I write for business owners. And I sit in rooms where the pretending stops.
Nearly four decades across more industries than I can count. I built an international freight company past $150 million in revenue, nearly lost it when a recession hit, spent four lonely years fighting it back, and sold it in January of 2000.
Everything I have written since comes out of those years, and out of the business owners I have worked alongside in the twenty-six since. What all of it keeps coming back to is this: your business and your life are never two separate things. Pretending otherwise is where most of the pain starts.
The Business Brickyard is where the lessons continue, most weeks.
The books
Fewer. Better.
And Other Business Life Lessons
Business owners are told that grinding is the price of success. This is the case against that story, and an argument for doing fewer things better than anyone else instead of more things well enough.
A counterintuitive and, dare I say, subversive little book. Tom Asacker · Author of The Business of Belief
Your Business Brickyard
Getting Back to the Basics to Make Your Business More Fun to Run
Twelve essentials most owners abandon once the business starts working. A small book about reconnecting with the purpose you started with.
It belongs in your pocket for permanent and immediate reference. Tom Peters · Author of In Search of Excellence
The podcast
The Business Brickyard Podcast
Real conversations for owners who want success without the grind.
The rooms
I don't do big-stage keynotes much anymore. The work I want to do happens in smaller settings, where the doors close and people stop performing. No slides. No script. A few difficult questions worth sitting with.
EO, YPO and Vistage forums
I'm a past member of EO and YPO and served as a YPO Forum Moderator for three years. I understand how forum confidentiality works and why protecting it is everything. For formal bookings, I co-founded ForumTalks, which is where that work lives.
Leadership teams
Mornings, afternoons or full days with a team ready to stop performing with each other. Closed sessions, built around where the team actually is.
Podcasts and panels
Shows where the host has done the work and the conversation has somewhere to go. Small panels where the moderator wants to make an impact. If you make something thoughtful, I'd probably love to be on it.
If what you're planning calls for one of these, write to me at [email protected].