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10/08/2026

Your circumstances are not your limitations, they’re your fuel. 🔥

Madean Gilzene built Extraordinary, a support network for families navigating complex childcare, from her own lived experience. This is the mindset that made it possible.

🔔 Turn on notifications! The full conversation with Madean drops Wednesday on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. Link in bio.

Most leaders set goals. The best ones build identity. Early in my leadership career I set the right goals without defini...
13/07/2026

Most leaders set goals. The best ones build identity.

Early in my leadership career I set the right goals without defining what kind of organization we needed to become to reach them. When the pressure came, the goals didn't hold because there was nothing underneath them.

The shift at Palm Beach Symphony wasn't driven by a target number. It was driven by a commitment to becoming a specific kind of organization. The numbers followed the identity.

James Clear puts it clearly in Atomic Habits. Every action is a vote for the type of organization you want to become. Cast enough consistent votes in the same direction and the identity shifts. Then the outcomes follow.

What kind of organization are you voting for every day, whether you've named it or not?

Most leaders set goals. The best ones build identity. Goals are destinations. Identity is a description of who you alrea...
13/07/2026

Most leaders set goals.

The best ones build identity.

Goals are destinations. Identity is a description of who you already are.

Every decision your organization makes is a vote for the kind of organization it is becoming.

What kind of organization are you voting for every day?
CEOMindset TheEnduranceLeader Strategy Nonprofit

Book of the Week: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.Continuously in print since 1989 because it's...
11/07/2026

Book of the Week: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.

Continuously in print since 1989 because it's built on principles that don't expire with the business cycle.

Three habits I return to constantly as a leader.

Be Proactive. Reactive leaders manage what's already in front of them. Proactive leaders build conditions that prevent the problem from forming. Covey's circle of influence is the diagnostic I use most often. Are you investing energy in what you can control or worrying about what you can't? One expands your impact. The other drains it.

Begin With the End in Mind. Every planning season at Palm Beach Symphony started with one question. What does success look like at the end of this and how will we know we got there? That clarity made every tactical decision easier because there was an agreed destination.

Sharpen the Saw. You cannot sustain high performance on a depleted instrument. The training, the early mornings, the reading, the time in the water. These aren't rewards for good work. They are the maintenance requirements for continued performance. Covey is direct about this. Renewal is not optional.

One of the most important books on my shelf. Back in the re-read rotation every year.

Which of the seven habits is doing the most work for you right now?

09/07/2026

You get 168 hours every week. Not one more. 🌊

Every hour is a token. Spend it on distraction, and it’s gone. Spend it on what matters, on your health, your work, your people, and it compounds into the life you actually want. How you manage those 168 hours doesn’t just describe your week. It defines your happiness and your success.

It’s fitting that it’s been exactly 168 hours since my ACL reconstruction. To everyone who has checked in, sent a message, or shown up for me during this recovery, thank you. Your support has meant more than you know.

Next Wednesday on Waves of Success, I sit down with .realestate and .hadarsophia to talk about what they do with their 168 hours, and what it’s taught them about building a life that lasts.

Set a reminder. This one’s worth your time.

.studio.wpb

I earned my Lean Six Sigma certification at Purdue.The most important thing it taught me had nothing to do with statisti...
08/07/2026

I earned my Lean Six Sigma certification at Purdue.

The most important thing it taught me had nothing to do with statistical models or process charts. It taught me to ask one question before improving anything: does this step create value for the customer, or does it just create activity for the organization?

Most inefficiency inside organizations isn't intentional. It's the accumulated weight of processes that made sense at some point and were never questioned again. Meetings that exist because they always have. Approval layers that no longer serve the decision being made. Reports nobody reads but everyone keeps producing.

The Toyota Way defines waste as any activity that consumes resources without creating value. Eliminating it isn't cutting. It's clarity.

At Palm Beach Symphony, applying lean thinking to our development operations revealed significant time being spent on donor communications that weren't advancing any relationship. Redirecting that capacity toward genuine cultivation conversations changed our revenue trajectory.

Eric Ries adds an important sequence in The Lean Startup. Build, measure, learn. Don't optimize a process until you know it's producing the right outcome. Most organizations focus on doing things efficiently before confirming they're doing the right things.

Do the right things first. Then make them efficient.

Where is your organization spending energy on activity that isn't producing value for anyone?

Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936.Every principle still works because human nature has...
06/07/2026

Dale Carnegie wrote How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936.

Every principle still works because human nature hasn't changed.

The one that shaped my leadership most: become genuinely interested in other people. Not for what they can offer. Genuinely.

I've built my network across five industries and three organizations on one practice. I remember what matters to people. I follow up. I show up when there's nothing in it for me.

The highest-value relationships I have today, with board members, major donors, business leaders, and community partners, didn't come from networking events. They came from years of consistent investment in people without keeping a ledger.

As a trustee at the Palm Beach Chamber of Commerce and a board member at the Rinker School of Business at Palm Beach Atlantic, I see this play out constantly. The people who get called first aren't the most prominent ones in the room. They're the most reliable ones over the longest period of time.

Reputation in a community like Palm Beach travels faster than any marketing campaign. How you treat someone when nothing is on the line is exactly what gets remembered when everything is.

Your network is only as valuable as the trust inside it.

Who have you genuinely invested in lately with no expectation of return?

Book of the Week: Good to Great by Jim Collins.This book changed how I think about organizational leadership more than a...
03/07/2026

Book of the Week: Good to Great by Jim Collins.

This book changed how I think about organizational leadership more than almost anything else on my shelf.

Collins and his team spent years studying companies that made the leap from good results to great results and comparing them to similar organizations that didn't. What they found challenges most of what conventional wisdom says about strategy and leadership.

Three principles I've applied directly as a CEO.

The Hedgehog Concept. What can you be the best in the world at? What drives your economic engine? What are you deeply passionate about? Where those three circles overlap is your actual strategy. Finding that intersection at Palm Beach Symphony clarified years of programming and fundraising decisions.

First Who Then What. The right people on the bus before you decide where to drive. The most expensive mistake I've made in leadership is keeping the wrong person in the wrong role too long because the conversation felt hard. Collins is unambiguous. The who comes first.

The Flywheel. There is no single defining moment in a great organization's trajectory. It's the result of consistent pressure on the same wheel, in the same direction, over a long period of time. The momentum that looks dramatic from the outside is always built through unglamorous consistency on the inside.

One of the most important books in leadership. If you haven't read it, it goes to the top of the list.
What do your three Hedgehog circles look like right now?

01/07/2026

Tomorrow morning, I head into surgery to reconstruct my ACL.

I’ve stood on a lot of starting lines. The edge of a wave before a set rolls in. The mat before an Ironman swim start. The tunnel before a race begins. They all feel the same. Quiet. Heavy. Honest.

This one’s no different.

I’m not pretending this is easy. Surgery is real, recovery is long, and the water will have to wait. But every wave I’ve ever paddled into started with a moment exactly like this one. Uncertain. A little afraid. Committed anyway.
So tomorrow, Day One of the comeback begins.

Not because I have it all figured out, but because I know how to endure, how to rebuild, and how to return. That’s not a slogan. That’s the work I’ve done my whole life, in the water, on the course, on the race course, and now in this recovery.

To anyone facing their own surgery, setback, or hard season tomorrow: you don’t have to fight the wave. Respect it. Heal. And paddle back out when you’re ready.
See you on the other side of this one.

Endure. Rebuild. Return. 🌊

The most important competitive advantage I have is not a credential, a title, or a network.It's the first two hours of m...
29/06/2026

The most important competitive advantage I have is not a credential, a title, or a network.
It's the first two hours of my day.

Training for two Ironmans while running Loggerhead Marinelife Center and Palm Beach Symphony full time doesn't happen by accident. It happens because the morning hours are non-negotiable. Movement. Reflection and planning. Learning. Before the first email. Before the first request. Before anyone needs anything.

Robin Sharma's 5AM Club framework is built on a truth I've tested for years. The hours before the world makes demands on your time are the highest-value real estate in your day. What you do with them is a compounding investment that pays back every single morning.

Jack Welch wrote in Winning that every leader has to find their voice. You cannot hear what you actually think when the world is already talking at full volume. The early morning is where you get honest with yourself about what matters and what you've been avoiding.

The quality of my decisions as a CEO has always tracked closely with the quality of my mornings. Not because of a magic routine. Because protected thinking time produces clarity that a fully reactive day never will.

Most leaders are already reactive by 8am. The ones building something that lasts are two hours in before the noise starts.

What does your first hour look like right now?

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