What would I say to my younger self?

I'd find that kid - early twenties, confident, impatient, absolutely certain he knew more than he did and I'd sit him down.

Here's what I'd say.

Slow down to speed up. You think pausing to understand the full picture is weakness. It isn't. The leaders who move fastest aren't the ones who react quickest. They're the ones who see clearest. Take the extra hour. Ask the extra question. The decision you make in clarity will always outperform the one you made in urgency.

Your network is your net worth. Not the LinkedIn version of that phrase. The real version. Invest in people genuinely and without agenda. Show up for others before you need them to show up for you. The relationships you build will open doors that no resume ever could.

Titles are temporary - reputation isn't. You will change companies. Industries will shift. Roles will evolve. But how you treated people - especially when it was hard, especially when nobody was watching - that follows you everywhere. Protect it like it's the most valuable thing you own. Because it is.

Sit with people who are smarter than you and stay quiet long enough to learn something. You will be tempted to prove yourself in every room. Resist it. The smartest person at the table is rarely the one talking the most. Be the one absorbing. Your time to speak will come.

The comfort zone is the enemy. Every time you felt stretched beyond what you thought you were capable of - that was growth happening. Stop trying to get comfortable. Get curious about the uncomfortable instead. That's where everything you want to become is waiting.

Own your mistakes faster than you defend them. You will be wrong. Regularly. Publicly sometimes. The leaders who earn the deepest trust aren't the ones who are never wrong - they're the ones who own it cleanly and move forward without making everyone else absorb the weight of their ego.

And finally - bet on yourself earlier. You must take leaps of faith. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting until you feel ready. Stop waiting for someone to hand you the opportunity you're more than capable of creating. You are more prepared than you think.

The younger version of me needed to hear that. Maybe someone reading this does too.

Sales gets the commission.

Operations gets the blame when something goes wrong.

And yet operations is the only function in the organization that actually determines whether the revenue gets kept.

Let me explain.

Sales generates the opportunity. Marketing builds the pipeline. Both are essential. Both deserve the recognition they get.

But revenue isn't real until the customer receives the order - on time, in full, and in perfect condition - and nobody asks for their money back. No credit. No refund. No reshipment. No apologetic email with a discount code attached.

That's revenue capture. And it doesn't happen in the sales meeting. It happens in the warehouse. On the dock. In the carrier network. In the hands of the person who packed the box.

Operations drives revenue capture. Which means operations drives revenue. Every damaged shipment is a margin event. Every short ship is a trust event. Every late delivery is a retention event. Every credit issued is revenue that was generated but never captured. Revenue that sales worked to earn and operations failed to protect.

And yet most organizations measure sales performance obsessively and treat operational performance as overhead.

Sales has a dashboard. A leaderboard. A commission structure. A weekly pipeline review. Operations gets a spreadsheet and a complaint ticket system.

I've watched companies where the sales team hit every number while the operation quietly eroded margin through credits, reshipments, and customer attrition that never showed up on revenue reports until it was too late.

You cannot sales your way out of an operations problem. The leaky bucket empties regardless of how fast you fill it.

Here's the reframe I'd offer every founder, CFO, and commercial leader:

Your best sales tool isn't the pitch deck. It isn't the trade show. It isn't the discount. It's a perfect order.

A perfect order retains the customer. Generates the reorder. Builds the reputation that makes the next sale easier. And protects every dollar your sales team worked to earn.

Operations isn't a cost center sitting behind revenue. Operations is where revenue becomes real. Invest in it accordingly.

I've worked for some brilliant founders.

I've also worked for some who were one book, one seminar, or one golf course conversation away from completely reinventing how they led.

Every few weeks a new framework would arrive. A new vocabulary. A new set of priorities that quietly retired the ones from last month. The team would adapt. Align. Execute. And then the next book would show up on the desk.

I've seen it three different ways.

The Reader. Finished a book every few weeks. Each one came with a new management philosophy, a new meeting structure, a new way of thinking about culture. The team became fluent in frameworks they'd never use twice. Nobody knew which version of leadership was showing up on Monday.

The Seminar Attendee. Would return from a two day workshop completely transformed. New language. New energy. New non-negotiables. Until the next workshop. The team stopped taking the post-seminar announcements seriously. They'd learned to wait it out.

The Envious Adopter. Would hear what was working for another founder - at a dinner, on a podcast, on the golf course - and immediately import it. No context. No translation. No consideration for whether the culture, the size, or the stage of business was even remotely similar. Just - "here's what they're doing. We're doing that now."

Here's what all three had in common:

The team never knew which version of the leader they were getting. And when people don't know what to expect from leadership - they stop trusting it. They stop investing in it. They start protecting themselves from it.

Inconsistency doesn't just create confusion. It creates cynicism. The mixed messages. The abandoned initiatives. The priorities that expired before they were ever fully executed. Over time the team stops believing that anything is permanent. So they stop committing to anything completely.

Learning and evolving as a leader is not the problem. It's admirable. The problem is performing that evolution on your team in real time without the self awareness to filter what's worth adopting from what's just noise.

Read the books. Attend the seminars. Take the call with the other founder. But know who you are before you decide who they told you to be.

Your team doesn't need a leader who has read everything. They need a leader they can count on to show up the same way twice.

There is a mandate at a lot of organizations right now. Learn AI.

Great directive. Genuinely important. Absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to stay relevant in an environment that is moving faster than any formal curriculum can keep up with.

There is just one small problem. The training doesn't exist yet. The mandate is real. The roadmap to get there is not. Which means a lot of well intentioned professionals are sitting with a directive to learn something and no structured path to actually learn it.

So this week I did what operators do when the resource isn't available. I figured it out myself. I spent time this week going deep on Claude. Not surface level. Not the "here is how to write a better email" version. The actual capabilities. The depth. The ways an operator with the right questions and the right framework can build something that creates real measurable value inside a real operation. Shipping dashboards. Order flow visibility. Financial reporting models. Contract analysis. Scenario planning. Drafting communications that used to take an hour in twenty minutes. And I am still just getting started.

Here is what I want to say to every operations and supply chain professional who has heard the mandate but hasn't found the path yet. You don't need a formal program to begin. You need curiosity and a willingness to sit with something long enough to understand what it can actually do. The people who will have the most value in this industry over the next five years aren't the ones who waited for someone to teach them. They are the ones who taught themselves while everyone else was waiting.

The mandate is real. The training is self directed.

Most cold chain companies are overpaying for every order they ship. Not by a little. By a lot.

It's buried in every oversized box, every block of coolant, every inch of unnecessary insulation, and every carrier rate that was negotiated once and auto-renewed into comfortable irrelevance ever since.

Nobody meant for it to happen. It just accumulated. Shipment by shipment. Until the cost of delivering the product became a serious threat to the margin on selling it.

Here's what I've learned walking into these operations:

Right sizing packaging alone reduces material costs, dimensional weight charges, and coolant requirements simultaneously. One decision. Three cost lines. Most companies pick a box size and stop thinking about it.

Coolant specs based on worst case assumptions that haven't been validated in years aren't caution. That's waste with a safety label on it.

Insulation that's present isn't the same as insulation that's performing. Test it. Validate it. Right size it. Across hundreds of thousands of shipments that difference isn't a rounding error. It's a budget line.

And the carrier contract - when did you last actually negotiate it? Not renew it. Negotiate it. There is almost always money on the table that a comfortable incumbent relationship is quietly leaving there.

The product has to arrive cold. It doesn't have to arrive expensively. That gap is exactly where the opportunity lives.

Unpopular opinion: Data doesn't drive decisions. People do. And the people are the problem.

"We need more data" is fear wearing a fleece vest and carrying an expensive laptop. It sounds responsible. It's almost always just a deadline extension on a decision everyone already knows needs to be made.

I've sat in rooms where twenty slides of color-coded metrics justified a decision that fifteen minutes on the floor would have told you was wrong. But nobody had been on the floor. The dashboard was right there. On a very large screen. With a legend.

Confirmation bias doesn't disappear when you add a bar chart. It just gets a title slide and a distribution list. Your data is only as good as the assumptions behind it. Your dashboard is only as honest as the people who built it.

Data tells you productivity dropped. It won't tell you productivity dropped because the new director is a walking HR incident and your three best people are updating their resumes during your mandatory engagement survey. That requires presence. Judgment. Actually talking to humans.

Data informs. Leaders decide. The algorithm doesn't have to look anyone in the eye when it's wrong. You do. Act like it.

Somewhere today someone is doing something hard for the first time. Leading a team they weren't ready for. Making a call without perfect information. Having the conversation they've been avoiding for weeks. And they're doing it anyway.

I've been in this work long enough to see people surprise themselves. The quiet team member who finds their voice and changes the entire room. The operator who inherits a broken system and builds something nobody thought was possible. The leader who fails publicly, owns it completely, and comes back more trusted than before. Those moments don't make the highlight reel. But they are the work. The real work.

Most people are doing better than they give themselves credit for. Most teams are closer to a breakthrough than they realize. And the gap between where you are and where you're capable of going is almost always smaller than it feels at 11 p.m. when the weight of it sits heaviest. Keep going. Not because it's easy. Not because the outcome is guaranteed. But because the version of you on the other side of this hard season is worth the work it takes to get there.

The best chapters don't always announce themselves. Sometimes they just quietly begin.

Every year - for the last fourteen years - I've saved the organization that I've led at least $1M in savings. Much of that has come through contract negotiation. Carrier agreements. Packaging contracts. Co-manufacturing deals. 3PL relationships. Vendor partnerships.

I've sat across from procurement teams, operations directors, and C-suite executives and walked away with numbers that made CFOs do a double take. And I've never done it by being the loudest person in the room.

What actually drives seven figure savings is preparation, research, pattern recognition, and relationship building. Preparation that makes the other side uncomfortable. Knowing their cost structure before they quote you. Understanding market rates better than their own sales team does. Knowing which concessions are real and which ones are theater. Walking in with data when they expected a conversation. That's not luck. That's homework.

But here's the part that separates a good deal from a great partnership - I've never left a table trying to make the other side feel like they lost. Because I've seen what happens when you do. The vendor who got squeezed finds a way to make the margin back. In service. In quality. In the fine print of a clause you didn't read closely enough. In the moment when capacity gets tight and your call goes to the bottom of the list. You didn't win that negotiation. You just delayed losing it.

The best deals I've ever structured came from asking the other side what they actually need. Not what they're asking for. What they need. Volume predictability. Fewer SKUs. Faster payment terms. A reference account they can put in their next pitch deck. Sometimes the thing that costs you nothing is worth everything to them. And that's where the deal gets made.

I've turned adversarial conversations into long term partnerships by being the person in the room who said - "here's what I need, help me understand what you need, and let's figure out if there's a deal here." There usually is.

Integrity at the negotiating table isn't soft. It's strategic. Don't bluff with numbers you can't support. Don't make commitments you won't keep. Don't extract so much that the partner has to cut corners to survive the contract - because those corners will show up in your operation. They always do.

A partner who trusts you will find capacity when you're in a bind. Will call you before a problem becomes a crisis. Will work through a dispute instead of hiding behind a clause. A partner who feels beaten will do the minimum - every time - right up until they find a reason to exit.

I've delivered more than a million dollars in savings on numerous occasions not by being ruthless - but by being prepared, honest, and creative enough to find value that a purely adversarial approach would have left on the table.

Negotiate hard. Negotiate smart. But always negotiate like the relationship matters. Because the contract has an end date. The reputation doesn't.

A vendor cancelled a meeting twenty minutes before it was supposed to start. Double booked. It happens. I get it. We rescheduled at their request. I moved things around. Blocked the new time. I showed up. They didn't. No call. No message. No heads up. Just nothing. The kind of nothing that isn't peaceful or productive. The kind that just costs you thirty minutes and your willingness to give someone the benefit of the doubt a third time.

Then - after I sent an email - they reached out later that day asking if I could "jump on a call" like I was sitting by the phone in a rocking chair just waiting for them to become available. I wasn't.

Here's what I want to say to every vendor and partner who operates this way - your calendar is not the center of mine. And every time you treat my time as flexible while protecting your own - you are making a decision about this partnership. You just don't realize it yet.

I don't need perfect. I need consistent. Cancel when you have to. Reschedule when you must. But show up when you commit. And if something goes wrong - own it. Fast. Directly. Without acting like it didn't happen. Because here's the truth about vendor relationships that doesn't get said enough - trust isn't built in the contract. It's built in the calendar.

It's built in whether you show up when you say you will. Whether you respect the time of the person you're asking for business. Whether your follow-through matches your pitch.

The product might be great. The pricing might be competitive. The deck might be polished. But if I can't trust you to show up for a thirty minute meeting - I'm not trusting you with the area of the business that I manage.

Small moments. Big signals.

've had weeks so packed with meetings about the work that needed to be done that I didn't have time to do the actual work. We called it collaboration. I called it expensive.

A full calendar actually is a monument to other people's priorities, built on your time, with your name on it. Congratulations. You've been fully booked into irrelevance.

Years ago, I started blocking my calendar the way I protect anything else I actually value. Aggressively. Without apology. With the same energy I bring to a contract negotiation - which is to say, I'm reading every clause and I'm not signing anything I don't believe in.

The results were immediate. Turns out when you give yourself two uninterrupted hours to actually think and work, you solve things. Wild concept. Somebody should write a book. Several people have but nobody has time to read them because their calendar is full.

Here's the meeting math nobody does: Six people. One hour. That's not a one-hour meeting. That's six hours of organizational time spent on something that could have been a document, a Slack message, or and I cannot stress this enough - doing work that moves the organization forward.

Your best thinking has a time of day. Mine is early morning. Before the requests come in. Before the notifications start. Before someone needs "just five minutes" which has never once been five minutes in the history of human communication.

Block that time first. Then build everything else around it. Because nobody is coming to rescue your calendar. Not your assistant. Not your boss. Not the person who just sent a meeting invite with "quick sync" in the title and no agenda. That's on you.

A full calendar isn't ambition. It's just noise with structure. Block the time. Do the work. Let the results speak.

Everything else can find a slot on Thursday at 1 p.m. - when I'm in the car rider line and my calendar is set to auto decline

Nothing is underrated.

No agenda. No deliverable. No metric to hit. Just thinking.

We've built entire cultures around busyness. Packed calendars are worn like a badge. "I'm slammed" has become the default answer to "how are you?" - as if overwhelm is proof of importance.

Some of the best decisions I've ever made came from doing nothing. A walk. A quiet morning. A drive without a podcast. That's where the pattern you've been chasing suddenly becomes obvious. Where the conversation you've been avoiding becomes clear. Where the strategy that looked complicated on a slide becomes simple.

We don't have a shortage of information. We have a shortage of space to process it. The most productive thing I do this week may be the hour I spend doing absolutely nothing - because that's when I will figure out the thing I'd been overthinking for days.

Protect your nothing time. It's not wasted. It's where your best thinking actually happens. The work will always be there. The clarity won't always come.

Give yourself permission to do nothing. It might be the most important thing on your list.

We think about “initial screenings” in hiring. But they’re just as powerful in everyday work. Before launching a project. Before approving a vendor. Before committing resources. Before saying yes.

An initial screening is simply a short, focused conversation to test alignment. Asking - what problem are we solving? Asking - what does success actually look like? What constraints exist? Who owns what?

Most operational and corporate friction doesn’t come from incompetence. It comes from skipping this step. We jump straight into execution without screening the idea. And then we’re surprised when scope creeps, expectations drift, accountability blurs, and frustration sets in.

A 20-minute alignment conversation can save weeks of rework. It’s not bureaucracy. It’s discipline.

Initial screenings aren’t about slowing momentum. They’re about preventing false starts. And in supply chain - and leadership - false starts are expensive.

Shipment packaging doesn’t get much attention until freight costs spike. Then suddenly everyone cares about cartons.

Right-sizing packaging is one of the most overlooked levers in supply chain. It sits at the intersection of cost, customer experience, sustainability, and operational efficiency.

Carriers don’t just charge based on actual weight. They charge based on dimensional weight - the space your package occupies in a truck or aircraft. Dimensional weight (DIM weight) is calculated using the carton’s volume (L × W × H) divided by a carrier factor. If the DIM weight is higher than the actual weight, you pay the higher number.

That means:
A 5 lb product in an oversized box might ship as 12 lbs. You’re paying for air. Right-sizing cartons reduces that gap.

The benefits are tangible:
- Lower freight spend (less DIM exposure)
- Better cube utilization in trucks and containers
- Reduced dunnage and packaging material costs
- Fewer damages from products shifting in oversized boxes
- Improved customer perception (no one likes a tiny item in a giant box)
- Stronger sustainability profile

Operationally, it also drives discipline. You’re forced to:

- Understand your SKU dimensions accurately
- Analyze order profiles
- Optimize carton assortments
- Align pick-pack processes with packaging strategy

Right-sizing isn’t glamorous. But in high-volume shipping environments, even a ½-inch reduction in carton height can translate into six-figure annual savings.

Freight is physics. The less air you ship, the less you pay. And in supply chain, small dimensional improvements compound fast.

We’ve all heard the language. A players. B players. C players. Rank them. Stack them. Upgrade them. That framework is simple - but it’s incomplete. Because what you really want isn’t just an “A player.” You want an exponential.

An exponential is someone who doesn’t just perform well in their role - they expand the impact of everyone around them. They stretch beyond the boundaries of their job description, influence across departments without authority, elevate standards by example, and make the room better simply by being in it.

A traditional “A player” might execute flawlessly. An exponential multiplies output. They don’t just hit their numbers. They help others hit theirs. They don’t just solve problems. They raise the level of thinking. They are positive culture changers - not because they’re loud, but because they’re steady, credible, and generous with what they know.

Exponentials uplevel others while doing their own work. And that’s the difference. Performance is individual. Exponentials are organizational force multipliers.

If you’re building a team, stop asking - “Is this an A player?” Start asking -
“Will this person expand the capability of everyone around them?”

If someone said: “Teach me something.” Not “What should I do?” Not “Can you review this?” Just - teach me something. What would you teach?

There are thousands of tactical lessons in operations and leadership. Formulas. Frameworks. Metrics. But what do you teach when someone gives you a blank canvas?

I'd say: Don’t just solve the problem in front of you. Solve the pattern behind it. Anyone can fix a late shipment. Fewer people ask why late shipments keep happening. Even fewer redesign the system so they stop.

The lesson wouldn’t be about supply chain. It would be about leverage.

If you can identify the root pattern - in process, in behavior, in communication - you multiply your impact.

Sometimes the most powerful teaching isn’t complex. It’s helping someone see one level deeper than they were looking before.

If someone said to you, “Teach me something,” what would you say?

One of the things I don’t talk about often - but value deeply - is that I’m often one of the first calls or messages former team members make when they’re thinking about leaving their current role.

It happens multiple times a month. “Can I run something by you?” “I’m not sure if it’s time.” “Am I overreacting?” “Would you look at this offer?”

Those conversations aren’t about resumes (although I do get asked to review those often). They’re emotional. They’re about doubt. Identity. Fear of making the wrong move. Excitement mixed with anxiety.

And then there are the other messages. The ones that simply say: “Just wanted to let you know I took a new role.” “We moved to a new city.” “Things are going well.” “Life’s taken me here.” No ask. Just an update.

When someone reaches out years after we worked together - whether for advice or just to share where life has taken them - it tells me something important. The trust didn’t end when the job did. Mentoring. Coaching. Teaching - those aren’t tied to payroll. They’re tied to relationship.

If someone still feels safe enough to call you when they’re at a crossroads or thoughtful enough to keep you in the loop long after you shared an office -
that’s not about title. That’s about how you led.

Careers are long. Chapters change. Companies come and go. But if you can be a steady voice - or simply someone worth updating - long after the org chart changes - that’s impact that lasts.

Every organization needs a BHAG. A Big Hairy Audacious Goal. Not a safe goal. Not a “stretch but realistic” target. A goal that makes people pause.

And while I believe strongly in an organizational BHAG - I believe even more in having my own individual BHAG's that support the organizational. That's right - BHAG's. Not singular. But multiple.

A true BHAG does a few things. It creates clarity, prioritization, filters from distractions. And when the goal is big enough - small debates fade. It isn’t about ego. It’s about alignment.

It says - “This is who we’re becoming.” “This is what we’re building.” “This is the hill we’re willing to climb.” Without it, teams drift. Effort spreads thin. Energy gets consumed by incrementalism. With it, momentum builds. Not because it’s easy - it usually isn't - but because it’s compelling.

What I have learned is that a BHAG can’t just live on a slide. It has to translate into quarterly priorities, weekly execution, daily decisions. Big vision with ground action. That’s how audacious goals become real.

I’ve spent some time reflecting on how I’m wired. I've used tools like Enneagram and Predictive Index. For those of us who grew up flipping through magazines, these tests feel slightly more scientific than those old "What Type of Guy Are You?" quizzes in Men's Health - where answering mostly A's meant you were "The Maverick Alpha" or all B's meant you were "The Thoughtful Trailblazer." These tests come with a little more science and a lot less abs on the cover.

On the Enneagram, I test as a 1w2 - the Reformer with a Helper wing. On the Predictive Index, I align most closely with a Venturer (although other tests have also shown Analyst).

That combination is interesting. The 1w2 in me holds a strong internal compass. High standards. Clear sense of right and wrong. Desire to improve systems and elevate people.

The Venturer adds fuel to that fire. It brings decisiveness, comfort with risk, competitive drive, and bias toward action.

So what does that look like in leadership? I don’t just want things to be better. I want them better now. I’ll take calculated risks. I’ll push for growth. I’ll step into ambiguity and move.

The upside is momentum, high standards, and courage to make hard calls. The watch-outs tend to be impatience, expecting others to move at the same speed, letting intensity overshadow empathy if I’m not careful.

Self-awareness helps. I've done well to keep the watch-outs in check. If you have worked with me - you'd probably not seen most of those traits.

The 1w2 keeps my motives grounded in integrity and service. The Venturer keeps me from overthinking and stuck in analysis. Standards with speed. Conviction with action.

Understanding how you’re wired doesn’t limit you. It sharpens you. It can sharpen teams.

I've used Predictive Index in building incredible teams. And while initially I was skeptical of it and may have called it nothing more than a magazine's latest "which guy is he" - the bumping together of different predictive index results allows for the quick identification of where communication will break down, where teams will stumble, and where trait dominance will show up.

I’ve sat in more “core values” sessions than I can count.

Whiteboards full of words and phrases. Great discussions where participants feel engaged. Everyone aligned.

The words and phrases - Integrity - Accountability - Teamwork - Customer first.

Heads would not in agreement. Slides would get printed. Posters go up and slides added to screens.

And then - nothing! Nothing changes. Just the wall paper.

Why? Because core values aren’t proven in workshops. They’re proven in decisions. They show daily and their tested frequently. You see misalignment when a high performer violates a standard, a deadline is at risk, revenue is on the line, or a tough decision has to be made. If the values disappear under pressure then they were never values. They were decorations.

Establishing core values isn’t the hard part. Operationalizing them is. It means hiring against them, promoting against them, and letting people go when they violate them. It means allowing the values to have meaningful impact to the organization. Really believing in your values means measuring behavior and not just outcomes.

Values that aren’t executed on create cynicism. Values that are lived create culture.

It’s better to have three real values than ten laminated ones. Because people don’t read the poster. They read the behavior.

Here we go again. Another big storm rolling through the Northeast.

Roads closing. Warehouses shutting down for safety. Carriers suspending pickups. State of Emergency announced.

And still - the asks come in. “Can we get this out today?” “This meeting is critical.” “This event can’t be delayed.”

I understand the urgency. But when warehouses close for safety - when teams can’t safely get to work - when trucks aren’t moving - when inventory is not positioned at other facilities - there is nothing to fulfill. Supply chain doesn’t override weather. It responds to it.

In moments like this, leadership means protect the people first and then communicate clearly and early.

The storm will pass. The meeting can be rescheduled. The event can adjust. But the safety of the team isn’t negotiable.

Here we go again. And just like every time before - we’ll plan, adapt, and move as soon as it’s safe to do so.