Two summers lugging shingles on a roof.
Eight years refereeing hockey, up to national championships.
An abandoned PhD on leadership, sport, and masculinity in the First World War.
None of that is a business education. All of it is why I can do this job.
People ask how that adds up to a transformation practice and a portfolio of nine companies. It doesn’t, really.
Kierkegaard said “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
If I had to pick the one part that mattered most, it wasn’t either degree.
It was the whistle.
Here’s the thing about officiating: every time you blow the whistle, you’re at least 50% wrong.
From 14 to 22, that taught me things no classroom was going to:
How to stand in the fire.
How to talk to adults who are furious with you.
How to manage a game rather than just call one.
And how to hear critique from senior officials whose entire job was to tell me where I could be better.
That last one is the one I’d hand to any leader reading this.
Critique from the right person is a kindness. We’ve mostly stopped teaching that. Somewhere along the way people trade curiosity for pride, and then can’t work out why they stopped improving.
A mentor gave me the test years later: you can’t be curious and furious at the same time.
So when you get that knot in your stomach from the client feedback, the number you didn’t want to see, the person on your team telling you something true, the only question is which one you are right now.
Curious, or furious.
You only get one. And only one of them makes you better.
We’re all just trying to get it less wrong faster.
Jason Shupp had me on From There to Here last week. His show does origin stories, so he took the whole thing back to the start.
The roof, the whistle, the dissertation I walked away from, starting the business with my dad and my brother, and what my father taught me before he died.
It’s the version I don’t usually tell.
I hope you enjoy it.
Apple: https://hubs.li/Q04v0n350
Spotfiy: https://hubs.li/Q04t-lYs0
