About
The long version.
The short version: senior leadership at 23, Soccer Post, the construction turnaround, ProvenChaos. Here is what happened in between.
One housekeeping note: if you were looking for Gerry McNamara, the Syracuse basketball coach, that is a different man. I am the business one.
The climb
I got a leadership seat young, senior leadership at 23, and learned the job the expensive way: in public, with payroll due.
At Soccer Post we went from $5.9 million to $15 million in eighteen months, then past $25 million. Thirty-five stores across thirteen states, the second-largest seller of soccer equipment in the country. The Franchise 500 noticed three times. I also sold TotallySoccer.
Later I ran NFFS, a construction company, from $7 million to $30 million in three years. Inc. 5000 twice, the fastest-growing company in Jacksonville, a Best Places to Work award, and an Ultimate CEO nod from the Jacksonville Business Journal. Proof that you can build a company people actually want to work for and still outperform.
What the lists did not show: hundred-hour weeks, sleeping at the office, keeping score with effort because I did not know another currency.
The floor
This one came early, not at the end. On Valentine’s Day, at twenty-five, my body filed a complaint. Chest pain. Blood pressure at 195 over 96. A hospital bed instead of dinner reservations.
I was winning by every scoreboard my industry kept, and losing by the only ones that matter. Then I got up and went back to work, and kept going for years.
That is where the question behind everything since came from. Why does growth have to feel like this? It does not. Chaos is a design flaw, and design flaws have fixes.
I have written around this a few times since. I’m Dying (and so are you) is the one people send to their friends.
Since then
Five companies led across B2B and B2C: manufacturing, internet, construction. Since stepping out of the operator’s seat I have advised more than 100 B2B companies, from the first million in revenue to just under a billion.
Today that work is ProvenChaos: coaching, strategic planning, The New Mastermind (an invitation-only room built for ten CEOs), and the frameworks that exist because I did it wrong first. I host the Best Places to Lead podcast and speak on stages around the world.
The mission is plain: positively impact five million people through better business.
How I’m wired
I like receipts, so here are mine. Gallup’s StrengthsFinder. A Berke assessment my own company commissioned on me, which is a humbling thing to order. TalentSmart’s emotional intelligence appraisal. The newest of them is a decade old, and the wiring has not changed.
The five strengths, in my words:
Strategic. I see patterns where other people see noise. Hand me a mess and I start asking what if until the best route shows itself.
Arranger. Gallup calls this one the conductor: people, money and time arranged and rearranged until the machine runs. It is why I believe every company already has an operating system, whether anyone designed it or not.
Achiever. Every day starts at zero, and the day has to put points on the board before I can sit still. Weekends and vacations included.
Learner. The climb from not knowing to competent is my favorite place to stand. The credential at the top interests me less than the getting there.
Input. I collect. Books, frameworks, questions, other people’s expensive lessons. Sooner or later all of it ends up in the work.
A strengths list without the other side of the ledger is a brag sheet. So here is the other side, straight from the reports.
The Berke flagged that I keep a positive view “even when the objective situation does not warrant it.” Accurate. Optimism carried me through five companies. It has also kept me in bad bets after the numbers said get out.
I avoid conflict longer than I should. I want the mutually agreeable solution, and sometimes I am still hunting for one when the moment calls for a hard no.
I resist tight controls and rigid rules. Useful in a founder, expensive in an operator. Most of the systems I teach exist because I had to build discipline into the company that I do not carry around naturally.
I produce ideas faster than a room can absorb them. The report suggested, politely, that I delay my responses “to give others a chance to speak.” People who have sat in my leadership meetings put it less politely.
The emotional intelligence appraisal came back 94 overall, and the lowest of the four skills was relationship management. Read those two together and you get an honest sentence: knowing what everyone in the room is feeling is not the same as handling it well every time.
None of this is decoration. It is the operating manual for working with me, and half the reason I trust systems over personality. I have read the printout on mine.
Off the clock
Jacksonville is home. I am a husband and a father first, which took me an embarrassingly long time to actually mean.
Most mornings start the same way: intentions written down before the day starts making its own demands. Most weeks include an OrangeTheory class I complain about and feel better for. I keep my keys on a hook by the door, because I am not especially disciplined. I just build systems that make discipline unnecessary.
Where to go from here
The business work lives at ProvenChaos.com: coaching, planning, the CEO group, the frameworks, and the weekly letter. The personal writing is in the essays.