Blog Archives
How to Succeed in Your Professional Service Business
Larry Easto’s How to Succeed in Your Professional Service Business is a practical and reflective guide for self-employed professionals who are skilled at serving clients but less comfortable with the business of finding them. Moving from mindset to marketing, Easto argues that sustainable success begins with the professional’s inner life: passion, purpose, beliefs, values, calm decision-making, and authenticity. From there, he turns toward the visible work of building relationships, clarifying an ideal client, developing a personal brand, networking, creating compelling offers, using online tools, and sustaining trust through credible authority and continuous improvement.
What I appreciated most is the book’s insistence that marketing professional services doesn’t have to feel like a costume. Easto’s best idea is that the provider and the business are deeply intertwined, which makes authenticity not a decorative virtue, but a practical necessity. I found that especially persuasive in moments like his story of setting up a law office around a pine dining table rather than an intimidating desk. That image stayed with me. It quietly expresses the whole book’s philosophy: clients are not abstractions to be captured, but people to be met with clarity, usefulness, and care. The recurring “Life Lessons” also give the book warmth. Marg’s second thought before buying a troubled business, Ben’s shift from financial planning to life coaching, and Eva’s discovery of purpose through music and seniors’ care all make the advice feel lived rather than merely assembled.
The writing has an easy, mentoring cadence. Easto can be conversational, even folksy, and that makes the material accessible without draining it of seriousness. I liked the way he folds in memorable images, from the Field of Dreams opening to the lodgepole pine after a wildfire, because those metaphors give the business advice an emotional weight. I found the stronger current to be pragmatic. Easto keeps returning to action: SWOT analysis, relationship-building, a 30-, 60-, and 90-day plan, added value, communication, and trust. The ideas are at their best when they join hope to responsibility.
I came away from the book feeling that Easto is less interested in teaching professionals how to sell themselves than in helping them become more fully themselves in the marketplace. This is a thoughtful guide for consultants, coaches, advisors, trainers, solo practitioners, and small professional service providers who want practical marketing direction without sacrificing their integrity, personality, or sense of purpose. It would be especially useful for professionals in transition, people who know they’re good at their work but need a steadier, more authentic way to invite the right clients toward it.
Pages: 262 | ASIN : B0DGNK4PXC
Sharing My Survival Kit
In The Resilience Mindset, you present the ReBAR framework developed following your long road to recovery after a devastating cancer diagnosis. Why was this an important book for you to write?
After many of my speaking engagements following the release of my memoir, At Face Value: My Triumph Over A Disfiguring Cancer (2001 1st edition, 2006 2nd edition), audience members often approached me to say they had read my memoir, but what I spoke about included so much about how others could deal with change, conflict and adversity in their own lives. Many encouraged me to write another book sharing my survival kit and ReBAR framework in a workbook style so others could learn my methods and personalize to their own life journey. So I was compelled to write this to help others.
One of the most powerful scenes is your reaction after learning the potential extent of your surgery. Why was it important to share that moment so openly?
That was the turning point moment when I realized life would never be the same for me. I was at a loss on how I would be able to move forward. I wanted to share that vulnerability with my readers, hoping it would inspire them to have confidence to be able to open up about their own pains and challenges.
Of the four elements of ReBAR, which do people tend to struggle with the most?
I think the Act phase is the most difficult for people to implement, because this is where the real work begins. This is when we must focus on what we can control, find ways to confront our challenges, and set goals to make progress toward a better future. This is where the rubber meets the road, but it’s critical that we focus on progress in small increments, so we don’t get overwhelmed or frustrated along our positive journey forward.
When readers finish The Resilience Mindset, what do you hope they believe about themselves that they may not have believed before opening the book?
I want readers to believe that we each have the capacity to build resilience, to find purpose from pain. I want readers to understand that we can learn how to build resilience, we can find our inner strength, and we can bounce forward from change and adversity, not just bounce back. By developing simple habits that take just a few minutes a day, we can change our life for the better so that when future adversity presents itself, we have the tools to better cope and keep hope.
Author Links: GoodReads | X | Website | LinkedIn | YouTube | Instagram
“Finally, a book that provides practical guidance for business professionals and everyday people to find greater success and purpose despite daily challenges.” — Grant Riggs, CEO, Riggs Distributing
Adversity can deliver a blow to our emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual health, eroding our self-confidence and self-esteem. Having experienced a harrowing ordeal with a life-threatening cancer that left him with a permanent facial difference at the age of twenty-one, Healey found a way to harness daily inspirations into key turning points that enabled him to create an actionable framework of four key principles to not only manage adversity whenever confronted with it but to learn how to create a better, more fulfilling life — because of it. Healey’s four principles are invaluable to individuals and to those leading teams of people.
Coping with adversity is one thing, but thriving is another. To thrive, we must find happiness, success, and purpose by developing ways to build resilience, embrace change, and strengthen our resolve so that we become unstoppable. Each of us has the capacity to incorporate Healey’s resilience framework into our daily routines and become more empowered and self-confident.
The Resilience Mindset offers evidence-backed research and stories from others who overcame seemingly insurmountable odds, including paralysis, traumatic brain injury (TBI), severe dyslexia, burn injuries, and other adversities. Offering more than just inspiration, The Resilience Mindset provides readers with the tools to build their own survival kits to take on the smallest and biggest obstacles, leading to a more fulfilling life.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats is a reflective career memoir about leadership, mentorship, and the complicated machinery of global logistics, told through Rich Higgins’s more than forty years in the field. Using tugboats as his central metaphor, Higgins looks back at the people who steadied him, pushed him, protected him, and taught him how to lead. The book moves from noisy trucking docks and deregulation to retail bankruptcies, mergers, Asian port visits, union conflicts, public speaking, health struggles, and late-career reinvention. What holds it together isn’t just supply chain expertise, though there’s plenty of that. It’s gratitude. Again and again, Higgins returns to the idea that a career is rarely built alone, and that the best leaders are the ones powerful enough to guide without needing the spotlight.
I appreciated the book’s emotional honesty. Higgins doesn’t polish himself into some flawless executive hero, and that gives the memoir its warmth. The scene where Tom drives him to work every day after his DUI is one of the book’s most affecting moments because it’s both painful and generous. Higgins lets us feel the shame of that mistake, but he also lets us feel the astonishing grace of a friend who simply shows up. I found that more memorable than many of the larger corporate victories because it captures the book’s real subject: character under pressure. The same is true when he writes about relocating his family and watching his daughters struggle, or turning down the dream job in St. Louis so he could be near his dying father. Those passages carry a quiet ache. They remind us that every career decision has a private cost, and Higgins is at his best when he lets that human truth sit beside the business lesson.
The writing is plainspoken and sincere. Higgins writes like a man talking across a table, and that directness suits the material. The book uses a lot of quotations, acronyms, and operational detail, especially when it gets deep into detention, demurrage, ocean rates, UPS contracts, and best-practice checklists. I did occasionally want a little less instruction and a little more scene. But even the technical passages have an authentic authority. When Higgins describes eliminating rail detention by teaching the distribution center team how the clock worked, creating a Container Priority Report, and getting everyone aligned around FIFO, the lesson lands because it’s concrete. The ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in action: Charlie trying to turn C players into B players, Dave bringing in positive reinforcement training, Greg keeping a position open until Higgins found his way back, Jimmy valuing expertise over age. The book’s moral universe is clear, maybe even stubbornly so, but I liked that about it. Tugboats, captains, crew members, pirates. It’s simple language for complicated workplaces, and it sticks.
Teachers, Teams & Tugboats feels less like a conventional business book and more like a thank-you letter written after a long and meaningful voyage. Its best moments are tender, funny, and grounded in hard-earned perspective, especially when Higgins admits what he didn’t know, who helped him survive, and which values still matter after the titles and relocations fade. I closed the book feeling that its deepest argument isn’t about logistics at all, but about remembering who carried us when we couldn’t quite steer ourselves. I’d recommend it to readers in supply chain, retail, transportation, or operations, but also to managers, mentors, and late-career professionals who want a candid reminder that leadership is built through patience, integrity, gratitude, and the grace to help someone else reach safe harbor.
Pages: 78 | ISBN : 978-1970751505
Effective Leaders
Faith in Flux is a collection of Christian leadership essays that frame leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Writing this book was important to me because it was an outlet for my reflections on my doctoral journey. I authored these essays while attending Liberty University’s School of Education, studying for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Educational Leadership. Postgraduate students can get overwhelmed by the volume of scholarly reports, peer-reviewed studies, and primary sources they must scrutinize before drafting their own academic prose. While reviewing and preparing for my dissertation, I decided to revisit my journey and share some of the leadership knowledge I had amassed, curated, and synthesized during my four years of study. I think education’s purpose is more than a simple knowledge transfer; it is knowledge shared to encourage deep thought and spark honest debate – a true collaborative effort.
Why do you believe listening is such a foundational leadership skill?
Listening is a foundational leadership skill because it builds trust, encourages diverse perspectives, informs decision-making, and mitigates potential conflict. As a child, adults told me that God gave us two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we speak. Although it’s commonly attributed to the ancient Greek Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the quote “We have two ears and only one tongue so that we may hear more and speak less,” was written by Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynic philosophy. The Cynics were a precursor philosophy to the Stoics; therefore, it makes sense that they share core beliefs. Likewise, Hellenistic culture influenced the Christian Bible. In the Old Testament, there are two references in Proverbs 10:19 and 17:28 advising to “hold their tongues.” Also, the New Testament has a similar quote in James 1:19: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger.”
Mentorship feels central to the book’s worldview. What makes a mentor truly transformative?
Mentorship is a critical component of education. The mentee determines whether a mentor is truly transformative. As my favorite mentor once said, “I’m not training you to do your job, I’m training you to do mine.” Anyone can be a mentor: family members, friends, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, or authority figures. Mentorship is a relationship. Both parties are responsible for nurturing any healthy relationship. However, a good mentor inherently has the mentee’s best interest at heart. Mentorship is not a self-serving endeavor, and sincerity is difficult to fake in the long term. All relationships take effort and time. However, not all advice is prudent or actionable. Mentors provide guidance while allowing the mentee to make mistakes without achieving total failure. As General David Goldfein wrote, leaders share success but own failure. I think effective leaders are mentors, and good mentors are leaders.
What audience did you most hope would connect with this book?
I view education as a collaborative effort with educators as mentors. My intent is not to proselytize but to share academic literature from my studies and personal anecdotes from my military experiences. Although I wrote this book from a Christian lens, ethics and morality are human ideals. Ethics is a branch of knowledge focusing on virtues, obligations, and consequences. It originated from the Greek ēthos (character or custom). Morals are one’s particular values concerning right and wrong that inform one’s conduct. It is derived from the Latin word mōs (custom or habit). Culture, traditions, customs, and religion influence both societal beliefs. Anyone who wants to behave ethically and morally (in the classroom or the boardroom) is my target audience.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Website | Amazon
In a world of constant change, this collection of essays distills four years of doctoral research at Liberty University into a practical, faith-grounded exploration of educational leadership, ethics, and modern pedagogy.
Author Michael W. Cook bridges the gap between rigorous academic scholarship and accessible prose, weaving in candid military anecdotes and a distinctly Christian worldview to make complex ideas both relatable and actionable.
From the timeless wisdom of Saint Augustine and the Founding Fathers’ vision of an educated citizenry to today’s most urgent challenges—campus ideological tensions, academic freedom battles, STEM integration with robotics and maker spaces, game-based learning, bureaucratic hierarchies, and technology ethics-—the essays show Christian leaders how to navigate constant change (life is flux) while staying firmly anchored in biblical morals and principles.
More than a scholarly exercise, this book serves as both an engaging narrative and a practical reference guide, equipping educators, administrators, ministry leaders, and professionals with biblical wisdom for faithful leadership in the classroom, boardroom, and daily life.
Ready to lead with conviction when the ground is shifting beneath your feet?
Faith in Flux shows you how.
Faith in Flux: Christian Leadership Lessons From Classroom to Boardroom
Faith in Flux is a wide-ranging collection of Christian leadership essays drawn from Michael William Cook’s PhD studies in educational leadership, moving from classrooms to military teams to higher education debates and organizational ethics. Cook frames leadership as a moral practice shaped by change, faith, critical thinking, and service. He writes about Heraclitus and “life is flux,” Augustine’s belief that education should form virtue, Jefferson and Rush’s competing visions of public education, Freire and campus speech, conflict resolution at work and home, mentoring in the Air Force, project-based learning, bureaucracy, STEM, technology, and the educational damage left by COVID-era distance learning. It’s less a single-argument book than a cabinet of essays, each one turning over a leadership problem under a Christian and academic light.
I liked how personal the book becomes when Cook steps away from the machinery of citations and lets experience do some of the teaching. His memory of Mr. Miller stopping trigonometry class to measure a basketball hoop, then a water tower, and a church steeple, has a lovely plainspoken power because it makes his point before he explains it. The same is true of the Air Force satellite exercise, where students worked with a transparent little box, test equipment, diagrams, and failure itself as a teacher. Those moments gave the book warmth. I felt the author most clearly there, not just as a doctoral student assembling scholarship, but as someone who has been changed by good teaching and wants to pass that change along.
Cook’s convictions are sincere, and I respected the moral seriousness behind his concerns about campus speech, leadership legitimacy, and education without virtue. Some passages land with more force than nuance, especially when discussing Marxism, Freire, and contemporary university culture. The writing can become compressed by its academic scaffolding, with names, theories, citations, and conclusions arriving in a steady march. I appreciated that the book doesn’t pretend to be neutral. Its best ideas are grounded in responsibility: leaders should listen before correcting, delegate without abandoning accountability, protect children, teach for mastery rather than mere grades, and treat authority as something earned through character rather than title.
Faith in Flux is thoughtful, earnest, and often thought-provoking, especially when Cook connects leadership theory to lived moments of mentorship, classroom discovery, and moral choice. The prose is strongest when it breathes, and the ideas are strongest when they’re embodied in stories. This is a passionate book about becoming the kind of leader who can stand inside change without losing his ethical center. I’d recommend it to Christian educators, school leaders, military mentors, and readers who enjoy reflective essays that blend faith, leadership theory, and practical experience.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GWWNC92F
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Entrepreneur Secrets is a collection of stories from real-world entrepreneurs that reveals how purpose, profit, and power are forged not in theory but in lived experience. What made you choose a multi-author format instead of writing a single, unified business narrative?
Honestly, the question itself surprises me a little, because the word “entrepreneur” covers such an enormous range of people. An entrepreneur can be anyone: the hot dog vendor who starts with a single cart and grows it into a fleet of a hundred, a charter boat operator, a retailer, a tech founder, or a service provider. The paths look nothing alike on the surface.
That’s exactly why I chose a multi-author format. I wanted readers to step inside the journeys of very different kinds of entrepreneurs and see the world through each of their eyes. A single, unified narrative would have flattened that diversity into one voice, one industry, one perspective, and the truth is, one size doesn’t fit all in this world.
What unites these stories isn’t the how; it’s the outcome. No matter how varied the starting point or the path, the end result is the same: someone who took an idea, committed to it, and built something real. By bringing twenty of Houston’s elite entrepreneurs together in one book, readers get twenty different doorways into that same truth, and they’re far more likely to find a story that mirrors their own ambitions.
The book revisits ideas like resilience, mindset, and “knowing your why.” Why do you think these lessons keep resurfacing?
Knowing your why is absolutely critical to success, and I think these lessons keep resurfacing because they’re the foundation on which everything else is built. Strategy, capital, marketing, talent; none of it holds up without a clear sense of purpose underneath.
When you truly understand your why, you develop what I’d call an irrational passion for achieving it. And that’s the keyword: irrational. Because rational people quit when the first real obstacle appears, and obstacles always appear. Cash flow tightens. A key employee walks away. A deal falls through at the last minute. The market shifts overnight.
In those moments, logic tells you to stop. Your why is what tells you to keep going.
That’s why resilience and mindset come up in story after story in this book. They aren’t separate lessons; they’re the natural byproduct of an entrepreneur who knows exactly why they started and refuses to let circumstances rewrite that answer. You can teach someone tactics, but you can’t teach them purpose. They have to find that for themselves, and once they do, it becomes the engine that carries them through everything else.
Many chapters sit inside failure, uncertainty, and reinvention. Why was it important to include those moments, and do you think the culture around entrepreneurship is still too focused on polish over reality?
There is no Plan B. There is only Plan A, which is to manifest your dream. That doesn’t mean you can’t switch course or attack Plan A from a different angle when something isn’t working. It means you don’t abandon the dream itself.
Think about it this way: as a child learning to walk, you didn’t give up every time you fell on your bottom. You didn’t sit there and decide, “That’s it, I’m going to be a crawler for the rest of my life.” No, you tried again, and again, and again, in different ways, until you finally walked. That’s the entrepreneurial spirit in its purest form, and most of us had it before we could even speak.
That’s exactly why it was important to include the failures, the uncertainty, and the reinventions in this book. Those moments aren’t detours from the entrepreneurial journey; they are the journey. And yes, I do think the culture around entrepreneurship has become far too focused on polish over reality. We see the highlight reels, the magazine covers, the funding announcements, but we rarely see what it actually took to get there.
One of the most important lessons in the book is this: you don’t have to be perfect to launch. A friend of mine waited two full years to release his product because he wanted it to be flawless. During those two years, six other companies launched similar concepts. They weren’t perfect either, but they were in the market. They were learning, adjusting, building customers, and generating revenue while my friend was still polishing.
Done is almost always better than perfect. The entrepreneurs in this book understand that, and their stories prove it again and again.
The book challenges the idea that success is purely financial. How do you personally define it now?
Financial windfalls are great, there’s no question about that. But success, the kind that actually lasts, is bigger than the bank account. Lifting people up and giving back to the community matters just as much, if not more.
Money is a good thing to have, because it enables you to provide, not just for yourself and your family, but for the people and the place around you. I think of money as an umbrella. When it’s used well, it doesn’t just cover you; it extends out and shelters the community you live in, the employees who depend on you, the causes you care about, and the next generation of entrepreneurs coming up behind you.
That’s how I define success now. It’s not the number on the page, it’s the reach of the umbrella. If you’re winning financially but no one else around you is better off because of it, you haven’t really won. The entrepreneurs in this book understand that, and you’ll see it woven through every story. Their financial success is the engine, but the impact they have on their community is the real measure.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Instagram
25 Business Leaders. One Book. Countless Lessons.
What if the secrets to entrepreneurial success weren’t found in textbooks—but in real-life stories from those who’ve built, stumbled, and succeeded?
“Entrepreneur Secrets: Real Stories of Purpose, Profit, and Power” brings together 25 of Houston’s most dynamic business leaders. These are the voices behind thriving companies and influential brands, each one offering unfiltered insights into the strategies, setbacks, and breakthroughs that shaped their success.
This is more than an anthology. It’s a front-row seat to the decisions, pivots, and defining moments that built careers and legacies.
Inside this powerful collection, you’ll discover:
Candid stories from founders, CEOs, creatives, and service-based leaders
Lessons in leadership, branding, team building, and mindset
Practical insights from entrepreneurs who’ve faced failure and rebuilt stronger
Diverse perspectives from Houston’s top business innovators
Strategies and reflections that connect purpose to sustainable profit
Who is this book for:
Business owners ready to scale with clarity and confidence
Aspiring entrepreneurs seeking real-world mentorship
Leaders looking to align purpose with long-term profitability
Professionals hungry for inspiration rooted in truth, not theory
Motivational. Practical. Professional.
“Entrepreneur Secrets” is not about hype. It’s about what really works. Each chapter is a guidepost for navigating the entrepreneurial journey with heart, purpose, and relentless commitment.
All proceeds benefit Kids’ Meals, a Houston-based nonprofit feeding over 10,000 preschool-aged children daily.
Take the guesswork out of growth. Learn from those who’ve walked the path.
Order your copy of Entrepreneur Secrets today.
Authors include:
Bill Baldwin, Dr. Jacquie Baly, Steven Lawrence Biegel, Lary Barton, Matt Brice, Charles Clark, Kimberly Sherer Cutchall, Karen DeGeurin, Adrian Dueñas, Tod Eason, Gretchen Gilliam, Beth Braniff Harp, Alicia Jansen, Romain Kapadia, Joe Machol, Taft McWhorter, Dawn Nelson, Gerard A. OBrien, Mickey O’Neal, Helen Perry, Theresa Roemer, Edward Sanchez, Trace J. Sherer, Saba Syed, and Peter C. Remington
Unfollow the Leader
Unfollow the Leader by Reem Borrows is a reflective leadership book built around a clear central conviction: the old, performance-heavy model of leadership is no longer enough, and real leadership now begins with self-awareness, health, emotional intelligence, and values-led action. Borrows frames this through her Health, Head, and Heart approach, moving from self-leadership and purpose to courage, gratitude, relationship intelligence, flow, and practical execution tools like S.T.O.P. What gives the book its pulse is the way she folds personal stories into the framework, from the bruising early career experience of being told it was “my way or the highway,” to the family reunion after war, to the waterfall story where surrender becomes not weakness but wisdom.
Borrows writes best when she lets leadership leave the boardroom and return to the body, the home, the nervous system, the quiet ache of ordinary life. The coffee made for a wife after two years apart stayed with me because it says more about leadership than many polished business models do. It reminds us that presence isn’t soft. It’s strenuous, sacred work. I also appreciated her insistence that health isn’t a decorative add-on to ambition. That idea feels earned, especially when she connects burnout, ego, and disconnection to the way people actually behave under pressure. The book’s ideas are familiar in places, drawing from coaching, mindset work, emotional intelligence, and purpose-led leadership, but Borrows gives them warmth and moral weight.
Stylistically, the book has a generous, conversational quality, almost like sitting with a coach who won’t let you hide behind busyness. The book’s reflective rhythm gives its ideas room to settle, and the recurring themes create a sense of reinforcement. The prompts invite pause and self-examination, which feels fitting for a book so devoted to inner leadership. Borrows is not writing from a distance. She’s writing as someone who has been shaped by mentorship, grief, pressure, faith, mistakes, and hard-won clarity. That emotional openness gives the book its texture. I especially liked the moments where she admits the ego still rises, even in a boardroom, because that honesty keeps the work from becoming glossy or unrealistic.
I came away from Unfollow the Leader feeling challenged and moved. It’s not a book for readers looking for a ruthless corporate playbook or a dense academic treatment of leadership theory. It’s better suited to leaders, coaches, founders, managers, and thoughtful professionals who sense that success without inner alignment has become too expensive. I’d especially recommend it to anyone feeling stretched thin by responsibility, or anyone beginning to understand that influence without presence eventually rings hollow. This is a warm, reflective, and practical book for people who want to lead with more courage and care.
Pages: 226 | ASIN : B0F6Q2WXNG
Leadership Mindset
Adventures in Leadership offers reflections on leadership based on outdoor misadventures, near misses, and hard-won moments of perspective. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important for me to write Adventures in Leadership because the most meaningful leadership lessons I’ve learned didn’t come from a conference room; they came from real experiences, often in moments where things didn’t go as planned.
Over the years, I realized those moments, missteps, pressure, and uncertainty had more to teach than any formal training ever could. And if I could capture those lessons in a way that was honest and relatable, I believed it could help other leaders navigate their own challenges a little more effectively.
At its core, I wanted to show that leadership isn’t about titles or ego. It’s about how you show up for people, especially when things get hard. And if sharing my experiences helps someone lead with a little more humility, awareness, or intention, then the book did exactly what I hoped it would.
Many chapters end with clear takeaways—how important was it for you to keep the lessons practical and actionable?
That was incredibly important to me. I didn’t want to write a book that just sounded good; I wanted to write one that people could actually use.
There’s no shortage of leadership content out there, but a lot of it lives in theory. My goal was to bridge that gap between insight and action. After each chapter, I wanted the reader to walk away with something they could apply immediately, whether that’s a shift in mindset, a better conversation, or a small change in how they lead their team.
Because to me, leadership only really matters if it shows up in how you operate day to day. If someone can read a chapter and then go lead a little more effectively that same week, that’s where the real value is.
Was there a particular experience—like getting off trail or a near miss—that changed your leadership mindset the most?
There are a few moments that stand out, things like a river rescue or a near miss on Half Dome, but honestly, it wasn’t any single experience that changed my leadership mindset. It was the accumulation of those moments over time.
What I started to realize is that, in both the outdoors and leadership, things rarely go perfectly. People make mistakes, plans change, and pressure shows up when you least expect it. And instead of seeing that as something to eliminate, I began to see it as something to lead through.
That shift carried over into how I led my teams. I wanted people to feel like they could be human, that they didn’t have to be perfect to be valuable. Because when people feel trusted, supported, and appreciated for what they bring to the table, they perform better, they grow faster, and they show up more fully.
So those experiences didn’t change me overnight, but they reshaped how I define what good leadership actually looks like.
If readers remember only one lesson from Adventures in Leadership, what do you hope it is?
If there’s one thing I hope readers take away, it’s that leadership isn’t about a title or being perfect, it’s about how you show up for people.
The most meaningful leadership happens in real moments, when things are messy, when there’s pressure, when someone needs support. That’s where trust is built, and that human connection, especially through adversity, is what people actually remember.
If someone walks away understanding that they can lead right where they are, by being present, by being real, and by valuing the people around them, then that’s the lesson that matters most.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
After more than two decades leading teams in the corporate world, Brent Witthuhn discovered something unexpected: the moments that shaped him most as a leader didn’t come from strategy meetings or spreadsheets; they came from the outdoors.
From getting lost on remote trails…
To pushing through exhaustion, uncertainty, and failure…
To learning firsthand what it really means to lead when things don’t go according to plan…
Adventures in Leadership is a collection of real stories from the trail, each paired with a powerful, practical leadership lesson you can apply immediately in your life and work.
Inside, you’ll discover how to:
Stay calm and lead through uncertainty
Take ownership when things go wrong
Build trust and support within a team
Adapt when the plan falls apart
Grow through both success and failure
Written in a clear, relatable style, this book feels less like a lecture and more like sitting around a campfire, hearing stories that stick with you long after they’re told.
Whether you’re a seasoned leader, an aspiring professional, or simply someone looking to grow, Adventures in Leadership will challenge you to think differently about leadership, and remind you that the best lessons are often learned when you step off the beaten path.
