About

Thirty-five years in the field. One mission: make the hard lessons useful.

I built this site because the world of work is hard, complicated, and full of things nobody tells you until it is too late. I want to change that — one commentary, one video, one tool at a time.

My Background

The site isn't about me ... it's about you, and things you might find helpful. But I know that trust is essential to any relationship, so I'm writing this in case you're interested in getting to know me a little better.

By the time I was sixteen I had lived in over twelve different places. My mother and I following my father through jobs on the Union Pacific Railroad, then running log truck crews, then back to the Railroad, then back to logging. He eventually settled in as a long-haul truck driver. I didn't always enjoy entering schools late and feeling behind the other students, but I never resented my father. I understood he was working to provide for us and it's just where the work was. Mom and Dad divorced while I was still in high school, so I stayed in Pocatello, Idaho with my beloved Grandmother Jennie while they both went off to rebuild their lives in other cities. Mom was from the coal mining communities of Kentucky — Grandpa was a coal miner, and they moved west with his black lung money. Mom's parents and large group of siblings all made their way to Boise, Idaho and after many visits to see my loving and wonderful aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins — it was not until I was thirteen that I realized their accent wasn't a western Idaho dialect. Mom and her big, loving family were the counterbalance to Dad's severity and toughness.

My beloved Grandma Hall made me feel like I was the most important person in the universe.

Dad was a medic in an Infantry Combat Unit in Vietnam with Company C, 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) — the guys that rode Hueys into and out of battle. After several months of continuous combat operations, he was wounded in a ferocious firefight while trying to save a fellow trooper and friend. The rifle bullet he was shot with remained inside him for the rest of his life, because it was too close to his heart to remove. I was three months old. He came home, built a life, and raised his children with a military set of standards and expectations that I did not always appreciate and have never stopped being grateful for. In 2022 he passed away and received full military honors. I have always seen the world through a military lens — not because I romanticize war, but because that framing teaches you to think clearly about objectives, resources, terrain, and the people beside you.

My formal education is in economics and business. My real education is in the library and study I have spent thirty years filling with books — history, biography, economics, strategy, science, philosophy. The first time I walked into the Library of Congress and stood beneath the Minerva mural — with her great list of fields worth studying — I understood what a life of learning was supposed to look like. I average around forty books a year and consider it underperforming.

I plan to write more about my work and experiences in the Field Notes section below. But the summary is this: for the last thirty-five years I have worked in everything from front line production work to senior leadership in a growing dot-com. Work has taken me across four continents. I have hired and built teams throughout the United States, Europe, China, Southeast Asia, and Africa. I have trained, ran pilot projects, and advised governments and organizations through the World Bank in Pakistan — all to reduce the large bulge of unemployed young people in that country. I am an expert in digitization and have worked with archives of all types around the world.

I live in Utah with my wife, who is retired from being an elementary school aide and librarian — one of the good ones, who noticed that boys were coming into the library less and systematically started adding things that would draw them in. Biographies of soccer stars. Creepy houses. Snakes. Military aircraft. We have three grown children and two grandchildren I get to wrestle and play with once a week. They are bright, happy lights for both of us. Our German Shepherd is named Valkyrie, after the Norse figures who chose the worthy fallen on the battlefield. She has not yet chosen anyone, but she remains vigilant. We are committed Pittsburgh Steelers fans. I read Star Wars novels, watch every Marvel film, and believe that the original Star Trek series understood something about leadership and exploration that most business books have never approached.