. Money. The institution fails because money corrupts the mission.

The pureness of being a steward of what has been entrusted is knowing craft, kindness, love, and joy are parts of those trusts.

Finding the capacity to reduce yourself and make the One bigger is the single greatest motivator for being a one-man United Nations.

My entire life, I viewed the concept of United Nations simply, and it is more like a verb than a noun.

Unite people. Full Stop.

It is to Unite people. To find a way to be present with people where they are.

The lens through which you look at people should be that of a steward.

It’s a lens that needs to be sharpened. Not ripped apart with money, leverage, politics, or persecution.

That lens should be an honest portrayal of the heart.

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Being a first-time dad is one thing, being a first-time dad with a little girl will destroy you and build you each day.

There are no real instructions to being a girl dad.

At least there were none passed down to me.

Ashley arrived on scene six weeks early. Tiny, but perfect.

She teased her mom Rebecca and me with Braxton-Hicks contractions a week earlier than that. We fell for it.

We ended up in the hospital, embarrassed, but by that dry run, we knew what to do when it was time.

Or so I thought I knew.

The day came when Rebecca’s water broke. That was a new event.

We rushed to the hospital and spent the next six hours anxiously awaiting Ashley’s arrival.

There was no magic to it. Rebecca summoned the strength of Eileithyia and suddenly my entire life made sense.

The next day, I was walking on the beach with my pinky wrapped around Ashley’s hand.

The following day, she was talking and running our lives.

The fourth day, she was with Rebecca and me welcoming her new brother, and a day later her second brother.

It seemed like a week later; she was on a lacrosse field with her friends, motivating them to victory.

That first sixteen years felt like a week.

Things seemed so natural for her.

Ashley’s life was reading, laughing, playing, and watching.

Each day, she watched and absorbed everything.

She practiced life under security, love, and faith.

The next week she led her lacrosse team to multiple state championships, left for college, graduated, and became a woman.

The latter was something she earned through joy, pain, and observance.

By this time, I could not keep life from happening to her. I would never stop that from happening, anyway.

But she was earning her life card and delivering a solid performance.

I have been so happy to experience her life watching by her side, at her discretion, and with as much love as a father could have for a strong, generous, respectable daughter in a world like this.

She will graduate from law school this year.

She is a better person than I could ever be, and she is half my age.

I expect the next few weeks for Ashley will be on another level.

Her confidence is solid, her intentions are pure, and her faith is strong.

Because I did not have a strategy or instructions to facilitate her growth as a person, I relied on my instinct to treat her mother the same way I wanted a young man to treat her.

I, too, watched things growing up under my parents’ roof.

There were a lot of reasons not to model my most precious responsibility on my parents. But much of it was good.

Despite the tumult of living with raging alcoholics, the times of peace in my mind were those moments when my father acted on his advice and treated my mother with respect and genuine love.

Those stolen moments brought a smile to my mother’s face. She was happy to be acknowledged in that way.

Those rare events magnified how I was a fractured boy growing up watching chaos from inside a glass prism of beautiful colors.

There was over-confidence when confidence should have been enough.

There was loud chaos when gentle calm would have been better.

Anxiety led most encounters when natural personality was smothered.

The years leading up to meeting Rebecca, I challenged myself to try most things, even when it meant putting myself in vulnerable situations.

I did those things that mattered in the long-term.

As a professional athlete, it was tough focusing on somebody other than myself. But I tried to do this daily; not always successfully.

Confidence became central to my growth, but the underlying anxiety of not being good enough was always there.

So, when I met Rebecca, I focused even harder.

I would daily express my feelings to her to build her up. I did not need to allow her to do anything. She could do everything.

I focused instead on encouraging her to be anything she wanted. Try anything she had never done.

It has not been a perfect system because I am inherently a man and I have an irrational ego that must be fed.

But as I look back on the years of watching Ashley grow into an amazing woman, I have watched my wife both accomplish this as well, and lead Ashley at the same time.

Whatever small part I played, I am so proud of both women in my life.

There are no instructions to raising a girl.

Whatever the instructions are, they began with how I treat my wife.

This is the greatest lesson I learned by being a girl dad.

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Everybody has a live concert story they love to tell.

Whether it was the first concert they saw live or their favorite concert, people remember the nostalgia of a live concert and their favorite band.

Then there are the concerts where things went either crazy in the audience or the backstage passes meant a night of debauchery with the band.

Live music is a stimulant for excitement.

One of my favorite stories about a live concert turned into an opportunity, but fell to just a memory.

It was both a great memory and a “could have been” story.

Jimmy Buffett went to Memphis and played at the Mud Island Amphitheatre every summer for as long as I could remember.

My father’s company sponsored the summer concert series, so we had front row tickets to every concert.

In high school, it was an easy 70-mile drive from our hometown in Jonesboro, Arkansas to Memphis.

Being at college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas, it made the drive over 300 miles.

I never thought for a second I would miss Jimmy Buffett, regardless of the distance.

The first year at Arkansas, I made the trip with my best friend from high school; he was back from Notre Dame.

Me being a 6’5” white guy and my best friend a 5’5” Filipino, we stuck out like a sore thumb anywhere we went.

He was brilliant, and I was average. He remained friends with me since 7^th grade, despite all the warnings from his parents.

They would grow to love me as we got older. Their initial concerns stemmed from when we attended grade school together. My guess was they knew there may be some emotional home issues working in my background. They were not wrong.

Ethan and I were front row again for the millionth time that summer.

Jimmy, once again, played an amazing concert and we sang along to every song.

Whether it is second nature or a self-taught preservation mechanism, I can see my surroundings and observe people with great clarity. It is an uncanny knack to recognize patterns and recall them to high certainty.

This night would prove no different.

As we got closer to the concert being over, I kept noticing a backup singer on stage watching me.

I told Ethan to watch her.

About that time, she backed away from the microphone to talk to a stagehand. She pointed in my direction.

I saw the stagehand move through the equipment and exit the stage toward the stairs leading to our section.

He walked directly up to me and handed me a note. Ethan stopped, looked at me, I shrugged my shoulders, and opened the note.

The backup singer was a beautiful Brazilian young lady who had been singing for Jimmy for years.

The note read to meet her backstage.

I smiled. I looked at the singer on stage and smiled again. She waved and smiled back.

The concert ended. Ethan and I made our way to the gate to the backstage.

We met the singer and talked for what seemed like hours but turned out to be thirty minutes.

She invited me to take the bus with the band to Cincinnati that night.

It seemed I was an under-forty victim of fate. Jimmy didn’t let me on the bus that night. I didn’t make the trip, no cannons thundered, and I did not plunder.

Ethan and I drove back to Jonesboro that night with one heck of a story.

Years later in pro-baseball, my buddy from Western Michigan and I would listen to Jimmy Buffett for hours. I would drive my Mustang GT Convertible out to the beach in Florida during instructional league, spring training, and during the season and we would hang out drinking beer to Jimmy Buffett.

During those days, I would re-tell that story a million times.

When I got my first boat, Jimmy became a featured artist on the sound system when our family would hang out on the water.

As I became an entrepreneur and began traveling the globe building my company, I often recited Jimmy as I left one town to another.

The six months I spent in Europe felt like a lifetime ago now. While I was there, I traveled back and forth to Paris many times.

The first five times I went, I hated Paris. It was crowded, the traffic was bad, and I was unsuccessful on my mission.

The last four or five times I went, I took it all in and loved it.

Leaving Charles de Gaulle, returning to the States, I remembered that concert, that backup singer, and began reciting those words, “He went to Paris… Looking for answers, to questions that bothered him so.”

Rest in Peace my dear nautical friend. The path you sang about has been the journey of my lifetime.

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In college, I believed I would be a great finance guy.

My freshman year, I researched IBM and made an investment recommendation to my father. To my father, I knew nothing.

He was an experienced businessman who built his wealth by working hard.

He did not listen to my research. That missed opportunity was in the tens of millions of dollars.

I lacked the sales skills to get him to commit.

During my studies, I wrote a report on my father’s company.

It was a massive report based on what I knew about the business, dissecting each part of the business plan, and built the presentation to the best of my abilities without AI or PowerPoint.

My father gave it to the Chairman of the Board. The Chairman reached out to me and my father and told me I should work as his Investor Relations VP.

The platitudes were ego boosting.

In my early 40s, I broke out of the corporate minutiae to prove I could do it myself.

I started by buying my first company. Then, starting my second. The next one I decided I wanted the public markets route. I took control of an OTC company.

That became the small progression to take my company to the senior public markets.

There was intention in each step. I thought I knew the steps.

By the grace of God, I built a sizeable company in three years and made the next steps to IPO on the senior public markets.

It took seven long weeks and two devastating starts and stops, but I launched my company on a senior board.

It was less than satisfying. It seemed the journey there was more fulfilling than the actual listing.

The hard work was only beginning.

The first and single greatest IPO in history started at a wedding ceremony in Cana in Galilee.

It was a journey of thirty years, studying, working, and being patient.

There was no social media, no investigative journalists, no ground swelling of momentum from employees talking about it before it reached the market. It just turned up at a random time, in a random house.

In fact, the Developer was hesitant about launching because of His own determination of market conditions.

The analysts were not covering this foretold company. In fact, they did not know He existed despite their books written hundreds of years beforehand telling His greatness.

Those scholars knew the limitations. Their history told of years of success, then failure, reconciliation, then betrayal.

There was a crisis of belief created by the investor’s own doubts in the Founder and His will over the mission.

The Founder had developed nothing out of the ordinary. Instead, He launched His vision turning the world upside down.

His investors were not only billionaires, millionaires, the guy next door, or the day-trader; it was everyone. He was creating a visionary product where everyone could make an investment.

He thought it was not yet His time.

His support staff thought differently. The same person who invested in His first-generation development, was the same person who insisted that it was time for Him to show the world who He was.

His team assembled for three days, celebrating friends and family.

Their capital had dwindled, and there was anxiety from His leading support staff.

They needed to create the buzz to create an investment opportunity in the very thing this young Founder would be.

It was time to take His vision to the people.

They asked Him to begin His Roadshow.

His response was terse and objective.

“I have invested my years learning, knowing, and developing my vision. It is not my time to launch this at a random event,” He said.

They responded by telling the outside advisors, “Do whatever He says.”

The Founder already had the answer in His heart. He verbalized it to the outside advisors in very succinct instruction.

The results of His directions produced the finest offering known to man.

The organizers and guests at the event did not realize what had happened. They were given the most brilliant gift they had ever seen or heard.

The analysts and investors soon realized they were experiencing greatness. They were given the opportunity to participate in an IPO. Whereas most Founders go to market with great fanfare – this Founder launched His intentions in a quiet assembly of family and friends.

The guest expected the best parts of the gathering first, which was the custom. However, this Founder was different.

His vision was that the finest, the best, were actually to be delivered last. He knew being content was lazy and that experiencing great joy comes from being patient and receiving those things that were not expected.

The launch of the Roadshow was happening. The Word was on the street.

Jesus’ trusted advisor, Mary, felt compelled to get Jesus to launch His upside-down world.

It was a new world, where the least on earth will become first in heaven, and the greatest on earth will become last.

The guests did not expect the best wine last; they expected it first.

Jesus was investing in our futures. His death, burial, and resurrection were the greatest sacrifice ever made for humanity.

Without the launch of the roadshow, we may never have experienced it.

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I am a deal junkie.

The conversations I get into always end with me trying to see if there is a deal somewhere in the conversation.

My soul craves acquisition - whether it is a business, my own salvation, or an intense debate to make me a better person.

I am not sure if it is a bad habit I learned or if it is my way of trying to understand the people I am talking to.

There is no industry that I don’t find fascinating. I want to know how everything works, how they make money, and what drives customers to grow the business.

A little more intricate is valuing a business.

The basic valuation starts with a business’s earnings and applying a formula using a multiple of that company’s earnings.

There are industry averages, financing risks, contract risks, management risks, environmental risks, future technology risks, and the list continues to build. Of course, you want to consider these, plus more, to understand what multiple you want to put on the earnings to get the right valuation.

That’s only your internal perspective.

Then comes the bank’s perspective.

They take all your risk factors and multiple evaluations, and they add their conservative approach to valuation.

Depending on how aggressive you want to be in your offer, this step could be devastating to negotiations.

Essentially, valuing the company on your own metrics is one thing if you have cash. But if you are financing a deal – the deal is only as good as your borrowing capacity.

Deals are also living organisms.

You can shape them through initial negotiations, but they are pliable with every breath each side speaks.

There is an art and a craft to negotiating deals, closing deals, and being able to do more.

Yet, the central theme to finding out that craft is stuck in the success you have valuing the last deal and then the next one.

Over time, if you are successful enough, you can find a rhythm to your valuations and that process becomes second nature.

In each deal, you become your own worst critic on how things could have been better negotiated.

It is a bad cycle – one that takes time to develop and master, but if you have advisors who are working against you because they want to make money off your risk, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Or you discover your own way of looking at an old approach. A new way to look at industry standards like EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization). It is the metric for a lot of industries to base their valuations.

In a heavy capex business – this is only one part of the story.

Cashflow is the most honest way to approach a valuation. EBITDA less annual capex would be a better standard. It keeps the formula from being seller oriented to being a more fair orientation of the business.

Building in the future capital expenditure is the key to success in any acquisition. Delaying any capex will impair an acquisition and consolidation strategy every time.

It’s like your soul.

You must make an investment in your soul.

Every do-gooder makes an investment in their heart. They invest in the feeling instead of the outcome. They do a nice thing for someone that makes them feel better about themselves and instantly, they think they deserve a trip to heaven.

The apostles Paul and James took up the same question and answered it differently.

Paul is dealing with how a person is justified before God: by faith, not by works. James is dealing with how the reality of that faith becomes visible in a person’s life: genuine faith produces works.

Valuing the soul is like establishing the faith of that person. It is less about the formula than about the constitution of the will.

Am I investing in the Lord for the salvation of my soul? Or am I investing in good works to produce something for myself on earth?

For a deal junkie, getting the deal done is the primary focus. Despite my good intentions of buying right, I fall short because I focus on getting the signature at the close.

The confusion I have about myself is the valuation expectation.

Where am I placing the most value?

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Measuring success can be a double-edged sword.

Putting your success front and center is reassuring for most, but it can also put a number on your failures.

And for some, that is a trip down a rabbit hole in the dark you don’t want to go.

I met an author for the first time in 1990. He measured performance much like an athlete would in any sport. Results.

The Game of Work by Charles A. Coonradt.

It is a brilliant management principles book about measuring to get more out of your people.

Chuck was working with my father in developing his people. My father invited me to attend a training session for two days with Chuck.

It was my first real impression of measuring a job like I would play baseball. But even then, it would take me years to realize how much more I could have learned.

Before my freshman year in high school, my mother worked so hard to get me into honors classes.

At that time, it was at the height of her alcohol addiction. I suppose it made her feel good that she was attempting to make me better than I was.

It didn’t work. My GPA started off deep in a hole after freshman year. The emotional and mental baggage of trying to please her, coupled with a lack of attentiveness and defiance, led to a disaster of my own doing.

By senior year, a 90-day rehab assignment, and two years of sobriety for my mother, I had worked my way onto the honor roll.

That scorecard was met with cheers and the proverbial, “I knew you could do it.” My instinct was she was saying she was right all along about my abilities–not that she was giving me a compliment for an achievement of considerable value.

My senior year, I missed the honor roll the first semester. I called my father to let him know I missed the honor roll because of one C.

His words and tone were different altogether from my mother’s. He said, “That’s great. It took a lot for you to get on the honor roll. It felt good, didn’t it? Now you know how it feels to miss. This will be a great test to see how you respond next semester.”

He acknowledged my hard work–he acknowledged my success–he challenged my desire.

I ended up on the honor roll the rest of the time in high school, leading into college and graduating in three years with two majors.

Scorecards are a general predictor of success and failure. They are a great metric of life.

Though as I internally debate scorecards, I realize that there are intrinsic pieces not in scorecards. A scorecard does not weigh historical personal and emotional challenges, nor overconfidence in abilities.

If Chuck would have measured me by my tests from sixth grade until my senior year in high school, he would have told my mother, “You are wasting your time with honors classes. He is not a good student.”

If Chuck would have measured my abilities in baseball as I graduated from high school, he would have told me not to waste my time as a walk-on.

This would not be Chuck taking a dig at me, but considering my results, this was what the numbers were saying.

Like my father, Chuck would tell me to follow the trends on the scorecards.

I did not know what I know now.

I met 300 lbs. when I was 50 years old. I did not like the man I met.

I had been challenged and was failing at life.

It became real to me I needed to get back into life.

The answer was one of my miniature Australian Shepherds I walked every day; six times a day.

I measured everything from each of our walks. Total time, total distance, day versus day, month versus month and year versus year. I was tracking it all. We were averaging 8 to 10 miles a day.

I was still 300 lbs.

To keep up with my little guy, I changed my diet, which I had perfected for 50+ years. First the sugars. Then the sodas. Then the carbs.

Suddenly, instead of walking, I was now running again, except I started biking again and added in working out. I settled on 180 minutes of activity each day, burning over 2500 calories a day.

And then I saw the scale. It read 218. In less than 9 months, I dropped 70 lbs. And within 24 months, I dropped 82 lbs. I measured everything and have not stopped.

I have now normalized my total exercise burn and prioritized certain metrics versus others.

My parents have since passed away – my mother just recently.

They competed hard. They were each driven by different things in the end.

As an outsider to their marriage, I would say they were indifferent to each other’s methods, but enjoyed the good times they had together.

The Game of Work turned out to be The Game of Life.

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Being an entrepreneur has led me down different paths at each turn.

I have found a type of calm by developing myself away from the traditional route of a businessman.

Most people do not understand my decisions and are therefore shocked I could be so bold.

The very few who do understand would testify to my insanity at a trial.

My life resembles the widely distributed chart below, which accurately reflects my mindset.

Travelling the globe has been perfect for me.

Trying to describe my travels has allowed me to find new ways to talk about different locations.

Each new misadventure is a lesson I learned or an altered state of mind I found along the way.

It brings me great peace knowing how good it feels to adapt to new cultures, new languages, unknown places, and extraordinary sights.

During COVID, I found my way to be in Europe by myself for six months.

I bought a horse in Spain. Out-of-the-blue.

Then I bought a company.

At home, a plague of incompetence by a vendor attacked my company.

It affected the entire organization and caused me to pursue opportunities across the globe.

Thus, my six-month misadventure.

The travel during the pandemic was romantic. I was by myself everywhere I flew, drove, walked, or took a train. Literally, there were no passengers, no tourists, no vacationers.

While back at home, my staff battled to stay relevant not for any fault of their own, but for a lazy, arrogant, dismissive, incompetent professional service organization unable to complete an engagement.

The decisions of the past have not destroyed my vision or my creativity.

In fact, those decisions have nurtured my creative strengths and enhanced the vision for the future in many different fields.

Accountability is a unique word in the world of finance.

When someone talks about accountability, the next questions from anyone should always be, who are you accountable to? What are you accountable for? What will this accountability bring?

People have an agenda; it’s human nature.

The assumption is you hire the biggest and the best, you get the best.

But accountability cuts both ways. What you are really getting is what the hiring managers can find.

Their accountability is their own ability to find talent.

If the hiring target is a graduate with a degree who can pass a comprehensive test and is respectful enough to not cause waves in the office, how can I hold them accountable for incompetence?

In theory, I am getting exposure to a top-tier firm by size, but they could be the worst-ranked firm for years running; hidden from clients in daily industry rags published years later.

The result is that there is no accountability until judgement day comes.

Life becomes an insolvent mess when you let critical decisions rule your life.

The judgement you fear is not your peers’ – it’s the One weighing your true worth by His will.

My value would never register in the same way I thought it would.

You can exhume my body from the grave and do a final-final autopsy review, but I choose a very different route.

The trials over the past years have only deepened my faith in God. Peter, James, Paul, and John all talk about the trials that make the person and deepen the faith.

Would I have loved to continue building my life and my company? Yes. Of course.

But I learned so many more lessons from failing.

God is not money. Stop worshipping it.

Some friends are only friends when you can give them things. Stop relying on them.

Life is a simple journey. When you have an obstacle, challenge your mind to see it from every angle and decide based on prayer.

The worst decision made is usually the beginning of the best results you never imagined.

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I set out to write a satirical piece on how the media blows everything out of proportion.

The intention was to let my humor and storytelling own this piece.

The more I got into the development of this Dispatch – I realized on the surface; it appears the mainstream media has no joy in their lives. Without joy, it is hard to laugh at the funniest parts of life, whether it is our own mistakes or own idiosyncrasies.

The doomsday media had compelled everyone to worry about everything; AI and data centers especially.

We can reach back in time with most predictions of the twenty-first century and find that they are at best - misleading, false, or right.

I am sure there were plenty of arguments from intellectuals that produced doomsday predictions.

Most arguments, I would say, would be whose name is the first author of recently proven false data. Congratulations. You are the tallest of the pygmies.

But let’s be more specific.

Take the most recent predictions of the last few centuries. The climate change lie.

For many, it was the end of the world. The peril of capitalism was the deaths of hundreds of millions.

The ice caps are melting, and the floods will devastate coastlines and mainland continents.

The prediction was 2006 by Al Gore – telling us the world was going to be past the point of no return in 10 years. It is now twenty years later.

Al would become a very prolific investor in all things climate related because of his biased and manufactured data to support his theory.

Then came COVID.

Again, the science–“you must believe the science.”

Arbitrary distances, covered faces, and perpetual shots were going to make it all better. All the while, the director of the infectious disease program for the US was secretly funding, lying, and deceiving Congress and the world with his research into a gain of function.

He recently invoked his Fifth Amendment right over a hundred times before Congress, shielded by a preemptive pardon reaching back to 2014. The bigger question is why is a person who has a pardon pleading the Fifth at all?

Legal scholars are debating whether he should even be allowed to – a pardon removes the very risk of self-incrimination the Fifth exists to protect.

And now, it is AI.

This is the destruction of man. The fall of human society as we know it.

The creation of a new class of stupid people. People will die. There will be no water. Nobody will have a job. This narrative and support by the media continue to come up with new predictions.

It is a new doomsday all over again.

It’s all just fear mongering so that a certain few make millions, if not billions of dollars off your indecisiveness and inaction.

My job is to celebrate and encourage people to embrace the gifts they are entrusted with.

Journalists should be celebrated. Specifically, we should celebrate their ability to do the research, ask the questions, and formulate new and creative ideas on how to persuade people with their discovery. This is an admirable field.

Yet – it is so hard to do that when they stopped being their true selves to cater to their dominion.

Owners, editors, and ideology strip the well-intentioned journalist’s truth away from them by directing outcomes that generate the most views and subsequent revenue dollars.

It is the counterculture con.

To their base, the media owners strike the rebel pose - “Damn the man.” But inside the building, they are the man: the whole machine runs to grow revenue so they can keep selling the pose.

And they use the power not to open the debate, but to close it – to stifle the other side and cast anyone who questions them as the villain.

That isn’t capitalism; capitalism thrives on competing ideas. It’s the socialist’s instinct – one approved outcome, enforced from the top, everyone else made the enemy.

In my eyes, this is the sign of pure evil.

AI will go through the same gamut of ideology fixation.

Does owning media give you more power to beat the titans of enterprise? I should think not.

The capitalist titans will win because they know how to innovate.

The intellectual minds of the media owners can’t imagine seeing past their ideology and arrogance to hear the people or innovate to make things better.

They stick to their perceived intellectual superiority and demand that the people bow down to their will.

It is not the mechanism that will fail the people of this country; it is the media conglomerate that forgot that God owns everything. He will command justice, mercy, and grace.

There will be no doomsday – there will be the coming of our Lord to raise up His church.

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My senior year in high school, I was voted to have the best smile.

It was not a vote for the funniest, the most athletic, nor the smartest; it was a vote for the best smile.

Let me tell you why that is disturbing.

I went to an all-boys Christian school.

In the south.

Period.

I laughed it off when I took the certificate from the teacher.

There were laughs from my classmates.

She was my English teacher and certainly a great person.

Looking back, I remember her as a great person because of the two things she did.

The first recognized that none of my classmates had voted for me to receive any kind of award. She made one up.

And the second, although it was a made-up award, it was something she felt she needed to do to protect a fragile teenage boy’s ego.

I was a fragile teenage boy with two alcoholic parents and in my heart it felt good to walk up and receive acknowledgment for something so small as a smile.

The faculty knew who I was and what I was facing.

One day, during my freshman year, the principal came to get me from class to let me know there was an issue at home and not to worry.

The issue I was told was that my father had checked my mother into rehab for alcohol addiction.

He told me to go home like always, but that my mother would not be there.

The principal asked if I had questions.

I had none. I stared at him with a smile on my face, as if I were telling him everything about me but saying nothing.

I always expected a conversation like this, or probably worse.

That day changed the future me.

From that day on, having people focus on me was not comfortable.

Questions. Concerns. Side-glances.

None of which I was comfortable with.

So I began to smile.

I knew If I smiled – people would think I was okay.

Being okay meant people would ask fewer questions, express fewer concerns, and I would feel fewer side-glances toward me.

I think I also started to notice people.

Not in a generic sense, but in a way that I felt small; I imagined other people felt small, and I wanted them to realize that I see them.

I wanted them to feel appreciated by even the smallest gesture.

I smiled. I engaged. I encouraged.

Stranger. Friend. Competitor.

It made sense to me that those around me should not feel as if they had to hide, but even more, that they were seen. Appreciated. Loved. Respected. Valued.

I smiled.

Not a fake smile. A deep, engaging smile that lets people know I am team “them.”

It feels like I wore a mask every day back then.

Today, I feel like it made me a better person, despite the why.

The regression of my character happens. I find faults in people, I complain, I hate, I wish bad things to happen, and then I realize it is all so small.

I should just smile.

Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books in the Bible. Specifically, Hevel is one of the brilliant concepts delivered in the Old Testament; outside of everything pointing to my Lord.

Hevel is defined as vapor or smoke. Everything is Hevel.

The best illustration for Hevel is – trying to grab and hold on to a vapor.

You see it. You reach for it. You grab it and yet, it cannot be held.

Everything is Hevel.

I have learned the big reveal is not the smile.

It is the character behind the smile that is made up by the pain and hurt we all experience.

Those things don’t last. But the memory of good people – and the good people they make, does.

That is the true reveal.

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The debate rages…AI-generated actors or real-life actors?

I want to be perfectly clear. AI is amazing.

I use it every day.

Grok, Chat and Claude are constantly open on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

The result is like living in the smartest classroom in the world; watching the smartest people in the world debate each other in a closed-circuit knowledge bowl.

In the meantime, I am sucking up the knowledge and formulating many more interesting questions to ask the next person I find who will talk to me.

If you are not doing this for an hour or two a day, your mind is not working to its full potential.

The debate begins here:

Will the world truly miss actors when studios use AI-generated actors instead?

Will the cost of making a movie go down?

Will the set temper tantrums become non-existent?

Could people get enjoyment from watching another computer-generated emotion?

I have thankfully lived through the careers of many actors.

My favorites are Denzel Washington and Kevin Costner.

I don’t care about their politics or how much money they have made.

What I care about is watching their lives as they perfect their craft on screen.

These two actors are indeed the best of the best.

There are others I could mention, but these two bring out the raw emotion and complexity of being a man.

They have done it so well throughout their lives on the screen.

I am humbled to have watched their lives when they have not seen mine at the same time.

An AI-generated actor will fall flat on screen. Based on the lack of spine to most predictions by the media, AI actors will be done for about 15 minutes before people rebel.

Moviegoers are already rebelling against the bland, curse-heavy scripts thrown on the screen today by the emotionless current batch of unchallenged writers. That is not the world someone who enjoys film wants to see; let alone pay money for.

Let’s teach craft by experience in front of the lens. Develop emotions with words. Home in on the brilliance of writers, actors, and producers – as well as the others on set. It takes the whole crew to make a brilliant movie.

The likely answer: save AI-generated content for advertisements and the news, not film.

Give me a healthy, breathing actor who loves acting and wants the viewer to feel the part they are portraying.

So I say to the actor, forget what you read in the press. Instead focus on finding the meaning behind the words of the writer and bring them to life. Fill the viewer with so much emotion, they don’t want to leave the room - or better yet, they come back each week to watch you do it again.

Don’t let me think in the first act, “Is this a live person, or is it Memorex?”

For those who complained about listening to music on Memorex tapes, remember the more you could listen to music, the more you listened to better music.

AI is here. Embrace it and learn from it.

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