I built the life, and lost what mattered in it.

I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, about half an hour east of Tulsa. By ten I was riding my dad's trash route before school. By high school I was six-foot-eight, and I learned early that being tall and aggressive gets you through most of life. People move out of your way. I was a bully without knowing I was one.

That carried me through twenty-five years in business. By any outside measure it worked. I was successful, and I made a lot of money.

Then I looked at what I actually had. Not one employee I had developed. A business that was just me doing the work. A marriage I used work to get away from, and children I wasn't close to. I had spent years blaming my wife for the marriage, and never once looked at myself.

The change didn't come from a breakthrough. It came on an ordinary bad day, covered in mud, trying to fix a broken water line by myself. Every old instinct said to curse the pipe, the weather, whoever should have helped. Instead I laughed, because it was on me: I hadn't prepared, I hadn't brought the right tools, I hadn't asked for help. Taking responsibility for that one small thing gave me more peace than anything I'd ever won.

I started practicing what I had spent years only studying. I read close to a hundred books in a year. I found a handful of men who would tell me the truth. I decided to be a better husband before I asked for a better wife, and the marriage changed. So did the business, and so did I.

I wrote The Accountable Life for the man I was: thirty-five to fifty-five, successful, and quietly not at peace. Now I spend my time with men like him, one conversation at a time.

Faith is part of how my change happened. It's welcome in our conversations if it matters to you, and never required.

An early conversation, from 2022, on the HolderView podcast with Chris Holder.