We bought this house in a high market. We're selling in a low one. This isn't the first time this has happened to me. Years ago I bought a home and sold it at the right time, made a solid profit, felt like I had it figured out. Then I bought again, at a high, and now I'm selling at a low. Same person. Same intentions. Different point in the cycle.

That's the part that took me a long time to understand. Everyone tells you the housing market goes up. Nobody tells you it goes up and down on a cadence nobody can predict, and where you land in that cadence when you buy or sell can be the difference between a profit and a loss, with almost nothing to do with how smart you were going in.

Life works the same way. You have high years and low years. High months and low months. Some of that is market forces outside your control, and some of it is just the natural rhythm of things changing, your perspective shifting, your environment moving under your feet. Nobody talks about this enough either. High and low is normal. It doesn't mean something is wrong with you. It means you're a person living through time, and time is not a straight line.

I bring this up now because I'm sitting inside one of those low moments and it's forcing me to look at something I got wrong before the house ever hit the market.

When we listed, I brought in a realtor, we talked pricing, we talked strategy, and we went with it. Reasonable due diligence. But three months in, sitting with no offers, my wife has a list of fixes. Change this, remodel that, put more money into it. And I'm sitting here thinking maybe we should have priced it more aggressively out of the gate. Maybe one big reduction instead of the string of small ones we've done. Maybe if we drop again we're just bleeding leverage we won't get back.

Round and round. Everybody's got a theory about what we should do differently now. But that's not actually the problem.

The real question surfaced when I asked myself why we never talked about this before we listed. Not the pricing. The scenario planning. Nobody sat down and asked what happens if this doesn't sell quickly. Or what happens if it doesn't sell at all for six months. We never asked that question. We just had hope.

And when I really dig into why, the answer is almost embarrassingly simple. We were busy. Life was moving, work was moving, and we didn't dedicate the time to sit down and think it through. It wasn't that we're bad planners. It's that we never prioritized the conversation. Nobody blocked the time. The question of what do we do if this doesn't sell never even made it onto the agenda, because we never built an agenda in the first place.

This is the same failure I've watched happen on job sites for years, just wearing a different outfit. A project team does due diligence, builds a schedule, identifies some risks, and feels good walking into execution. But due diligence isn't the same as a management plan. Identifying a risk isn't the same as deciding, in advance, what you'll actually do if that risk shows up. The teams that recover fast from a setback aren't the ones who got lucky and avoided the setback. They're the ones who had already asked the uncomfortable "what if" question before the pressure was on, so when the setback landed, they weren't inventing a plan and managing their emotions at the same time.

That's the whole difference. Clarity doesn't stop the down cycle. Nothing does. The market moves, the schedule slips, the scope changes, the house sits. That's not a failure of planning. That's just what cycles do. What clarity actually buys you is speed getting out of it. If we had sat down before listing and asked what our threshold was for a price drop, what our timeline tolerance looked like, what we'd do at the 30 day mark versus the 90 day mark, we wouldn't be having a reactive, slightly tense conversation right now about remodeling versus repricing. We'd be executing a plan we already agreed to. Instead we're improvising under pressure, which is the most expensive way to make a decision.

I've noticed this pattern in my own life outside of houses too. I go through stretches of extreme growth and execution, followed by stretches where I have to rest, reflect, and do the front end thinking I skipped the first time around. I used to think the growth phase was the important one. Now I think the recovery and planning phase is where the actual leverage lives, because that's when you get to ask the questions you were too busy to ask while you were moving fast.

I'm not going to pretend I know how this house sale ends. I'm not a predictor of markets, and I suspect all of us have more high years and low years ahead, because that's simply how this works. But I do know what I'm taking from this one. The lesson isn't price the house better next time. The lesson is put the plan in place before you need it, so the low cycle doesn't catch you standing there with no answer, just hope.

Nothing worse than walking into a crisis with no plan. Talk about the risk before it's an emergency, not after.

Earn your success. Every day.

Subscribe

Here’s the idea that stuck with me: belief isn’t the same thing as truth. It sits somewhere between fact and faith. And once you see it that way, you realize beliefs aren’t fixed. They’re tools. You can pick them up, put them down, and swap them out when they stop working for you.

That reframe matters more in project management than it might seem.

The Motivation Triangle

Eyal laid out what he calls the Motivation Triangle: Motivation, Reward, and Belief. Most of us think about motivation and reward all day. We talk incentives, deadlines, bonuses, recognition. What we don’t talk about enough is belief, the quiet third leg of the triangle that’s actually driving the other two.

Belief is the hidden side of motivation. Before a team member pushes through a tough shutdown schedule, they first have to believe the push is worth it, that the plan is sound, that leadership has their back. Before a PM commits to an aggressive recovery schedule, they have to believe it’s achievable. Strip the belief out and the motivation collapses, no matter how good the reward is.

I’ve watched this play out on job sites more times than I can count. Two crews, same scope, same resources, wildly different outcomes, and the difference wasn’t skill. It was what each crew believed about the work before they started.

Limiting Beliefs vs. Liberating Beliefs

The webinar framed most of our beliefs as either limiting or liberating. Limiting beliefs sound like “this schedule is impossible,” “this client never listens,” or “we always run into this problem on turnarounds.” They feel like facts. They get repeated so often on a project that nobody questions them anymore. They just become the water everyone’s swimming in.

Liberating beliefs do the opposite. They open up options instead of closing them down. “We haven’t found the fix yet” instead of “there is no fix.” “This client hasn’t heard the right pitch yet” instead of “this client never listens.”

Subscribe

The hard part is that limiting beliefs don’t announce themselves. Nobody walks onto a site and says “I’ve decided to believe this project is doomed.” The belief just quietly shapes what they notice, what they report, and what they give up on trying.

Which is why the only way to find them is to look inward. Self-reflection isn’t a soft skill here, it’s diagnostic work. If you want to know what’s actually limiting a project, you have to ask what you and your team have quietly decided is true about it, and then test whether that’s a fact or just a belief that’s outlived its usefulness.

Believing Is Seeing

The line from the webinar that I keep coming back to is this: believing is seeing, not the other way around. We like to think we form beliefs based on what we observe. Eyal’s argument, backed by a lot of behavioral research, is that it often runs backward. What we already believe shapes what we notice, what we dismiss, and what we remember.

On a project, that means the PM who believes the schedule is unrecoverable will find evidence of it everywhere: every delay confirms the story, every win gets explained away as luck. The PM who believes there’s still a path through will notice the openings, the willing subcontractor, the sequence that could be compressed, the scope that could flex.

Same job. Same data. Different beliefs. Different projects, effectively.

Where This Meets Clarity Before Commitment

This is exactly why clarity has to come before commitment. Not just clarity on scope, schedule, and budget, but clarity on the beliefs sitting underneath every decision you’re about to make. Before you commit a team to a recovery plan, a client to a promise, or yourself to a position in a disagreement, it’s worth asking: what am I currently believing about this, and is that belief a fact or a tool I picked up somewhere along the way that I could put down?

Beliefs are malleable. That’s the whole point. You’re not stuck with the ones you started the project with. You can examine them, test them against reality, and swap the limiting ones for liberating ones without changing a single fact on the ground.

The webinar was about personal development on its face. But like most good frameworks, it doesn’t stay in one lane. It applies just as well to a steel erection schedule as it does to a personal goal.

Worth sitting with this week: what’s one belief you’re carrying into your current project that you’ve never actually tested?

Earn your success. Every day.

There was a stretch of my life where I was moving but not going anywhere.

I got up, went to work, came home, and did it again the next day. On paper it looked fine. Underneath it, I was tired more than I want to admit, unmotivated, and honestly a little lost. I didn’t have a plan. I had a routine, and there’s a big difference between the two. A routine keeps you moving. A plan tells you where you’re headed.

I didn’t know it yet, but the thing that would change that was a book, a simple rule inside it, and eventually a tool I would build with my own hands to carry that rule with me every single day.

Subscribe now

The Book That Started It

The book was The 5AM Club, and the piece that stuck with me wasn’t the wake-up time. It was the 20/20/20 rule. The idea is simple: take the first hour of your day and split it into three twenty-minute blocks.

Move. Reflect. Grow.

That’s it. No complicated system, no seventeen-step morning routine you’ll abandon in a week. Just move your body, reflect on your life, and put something into your mind before the world starts asking things of you.

I want to be honest with you here, because I think honesty is more useful than perfection. My 5am club isn’t truly 5am anymore. With three young kids and a lot on my plate right now, I’ve slipped that start time back by an hour or so. Do I want to get back to true 5am? Sure, and I probably will once travel and the season of life I’m in eases up a bit. But here’s what I’ve learned: the power was never really in the clock. It was in the order. Move, then reflect, then grow, before the noise of the day gets its hooks in you. Whether that starts at 5:00 or 6:15, the days I follow that order are still, hands down, my best and most productive days.

What Move, Reflect, Grow Actually Looks Like

For me it’s simple, and I think that’s the point. Nothing about this needs to be complicated to work.

My move is a morning walk or jog. Nothing fancy, just my body in motion before my brain starts running the day’s problems.

Then I sit down and reflect. This is where I think about my life, my family, my faith, and what I’m genuinely thankful for. It’s the part of the morning that keeps me grounded, because it’s easy to chase the next thing and forget to notice what’s already good.

From there I move into twenty minutes of reading and learning, feeding my mind something worth having before I hand it over to emails and meetings and everyone else’s priorities for the day.

And then I come back to the page one more time to map out my day, so that when I walk into it, I’m walking with a plan instead of just reacting to whatever shows up first.

That loop, in that order, is what took me from someone without direction to someone who started thinking clearly and moving with purpose. My energy came back. My focus sharpened. New opportunities started showing up that I don’t think I would have even noticed before, because I wasn’t paying attention to anything beyond getting through the day.

Why I Built a Physical Planner for This

I’ve always been someone who captures things in my phone, in notes apps, in Google Docs. That’s not going away, and there’s nothing wrong with it. But there is something different about pen to paper. It slows you down just enough to actually think, instead of typing on autopilot.

That’s why I built the Built Before Sunrise Planner. It’s intentionally simple, just two pages that repeat every day.

Get the Built Before Sunrise Planner Today!

The first page is where the day gets built. It’s a space to plan out what actually matters, so the important things get done first instead of getting squeezed out by whatever’s loudest.

The second page is blank with lines, meant for that reflection block. Life, family, faith, gratitude, whatever’s on your mind. It’s the same page I use every morning myself.

That’s the whole planner. No 40-page system to learn, no overwhelming layout. Just a tool built to sit alongside you through the same simple loop that changed things for me.

A Plan Is the Whole Point

I want to be clear about something: I’m not trying to sell you a miracle. I’m offering you a plan, because a plan is genuinely all you need to start moving toward the next level of your life.

I know how loud the world is right now. I know how hard it is to find a clear direction when everything is competing for your attention. It took me years to get to a place where my head was clear enough to lock onto a direction and actually stick with it. That discipline didn’t come naturally. It came from a real desire to learn and from building the skill of making a plan and following through on it.

That’s the skill I want for you. Not a hack, not a shortcut, a real skill. Build it, put it to work, and let it work for you over the long haul. That’s how you skill up in a way that actually holds up, in this season of life or any other. Focus on the skill, and the results follow.

If a physical, no-frills space to move, reflect, and grow sounds like something that could help you get out of the fog and headed forward, you can find the Built Before Sunrise Planner here: Get the Built Before Sunrise Planner Today!

Earn your success. Every day.

We were stabbing steel columns up through an existing roof line on a project a few weeks ago. Simple enough concept. The drawing package we were using as our baseline showed the column coming up through the roof line by nine inches. Before we cut a single column to length, I asked the general contractor to verify the actual roof elevation against the design. I wanted a field check before we committed steel to a saw. They opted not to do it.

I did not agree with that decision, but it was theirs to make and I moved on.

Then the column went up. It was flush with the existing roof line. Not nine inches proud. Flush.

I want to be honest about what happened in my head in that moment, because I think most people in this industry know the feeling. I got flustered. I felt my blood pressure climb before I even understood the problem. My first thought was not "what happened here." My first thought was "why didn't they measure like I asked them to." I started placing blame before I had a single fact to support it. I even said something to their project manager about their onsite guy not verifying the roof line like I had requested. I was building a case in my head, and I was building it fast, and I was building it on nothing.

It took me about a minute to catch myself. That minute felt long in the moment, but looking back, it was the fastest and cheapest correction I made all day. I stopped talking and started digging into the drawings instead.

A few hours and a lot of measurements later, the real answer showed up. It was not a bad column length. It was not a missed field verification. The design detail we were using as our baseline was drawn for a different building in the package, not the one we were standing in. The top of steel elevations were different between the two buildings, which meant the distance between the roof line and the top of steel was different too. The column was right. The cut was right. The drawing reference was wrong.

I had already told someone their team failed to do something, based on an assumption that turned out to be false. That is a hard thing to sit with. I pride myself on being right, on knowing my drawings, on being the guy who catches the problem before it becomes expensive. And here I was, the one who needed to be corrected, by myself, a few hours after opening my mouth.

Here is what I have learned from moments like this one, and I have had more of them than I would like to admit. Jumping to conclusions is not really a communication problem. It is a patience problem wearing a communication costume. When something does not match what we expect, the brain wants an answer immediately, and it will hand you the fastest one available, which is almost always the one that protects your own position first. Someone else did not do their job. Someone else measured wrong. Someone else missed it. That story feels good for about ninety seconds. Then the facts show up and the story falls apart, and now you have to clean up two messes instead of one. The original problem, and the accusation you made before you understood it.

So I built a process for myself. Not a poster on the wall, a real one I actually run through when something does not add up in the field. I call it Pause, Ask, Understand, Respond.

Pause.

The moment something contradicts what I expected, I make myself stop talking. Not stop thinking, stop talking. My rule is that I am not allowed to assign blame or cause out loud until I have moved through the rest of the process. This sounds simple. It is not. The urge to say something in the moment is strong, especially when you feel caught off guard in front of other people. But a sentence said in the first ninety seconds cannot be unsaid, even if you are wrong five minutes later. The pause is not hesitation. It is the thing that buys you the right to be accurate instead of just fast.

Ask.

This is the step I used to skip entirely. I would go straight from surprise to conclusion, with no stop in between to actually gather information from the people closest to the problem. Stephen Covey wrote about seeking first to understand before seeking to be understood, and that idea has stuck with me because it flips the natural order. Most of us listen just long enough to build our response. We are not really listening, we are reloading. Asking real questions means going in with the goal of understanding, not the goal of confirming what you already suspect. A few questions I have started using on purpose in the field:

- Can you tell me more about what you saw or measured?

- What led to this? Walk me through it.

- Help me understand how this was decided.

None of those questions assign fault. All of them buy you real information instead of a story you built yourself under stress.

Understand.

This is where I separate facts from stories, which has become the most useful mental habit I have built out of all of this. A fact is a number, a measurement, a date, something written on a drawing. A story is the meaning I attach to that fact, usually within about three seconds, usually without evidence. The fact in my situation was that the column was flush with the roof line instead of nine inches proud. The story I told myself instantly was that the GC's onsite guy failed to verify the roof elevation like I had asked. That story felt true. It was not a fact. It was a guess wearing a fact's clothing. The actual fact, once I dug into it, was that the drawing detail we were referencing belonged to a different building in the package. Separating those two things, what actually happened versus what I assumed happened, is the entire skill. Most conflict on a jobsite is not a disagreement about facts. It is two people defending two different stories, each one convinced theirs is the fact.

Respond.

Only after pausing, asking, and actually understanding do I say anything with authority. And if I already said something wrong before I got there, which I did, this step includes going back and correcting it directly with the same person I said it to. Not a vague acknowledgment days later. A direct correction. I told their PM I was wrong about the field verification comment, that the real issue was a drawing reference error on our end, not a missed measurement on theirs. It is uncomfortable to walk that back. It is far more uncomfortable to let a false accusation sit unspoken between two people who still have to work together for months.

There is one more piece underneath all of this that I am still working on, and I think it might be the hardest one. I have to get comfortable not knowing the answer right away. My instinct is to resolve uncertainty as fast as possible, because uncertainty feels like exposure, like I am standing in front of people without an answer in my hand. But the fastest answer is usually the least accurate one. Sitting in the discomfort of "I do not know yet, let me find out" is not weakness. It is the only honest position to hold before the facts are actually in front of you. I am learning to let that discomfort sit for a few hours instead of resolving it in the first few seconds with a guess dressed up as certainty.

I do not think I will ever fully stop having that first flash of frustration when something in the field does not match the plan. I am not sure that is even something to aim for. But the gap between the flash and the sentence that comes out of my mouth, that gap is trainable. That is the part I am actually working on. Not eliminating the instinct, just refusing to act on it until I have earned the right to.

I do not know everything. I do not have all the information most of the time, especially in the first sixty seconds after a surprise. None of us do. The people who are good at this are not the ones who never feel the urge to jump. They are the ones who have built a habit strong enough to pause, ask, and understand before a single word leaves their mouth.

I created Clarity Before Commitment to help professionals make better decisions before making bigger commitments. Whether you’re leading projects, growing your career, or developing as a leader, my goal is to provide practical resources that help you move forward with confidence.

What You’ll Gain

This publication is designed to help you:

• Make better decisions with greater confidence.

• Lead projects more effectively.

• Accelerate your professional growth.

• Improve your leadership and communication skills.

• Save time with practical templates and proven frameworks.

• Develop habits that lead to long-term success.

• Build a more intentional and fulfilling career.

Everything I share is rooted in real-world experience and created to be practical, actionable, and immediately useful.

What You’ll Find Here

Topics include:

• Project Management

• Leadership

• Capital Projects & Construction

• Decision-Making

• Productivity & Systems

• Career Development

• Personal Growth

Free Resources

All subscribers receive access to a growing collection of practical resources, including:

• Free templates

• Checklists

• Guides

• Book recommendations

• Helpful tools and downloads

Clarity Membership

For those who want to go deeper, Clarity Membership provides access to an expanding library of premium resources designed to help you grow professionally and personally.

As a member, you’ll receive:

• 📚 Access to the Member Library

  • Member Library

• 📖 The complete Earn Your Success Member Edition

  • Earn Your Success: Introduction

• 🛠 Premium templates, guides, and project management tools

• 🚀 Early access to new resources and future releases

• 🎯 One complimentary 30-minute strategy conversation each year

The Member Library will continue to grow as I create new tools, templates, and resources.

Where to Start

If you’re new here, I recommend exploring in this order:

1. Read the free introduction to Earn Your Success.

   1. Earn Your Success: Introduction

2. Browse the Free Resources library.

3. Explore my Books & Tools.

   1. Books & Tools

4. Join Clarity Membership when you’re ready to unlock the complete resource library.

   Subscribe now

My Mission

My mission is simple:

To help professionals gain the clarity, confidence, and practical skills they need to lead better projects, make better decisions, and build meaningful careers.

Thank you for being here. I hope these resources help you grow, lead with confidence, and create lasting success.

Welcome to Clarity Before Commitment.

A basic reality that frequently goes undetected in the area of personal growth and achievement is the remarkable power of persistence. It’s the impetus behind numerous stories of success over hardship, and it’s the unflinching dedication to one’s aspirations that can change an ordinary life into a remarkable one. In this section, we’ll look at the art o…

Read more

Passion & Optimism

One of the first steps toward a more satisfying and purpose-driven existence is to determine what sparks and energizes you. According to Ken Coleman’s book “The Proximity Principle,” 70% of individuals are unsatisfied with their jobs and seek more meaning and purpose in their careers. So, the question is, what do you want to do? What s…

Read more

Cultivating a true passion for personal improvement is an essential component of your success path. Why is it so critical? Because it provides you with a strong weapon to employ when confronted with problems and barriers that threaten to obstruct your development. This lesson here or book will go into numerous crucial skills and topics in depth. These include financial literacy, flexibility, leadership, time management, prioritization, and cultivating an empathy and accepting perspective towards others. Remember that while chance may play a factor, your desire and effort are the driving forces behind your success. You’ve got this!

Financial Literacy

Financial literacy is one of the key abilities that may pave the road for a more successful and happy life. It’s the ability to make educated and wise financial decisions, which may have a significant influence on your entire well-being. In this session, we’ll delve into the complexities of financial literacy, with reference to financial expert Dave Ramsey’s advice. While I will not prescribe a one-size-fits-all method, I will urge you to investigate diverse ideas on money management and create your own financial plan. Let’s look at some crucial areas of financial literacy that you must understand:

1. Budgeting – Understanding Your Financial Flow

Budgeting is fundamental to financial literacy. It is the process of determining how much money you earn vs how much you spend. Budgeting is like having a plan for your finances, leading you toward financial stability and your financial objectives. Begin by keeping a record of your income and spending. Be diligent in classifying your expenses, whether they be for accommodation, transit, groceries, or leisure. This clarity will assist you in identifying areas where you may cut back or devote additional resources.

Read more

Welcome to Earn Your Success – Member Edition. This series is based on my book and has been adapted for Substack to create a more interactive reading experience.

The introduction is available to everyone. The complete three-module series is an exclusive benefit for Clarity Members, along with premium templates, practical tools, and additional member resources.

Purchase the physical book here: Earn Your Success!

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Philosophy of Success 9

Module 1: Grow to Love Personal Development 15

Financial Literacy 15

Adaptability 20

Leadership 25

Time Management & Prioritization 29

Think Win-Win 37

Module 2: Your Purpose 44

Passion & Optimism 44

Long-Term Thinking 49

Professional Development Strategy 50

Why Should I have a PDP? 51

The 7 Step Process 55

PDP Mid-Level Project Manger 60

Module 3: The Power of Persistence: Never Giving Up on Your Dreams 62

Love for Work 68

Case Study: Sarah’s Journey to Fulfillment Through Personal Development 71

Do’s and Don’ts: The Conclusion to Your Overall Career and Life Path book 74

Introduction

Welcome! You are about to go on a fantastic journey that will enable you to take control of your destiny. I want you to realize that you are the captain of your own ship, not simply a passenger, even though it sometimes feels like you’re just along for the voyage. I realize it might be intimidating, and uncertainty may seep in, but trust me when I say it’s worth taking the wheel and charting your route. I’m pleased you’ve taken this step ahead, and I hope the insights offered here will help you see life through a fresh lens and conquer any difficulties in your path.

Let’s break down the material we’re going to cover into three modules:

Module 1 – Grow to Love Personal Development

1. Financial Literacy: Understanding money, planning, and investing to ensure your financial future.

2. Adaptability: The capacity to stretch and adjust in the face of change is a key talent in today’s fast-paced environment.

3. Leadership: Developing leadership abilities promotes not just your work but also your personal progress.

4. Time Management & Prioritization & Purpose Statement: Mastering time management, creating priorities, and defining your purpose are critical for success.

5. Think Win-Win: Cultivating a mindset in which everyone involved can win is essential for long-term success.

Module 2 – Your Purpose

1. Communication: Effective communication is the foundation for developing connections and attaining your objectives.

2. Networking: Building a strong network provides doors to possibilities and vital contacts.

3. Mentors: Learning from people who have traveled the route before you can help you grow faster.

4. Passion & Optimism: Discovering and fostering your passion while having an optimistic mindset may make a world of difference.

5. Long-term Thinking: Focusing on the long game rather than instant wins lays the framework for long-term success.

6. Professional Development strategy: A planned strategy for your career advancement is vital.

Module 3 – Not Giving Up (Research, Skill Up, Network, etc.)

1. Persistence: Perseverance is often the key to breaking through barriers.

2. Love for Work: Cultivating a real enthusiasm for your profession may change it from a drudgery to a gratifying journey.

3. Aims: Setting specific and attainable goals keeps you motivated and on track.

4. Learning from Failure: Viewing setbacks as learning experiences is critical for progress.

You may be asking, “Who is this person, and why should I listen to and learn from them?” These are good questions, and I’ll respond by discussing my personal life-story and how I discovered my way to success.

My name is Josh Hirsch, and I was once in your shoes. I’d like to transport you to a period when I lacked confidence, was bashful, and believed I had no influence over my destiny. I felt like a cog in the wheel of a 9-5 job that I detested.

My first job out of college was in an atmosphere where I quickly obtained technical talents but lacked the opportunity to enhance my soft skills. I worked long hours, was stressed, and didn’t connect with my coworkers or the job itself. It wasn’t a daily emotion, but it lasted. I was the principal designer/engineer, directing drafters and revising equipment designs. While it was a pleasant profession, I couldn’t picture myself ever escaping the rat race. I stayed in that position for three years before deciding to pursue other opportunities.

The following position was similar, but with a heavier emphasis on projects. I went in with zeal and performed great technical achievements. I still didn’t feel like I was on the proper track to my ideal job.

I hopped from one job to another. Frustration and self-doubt entered the picture. “Why can’t I find satisfaction in my career?” I inquired. “Does it have to do with money?” Coworkers? “What am I missing?” During this period, I acquired an interest in learning and began reading self-help books. I pushed myself to study more, attend training classes, and seek mentors. I gradually began to perceive the world differently and began to love life more.

Through my schooling, networking, and personal growth, I turned into someone with a definite purpose and a fresh sense of fulfillment in life. Along the road, I met others who were facing similar issues, and we began assisting one another. This incident reinforced the necessity of having a network and not striving to do everything alone.

All of this resulted in the formation of Peak Project Solutions in 2022, a company with two core purposes. First, we want to teach ambitious professionals in project management, leadership, and other aspects of professional growth. Second, we aim to work with businesses to help them achieve business value via projects, beginning with project scoping and continuing through project conclusion.

Let me tell you a little bit about me before we get into Peak Project Solutions. I’m a spouse, parent, handyman, gardener, and many other things. I’ve always enjoyed learning new things and taking on new challenges. I’m always ready for new challenges, whether it’s diving into a bathroom makeover, repairing automobile brakes, or being part of a team building a processing facility. I grew up in a little rural area of Idaho, where I spent the most of my time working outside. This upbringing fostered in me a love of work and a strong work ethic, both of which are still vital in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world.

Before college, I was a more hands-on learner. While I did well in high school, I had yet to acquire a real love of studying. I acquired a genuine thirst for study and improvement after receiving my bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Boise State University. Those four years taught me how to think critically and solve difficulties.

After graduation, I began my engineering career, working long hard hours and climbing the corporate ladder. I was always learning new talents and teaching myself how to get better jobs, earn more money, and develop wealth.

I focused on personal relationships, finances, spirituality, and other issues at the same time. In 2018, I married my great wife, and we’ve since welcomed two wonderful children, Elliette and Teller, into our family. Every day, they teach me crucial lessons.

I am a patient and caring person at heart. I’m deeply committed to assisting others and encouraging them to take risks and embrace possibilities. I believe in pursuing financial success and generating win-win scenarios for everyone. My ambition is to see people thrive and find fulfillment in their work and personal interests.

Peak Project Solutions acknowledges the value of personal growth in a world full of difficulties and continual change. To begin, I recommend Dr. Spencer Johnson’s book “Who Moved My Cheese?” This captivating narrative follows four characters as they navigate a maze in quest of cheese, as well as their reactions when they discover it and when it goes. “Move with The Cheese and Enjoy It!” is my favorite quotation from the book because it emphasizes the need of adaptation. Peak Project Solutions is your partner for learning opportunities, project management, problem solutions, and more. I hope you’re as eager as I am to go on this adventure of learning and growth with me!

Philosophy of Success

Close your eyes for a moment and join me in a simple exercise. Begin to imagine yourself doing your ideal job. What are you doing in this perfect scenario? Can you feel the joy pouring from your smile? Allow these visuals to dance in your head for a few minutes. When you’re ready, return to the current moment and ask yourself, “How did I get to this position?” Was it simple or difficult? Most importantly, was it worthwhile?

During your visualization, you may have felt a tornado of emotions as you pondered these topics. Perhaps there was excitement, expectation, and a strong sense of satisfaction. But there may have been skepticism in the background. Doubt is that annoying little voice that tells you that your ideal career is out of reach, that the route is too difficult, or that you’re not good enough. It’s a formidable foe, but I dare you to remove uncertainty from the equation. I understand that it’s easier said than done, which is why I’ll give you some pointers on how to go about it shortly.

Doubt and worry/fear are unwanted companions on the path to your ideal career. They will arise, sometimes often, but you will learn to resist them quickly and eliminate them from your thoughts. The trick is to not let uncertainty and fear take root and dominate your decisions. They are weeds in your garden of aspirations, and you are the attentive gardener who constantly picks them out.

As you go, I want you to maintain a positive attitude and see yourself as a go-getter, a confident someone who knows exactly what they want and is not scared to pursue it. No one is immune to failure, not even this character. When failures occur, as they certainly will, you get up, brush yourself off, and move on with unyielding resolve.

What I’m going to share with you is intended to catapult you to the next level. It’s a toolbox full of the tools you’ll need to alter your life and discover deeper purpose. So, take a deep breath, clear your thoughts, and let’s dive into the methods and insights that will help you land your ideal job.

1. Define Your Dream Job with Precision

The first step on your path is to clearly describe your desired career. You can’t get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going. Consider your preferred job path. What does it look like? What do you do daily? Where are you employed? With whom are you collaborating? The more precise you can be, the easier it will be to build a road plan to get there.

2. Break It Down into Achievable Goals

Your ideal career may appear to be a gigantic mountain to climb but remember that every mountain is conquered one step at a time. Break your big dream down into smaller, more manageable goals. These landmarks will act as markers on your road, providing you with a sense of progress and success.

3. Cultivate Resilience and Persistence

You will surely confront obstacles and disappointments in your quest for your ideal career. These are not warning signs to give up, but rather opportunities to progress. Develop resilience by viewing setbacks as important learning opportunities. Accept perseverance as your constant friend, understanding that it is frequently the additional push through the most difficult moments that leads to success.

4. Develop a Growth Mindset

Doubt is frequently caused by a fixed mindset or the notion that talents and intellect are fixed. To counteract this, develop a growth attitude. Recognize that you can improve your abilities and intellect via work and study. Accept challenges as opportunities to progress, and disappointments as steppingstones to your ideal employment.

5. Seek Knowledge and Skills

Continuous learning is your ally on the path to your ideal career. Seek for educational possibilities, whether official classes, self-study, or mentorship. Acquiring new information and abilities not only makes you more qualified, but it also enhances your confidence.

6. Network Strategically

Your network is an invaluable resource. Connect with individuals who can provide advice, support, and chances for your ideal job. Find mentors who have traveled a similar journey and benefit from their experiences. Networking is about more than simply getting what you want; it is also about developing mutually beneficial connections.

7. Embrace Adaptability

The path to your ideal employment may not be straight. Be willing to adapt and change your direction if needed. Successful people are flexible. When circumstances change, take it as a chance to pivot and keep moving forward.

8. Maintain a Positive Mindset

When faced with adversity, a good attitude may be your ally. Visualize achievement, validate your strengths, and surround yourself with optimism. When doubt comes in, replace it with strong thoughts. Remember that success typically begins with believing in yourself.

9. Celebrate Your Achievements

Don’t forget to rejoice in your accomplishments along the way. Every step toward your desired employment, no matter how tiny, is a victory. Recognizing your accomplishments increases your drive and serves as a reminder of your progress.

10. Stay Committed

The road to your desired employment will not always be simple, but it will be worthwhile. Retain your commitment to your goals, retain your focus, and don’t be disheartened by minor setbacks. Keep your vision alive and let it propel you ahead.

As you ponder on these tactics and insights, I hope you feel more prepared to continue your path toward your ideal career. Yes, there will be hurdles, and doubt will periodically knock on your door, but with the correct mentality and skills, you can overcome those problems and silence the doubt.

Remember that you have the power to influence your destiny and control your life in the way you want. Your ideal career is not an unachievable fantasy; it is a measurable objective that you can achieve with hard work, determination, and a firm trust in your own abilities. So, are you prepared to keep going and find the road that would bring you to your ideal job? I think you are, and I’m here to help you along the road. We will dispel uncertainty, embrace opportunity, and create a path toward a future filled with joy and purpose if we work together.

Ready to continue?

Module 1 begins by exploring the habits, mindset, and foundational skills that drive long-term success. You’ll learn why personal development is one of the greatest investments you can make and how strengthening areas like financial literacy, adaptability, leadership, time management, and collaboration can transform both your career and your life.

Become a Clarity Member to continue reading the complete Earn Your Success series and gain access to premium templates, practical tools, exclusive resources, and future member-only content designed to help you grow personally and professionally.

Your journey toward greater clarity starts here.

Subscribe

After 10 years leading projects across construction, manufacturing, and design, I learned something that no textbook ever fully prepared me for: being a good project manager has almost nothing to do with schedules and budgets, and almost everything to do with how well you communicate.

This is the first post in a new series I'm calling the Communication Pillar. Over the coming weeks I want to dig into what it actually means to communicate well as a project manager, why it matters more today than it ever has, and what separates a document or a message that lands from one that gets ignored, misread, or quietly resented. I'm building this series the way I build most of my work, by pulling from research and books on the subject, pausing on the parts that hit home, and adding my own perspective from years in the field. So let's start at the beginning.

Why Communication Became the Job

Somewhere along the way, communication stopped being a soft skill and became the job itself. Nearly every company today runs on email, and that is just the baseline. Layer in Slack, Teams, texts, project management platforms, and social media, and you get a workplace where the sheer volume of communication has exploded even as the time available to craft it carefully has shrunk. Being a strong communicator is no longer a nice to have for a project manager. It is the core competency that everything else depends on.

Here is where it gets interesting for those of us in project management specifically. Technical communication is not the same animal as the writing you did in school. Think back to a paper you wrote in high school or college. Your audience was one person, your professor, and your purpose was singular, get a good grade. Simple, closed loop, low stakes beyond the classroom.

Now flip that. Your audience is your peers, other departments, vendors, customers, sometimes the public. Your purpose is no longer to satisfy a single grader. It is to convince, motivate, and shift attitudes toward a decision, a risk, or a course of action. Technical communication in project management is persuasive by nature, even when it looks purely informational on the surface. Every charter, every status update, every risk memo is doing quiet work to move people toward alignment.

What Is the Project Manager's Role as a Communicator

If you strip away the job titles and the methodology jargon, a project manager wears three communication hats at once.

First, you are a document creator. Business cases, charters, scope statements, risk registers. The paperwork of a project is not busywork, it is the connective tissue that keeps a project moving in one direction instead of five.

Second, you are a member of the project team, which means you are inside the conversation, not just broadcasting into it. You are shaping decisions in real time alongside the people doing the work.

Third, and this is the one people underestimate, you are the information resource for everyone touching the project, inside and outside your organization. Departments, suppliers, vendors, customers. You become the translation layer between groups that often do not speak the same operational language. A supplier does not think like your finance department. Your finance department does not think like your site crew. Someone has to move information across those gaps without losing meaning, and that someone is usually you.

Of the many technical documents a project manager touches, the ones I find myself drawn to are the front end documents, the business case and the charter. These set the tone for everything downstream, and if you get the communication wrong here, no amount of polish later fixes it.

Six Characteristics of a Strong Technical Document

Whatever form the document takes, a genuinely strong technical document tends to share six characteristics.

It addresses a particular reader. Not a vague audience, a specific one, with specific needs and specific blind spots.

It helps the reader solve a problem. If it does not move someone closer to a decision or an action, it has not done its job yet.

It reflects the organization's goals and culture. A document that ignores the culture it lives inside will get read but not trusted.

It is typically produced collaboratively. The best technical documents are rarely a solo effort. They are shaped by input from the people who will live with the consequences of the decisions inside them.

It uses design to aid readability. Formatting is not decoration, it is function. White space, headers, and structure carry as much meaning as the words themselves.

And it uses words, images, or both, whatever combination actually gets the message across, rather than whatever the writer happens to be most comfortable producing.

Share

Eight Measures of Excellence

Beyond the structure of the document itself, there are eight measures that separate excellent technical communication from mediocre technical communication.

Honesty comes first, and it should. A technical document exists to help people make wise choices, and that only works if the information inside it is accurate and presented in good faith.

Clarity matters just as much. If your reader has to work to understand what you meant, you have already lost some of them.

Accuracy is non negotiable. Small inaccuracies confuse and annoy readers. Major inaccuracies can be dangerous and expensive, and in project work, that is not an exaggeration.

Comprehensiveness means giving readers everything they need, not everything you know. There is a difference.

Accessibility is about structure, breaking information into sections so it flows logically and a reader can find what they need without hunting for it.

Conciseness keeps a document useful to a busy reader. Nobody has time for a document that could have said the same thing in half the length.

Professional appearance is the one people dismiss as superficial, but a document that looks neat, uses proper margins, and follows a recognizable format earns trust before a single word is read.

And correctness, the grammar, the punctuation, the spelling, is the quiet signal that someone cared enough to get the details right. If you cannot be trusted with a comma, why would anyone trust you with a budget.

Where This Leaves Us

Technical communication in project management is not a checkbox skill. It is the medium through which trust, alignment, and decision making actually happen. Every document you produce is either building credibility or quietly spending it down.

This series is going to keep digging into that idea, one piece at a time. I would love to hear from you as we go. What is the technical document you find yourself wrestling with most, the charter, the status report, the risk log, something else entirely? Drop a comment and let's compare notes.

Comment

If you've worked capital projects in an operating facility, you know that kind of schedule pressure. It shapes everything, starting with how the work gets scoped before a single bidder ever walks the site.

Both projects were infrastructure upgrades. Not new equipment, not a expansion. Improvements to existing assets. One was a wall coating replacement in a kitchen area. The other was a full roof replacement, TPO membrane, over a large section of the facility. On paper, neither one sounded complicated. Two straightforward scopes, two weeks, two crews. What could go wrong.

Project One: The One That Went Right

The wall coating project is worth mentioning because of what we did well, not because anything dramatic happened.

We used hand grinders and diamond blades to remove the old coating and prep the concrete for the new one. We built proper containment, sealed it with plastic, and ran ventilation to the outside so we were actually cleaning the air as it moved through the space instead of just pushing dust around.

The part that mattered most wasn't the technical execution. It was the communication. I took photos every day. I wrote daily reports. I sent progress updates that told plant leadership and the corporate team three things: how we were tracking against the plan, what the risks were to hitting our startup date, and what we were doing about them.

That transparency did a lot of quiet work. Nobody upstairs was wondering what was happening behind the plastic sheeting. When you're asking a facility to trust you with two weeks of downtime, that kind of visibility is not optional. It is the job.

Project Two: Where the Plan Met the Roof

The roof replacement started the same way. Cones out, barriers up, access points defined. We demoed the existing membrane and started pulling off the layer underneath, some kind of wood sheathing.

That's when things got interesting.

As we pulled the old sheathing free, we started backing out eight inch long screws. Long enough that I already suspected this job was going to outlast our two week window. We didn't panic about that part. The roof was external to the building, sitting over a warehouse section rather than an open product area, so the schedule risk felt manageable. Low consequence, we figured, if it ran long.

What I hadn't accounted for was what was happening underneath those screws, not just around them.

I climbed up onto one of the lines to get a better look at what was going on below the roof deck. That's when I noticed it. Those eight inch screws weren't just anchoring the sheathing. Some of them had pierced electrical conduit from the original installation. And as we backed them out, the vibration was shaking loose dust and debris, sending it falling into spaces we hadn't planned for at all.

Most of that fallout landed over the warehouse, which was a problem but not the worst version of the problem. The worst version was directly below a can de-palletizer, a piece of equipment feeding open, unlidded cans toward the filling line. Cans that would become finished product. Cans with nothing between them and whatever was now raining down from the roof deck above.

That is the moment a routine infrastructure project turns into a food safety event waiting to happen.

The Scramble, and What It Cost Us

We didn't have the luxury of redesigning the sequence. The facility needed to come back online. So we improvised an emergency mitigation on the spot: draped plastic sheeting above the de-palletizer and built a false ceiling to catch anything falling through before it reached the open cans.

It worked. But it was scope nobody had planned for, priced for, or scheduled for. It drove a change order, and it drove another one right behind it. Because once we found screws piercing conduit, we couldn't just leave it. Some of that conduit turned out to be abandoned, dead and safe to demo. Some of it was still live, still active, and had to be properly replaced.

Two small discoveries. Two change orders. Neither one catastrophic on its own. But both entirely avoidable if the front end investigation had gone one layer deeper before the bid package went out.

Where the Real Lesson Lives

Here's what I keep coming back to. Both of these projects were "simple" upgrades to existing assets. No new equipment, no unfamiliar systems, nothing that should have surprised anyone with real field experience. And yet the surprises still found us, because the thing we were replacing was not the thing that mattered. What mattered was everything attached to it, buried beneath it, or operating underneath it while we worked.

I climbed up on that roof. I did look. And I still missed the conduit until the screws started coming out. That's not a confession of incompetence, it's an honest look at how easy it is to under scope the investigation phase when a project looks routine and the clock is already running.

So how do we, as the people scoping these jobs on the front end, actually get better at this? I've started thinking about it as three questions that should get answered before a single line item goes into an RFP.

Comment

A Framework for Front-End Risk Discovery

Look Up. What is above this work, and what happens if something falls, leaks, or drops through during execution? On the roofing project, that meant asking what sat directly below every square foot of deck we were about to disturb, not just what sat below the building in general.

Look Down. What is buried in, attached to, or running through the asset you're removing? Conduit, piping, abandoned infrastructure from a decade of prior work, it's rarely visible until you're mid-demo. Assume it's there and verify, rather than assuming it isn't and being surprised.

Look Around. What is still operating adjacent to this work while you're doing it? A can de-palletizer running beneath a roof deck is a food safety risk. The same work above an empty storage bay is a Tuesday. Context changes the entire risk profile of identical work.

None of these questions require new tools or new budget. They require time, on the front end, before the RFP goes out and the schedule gets locked. That's the hard part. Time is exactly what feels most expendable when you've got a two week shutdown window and a plant waiting to restart.

But the change orders, the emergency mitigations, the scrambling to protect open product with plastic sheeting and plywood, all of that costs more time than the investigation would have. It just costs it later, when you have less room to absorb it.

If I'd walked that roof with those three questions in mind before we ever started pulling screws, I'd have caught the conduit risk in the estimate instead of in the field. I'd have planned for the de-palletizer exposure instead of improvising around it. The work still would have taken the same two projects, the same two weeks of pressure. But it would have looked a lot less like discovery, and a lot more like execution.

That's the standard I hold myself to now. Look up, look down, look around, before the bid goes out, not after the screws start coming loose.

Subscribe

Projects don’t usually fail because someone poured concrete wrong or installed the wrong equipment.

They fail because the project wasn’t clearly defined before execution ever started.

Everyone wants to talk about schedules, budgets, and Gantt charts. Those matter—but they’re not where successful projects begin.

Successful projects start with clarity.

Before a dollar is spent, everyone should be able to answer a few simple questions:

• What problem are we actually solving?

• What does success look like?

• Who owns the decision?

• What assumptions are we making?

• What could derail this project before we even start?

When those questions aren’t answered, teams spend months solving the wrong problems.

I’ve seen million-dollar projects delayed because no one aligned on scope early enough. I’ve also seen relatively small projects finish ahead of schedule simply because everyone knew exactly what “done” looked like.

One lesson I’ve learned is this:

Confusion compounds. Clarity compounds faster.

The more time you invest defining the project upfront, the less time you’ll spend fighting change orders, explaining decisions, and putting out fires later.

It’s not glamorous work.

But it’s the work that separates good project managers from great ones.

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing the tools, templates, and systems I’ve used to manage capital projects more effectively—from early feasibility through execution and closeout.

If you’re responsible for delivering projects, I hope you’ll follow along.

Subscribe

They fail in a fifteen-minute conversation that nobody bothered to have.

Here is the pattern I’ve watched play out more times than I can count: someone has a project idea. It sounds good. Leadership is excited. Everyone wants to move fast. So the team skips straight to planning — timelines, budgets, contractors — and nobody stops to ask the boring questions.

• What problem are we actually solving?

• Who needs to sign off on this?

• What does “done” even look like?

Six months later, the project is over budget, behind schedule, and half the stakeholders are asking why nobody told them about the electrical work. That’s not a planning failure. That’s an initiation failure. And it’s almost always preventable.

Initiation is the cheapest insurance you’ll ever buy

In project management, there are five process groups: Initiation, Planning, Executing, Monitoring & Controlling, and Closing. Everyone loves talking about Executing — it’s where the visible work happens, where you can point to progress. Nobody wants to slow down for Initiation, because on paper it looks like paperwork.

But Initiation is where you define the project and identify who actually has a stake in it. Skip it, or rush it, and you’re not saving time — you’re just moving the cost of that shortcut downstream, where it gets more expensive to fix.

I learned this the hard way on a garage addition early in my career. The scope felt “obvious” going in. It wasn’t. Halfway through, we discovered nobody had confirmed electrical loads with the client, and what should’ve been a two-day fix turned into a two-week delay. The cost wasn’t just money — it was trust.

Share

The two documents that would have saved me

If I could hand my younger self one thing, it’d be a simple system for capturing project ideas before they become expensive mistakes. Two documents do almost all the work:

The Project Ideation Log. This is just a running backlog — every project idea in one place, with rough budget, stakeholders, and target dates attached. It doesn’t need to be fancy. It needs to exist. Whoever’s watching the business — a plant manager, a department head, a PM — should be able to glance at it and know what’s coming.

The Project Approval Form. One to two pages, max. Before anyone commits real time to a project, someone writes down the business case: why this, why now, roughly what it’ll cost. This gets reviewed by the people who control the budget. If the project’s not viable, you find out here — not three months in.

Only after a project clears that gate does it earn a full Project Charter: the document that nails down scope, budget, timeline, risks, and who’s responsible for what. Think of the charter as the contract everyone agrees to before the real work starts. It should answer the unglamorous questions up front — who needs to be notified, what happens if there’s an electrical scope nobody planned for, who’s paying for shipping, who signs off on the final result — so those questions don’t ambush you at week six.

The best scope documents tell a story

Here’s something that took me years to internalize: a good project scope isn’t a checklist. It’s a narrative. It should read like you’re walking someone through the project from start to finish, so clearly that a stranger could pick it up and understand exactly what “success” looks like.

The checklist still matters — the risks, the vendor terms, the safety equipment, the RACI chart defining who’s Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed. But checklists don’t build alignment. Stories do. If your stakeholders can’t picture the finished project from reading your scope, you haven’t finished writing it.

Walk the job before you price the job

One habit I’d tell any new PM to steal: walk the site with multiple contractors before you lock in scope. It’s not just about getting competitive bids — though that matters. It’s that every contractor who walks the job sees something you missed. A subject matter expert standing in the actual space will catch a constraint or a risk that never would have surfaced in a conference room.

The real lesson

None of this is about paperwork for its own sake. It’s about respecting the fact that a capital project — a new home, a factory line, a piece of equipment with a useful life measured in years, not days — deserves more than good intentions and a start date.

Slow down at the beginning so you don’t have to slow down, apologize, and re-explain yourself at the end. That’s the whole trade. It’s a good one.

Subscribe

Over the years, I've had the chance to work with some great people on projects where the end goal was getting a brand new product into the marketplace. I can't share most of those stories in full — NDAs are NDAs — but I can lean on that experience, and more importantly, I can walk you through my own path of bringing two products to market: a manufactured egress window cover, and a self-help e-book.

Neither of these are massive, venture-backed success stories. They are real, scrappy, self-funded journeys, and I think that's exactly why they're useful. Here's what I learned, step by step, and what I'd tell anyone starting down a similar road.

Finding the Problem: The Egress Window Cover

The idea came to me almost by accident. I was exploring different cities to potentially move to, and I noticed something odd: a lot of houses with basements had egress window wells, and most of them were left wide open. No covers.

I wondered why, and the answer became obvious pretty quickly. The covers that existed on the market required either a trip to pick one up from a local distributor, or a full installation crew showing up at your house. Neither of those is a dealbreaker, exactly, but we live in a world where people expect to order something online and have it land on their doorstep, ready to install themselves. That gap was the opportunity.

That is step one of bringing any product to market, and it's the step people skip the most: find an actual problem worth solving. Not a feature you think is cool — a friction point real people are already living with.

Market Research: Trusting the Gap, Then Testing It

I started researching what was already out there. The cheap plastic covers lacked the durability I wanted to see. The premium options all routed through distributors or full-service installers. There was a real market — I could see it in how many businesses were operating in that space — and there was a real gap in how the product reached the customer.

I'll admit, some of my conviction came from my own bias: I knew that if I bought a house with a basement, I'd want my wells covered, and I'd want it delivered to my door. But at some point, you have to stop analyzing and start testing. I'm naturally an over-analyzer, and I recognized that I simply didn't have enough information to make a fully confident decision — so I made the call to move into prototyping instead of waiting for more data that wasn't coming.

If you're too afraid to put a little money on the line to find out, you'll never move past the idea stage. That's true of nearly every product I've seen go from concept to shelf.

Product Development: Specs, Prototypes, and Field Testing

I'd spent my early career as a drafter and designer, so building the prototype in-house was within reach. If that skill hadn't been there, partnering with a local fabrication shop would've been the move and honestly, that's the right call for most people at this stage.

I went out into the field and measured actual egress window wells, recorded the dimensions, and brought them into AutoCAD. One size came up again and again in a particular neighborhood, so that became my starting point.

Then I built out a ranked list of what the product actually needed to deliver:

• Shippable

• Lightweight

• Kid-friendly

• Durable

• Cost-effective

• Quality

• Visually appealing

From there, I broke each one down further — could it ship in pieces? Could slots reduce weight while still letting light through? Could a hinge or bolt system make it removable by a kid in an emergency, while still standing up to a 200-pound adult walking across it? Every design decision traced back to one of these requirements.

The first prototype came together in three equal sections, sized to fit a 52" by 36" well. I tested fit and function first, then loaded it with weight. It held a 200-pound guy with minimal flex — but "minimal" wasn't "none." So I drilled holes into the flanges to bolt the sections together, and that one field modification drastically increased the rigidity. That's the iterative loop in action: design, test, find the weak point, fix it, test again.

After that, I sourced a local shop for powder coating and was genuinely happy with the result. A friend who needed covers for his own home asked if I'd build him five. I didn't make money on that batch — I basically donated the labor and customized the units to seal the deal — but it was worth every hour. It put product into the field for real-world, long-term durability testing I couldn't have replicated any other way.

The Business Side: IP, Planning, and Funding

Since I was self-funding, I held off on patents or trademarks at the prototype stage — that's a decision worth revisiting once a product proves itself, not before.

I did put together a business plan: target market, marketing approach, rough financial projections. I didn't over-engineer it, but having something to anchor to kept me focused and honest about where I actually was versus where I thought I was.

On funding, here's the one piece of advice I wish someone had handed me directly: take the number you think you'll need, and double or triple it. Payment terms from suppliers help, but you still need real cash on hand, and self-funding this kind of project always costs more than the spreadsheet says it will.

Manufacturing, Quality Control, and the Unsexy Details

I spent a lot of time here — getting quotes from suppliers across different quantities, packaging styles, and regions. I landed on a manufacturer that built in batches of ten and shipped via wooden crate, which turned out to be the sweet spot for cost and lead time. I'd uncrate them on arrival, then individually group and package each unit myself.

Quality control came together through real conversations with suppliers about surface finishes, bending techniques, and CNC capabilities. We landed on a process: laser or plasma cutting, press brake forming with segmented tooling, SP6 commercial blast cleaning for surface prep, and a high-solids poly or powder coat finish in either Mahogany Brown or Aluminum Gray. None of that is glamorous. All of it is what makes the difference between a product that holds up and one that doesn't.

Branding, Packaging, and Getting It in Front of People

For packaging, I found a box from U-Line that fit the product perfectly — sometimes the boring logistics question has a simple answer if you look.

Branding was harder, and honestly, still is. We chose not to reinvent the wheel and kept the product under my name, since it's a genuine extension of what that brand is about. We've been building that presence through LinkedIn and Facebook, and through a website built on WordPress and Bluehost that's gone through more than a few iterations as we've figured out what actually represents the work.

Distribution, for now, runs direct and that's a space I'm still actively building out, alongside marketing, sales channels, and everything that comes after a product exists but isn't yet in front of the people who need it.

Product Two: "Earn Your Success!"

The second product was a completely different animal: a self-help e-book called Earn Your Success! A Journey Towards Contentment, Growth, and Opportunities, now live on Amazon.

Earn Your Success!

The "problem" here wasn't a physical gap in a market — it was something more personal. I'd lived through enough of my own professional and personal growth, enough hard-won lessons about perseverance, mindset, and figuring out what actually matters in a career and a life, that I wanted to put that into a structure other people could use. The book moves through personal growth, financial literacy, adaptability, leadership, and time management, then pushes into finding genuine purpose and direction, and finally into the discipline of not giving up when things get hard.

Where the window cover taught me fabrication and supply chains, the e-book taught me an entirely different production process. I knew the substance — the lessons, the structure, the voice I wanted — but I'm not a professional writer, so I brought in a ghostwriter to help shape the manuscript into something polished and readable while keeping it authentically mine. For the cover, I went to Fiverr and found a designer who could turn the concept into something that actually stood out on a crowded Amazon shelf.

That's really the core lesson from this second product: you don't have to be the expert in every part of the process. You have to know what the final product needs to be, and then go find the right people to help you get there. With the garage covers, that meant fabricators and powder coaters. With the book, it meant a ghostwriter and a cover designer. Same philosophy, completely different toolbox.

What Both Products Taught Me

Looking at these two side by side — a steel window cover and a self-help book — they couldn't be more different on the surface. But the underlying path was nearly identical: find a real problem or a real need, test your assumption before you're fully confident in it, build a rough version, get it in front of real people, and let their feedback shape what comes next.

Neither of these products turned into a massive business overnight. That's not really the point. The point is that both of them exist now, out in the world, doing what they were built to do — covers protecting basement window wells across actual homes, and a book sitting on Amazon helping someone work through their own version of growth and contentment.

If you're sitting on an idea right now, wondering if it's worth pursuing: it probably is, if it's solving something real. The only way to find out is to stop analyzing and start building — even if "building" just means a rough prototype, a messy first draft, or a conversation with the right person who can help you get from idea to shelf.

Message me

That description isn't wrong. It's just radically incomplete.

The longer I work across both residential construction and industrial project environments, the more convinced I become that "project manager" is one of the most misunderstood job titles in business. The title suggests administration — tracking, scheduling, checking boxes. The actual job is closer to running a small, temporary company. A PM is a mini-CEO, and almost nobody tells them that going in.

The Job Behind the Job Title

Think about what a CEO actually does, stripped down to fundamentals. They have to:

• Make the case for why the business deserves capital

• Secure that capital from people who control it

• Assemble the right talent and coordinate across functions that don't naturally agree

• Resolve conflict when priorities collide

• Manage the money — spending, forecasting, and reporting on it

• Deliver a result that justifies the investment

Now look at what a project manager does on any job of real size. Before a single piece of work starts, the PM has to build the business case — translating scope into dollars and dollars into value stakeholders actually care about. That's not paperwork. That's persuasion. You're asking someone to release capital based on your credibility and your numbers, the same conversation a CEO has with a board or an investor.

Once the money is approved, the PM becomes the connective tissue between disciplines that don't speak the same language. Engineering thinks in tolerances. Procurement thinks in lead times. Finance thinks in variance. The trades think in sequence and access. None of those groups is wrong — they're just optimizing for different things, and someone has to translate between them and keep the disagreements from becoming delays. That's not scheduling. That's executive coordination.

Then there's the money itself, which never stops moving. A PM is signing contracts and purchase orders, committing the project to obligations with real legal and financial weight. They're tracking actual spend against budget in real time, and — this is the part that separates a project manager from a project coordinator — forecasting the estimate at completion. Not "how much have we spent," but "based on what we know right now, where will this land, and does that still make sense for the business." That's the same forward-looking judgment a CFO exercises, just compressed into a single job and a single project instead of an entire company.

And underneath all of it sits cash flow. Knowing not just the total cost of a project, but when money needs to move — when draws are due, when vendors expect payment, when the gap between spend and reimbursement could actually stall the work — is a financial planning function. Get it wrong on a long project and you don't just have a budget problem. You have a liquidity problem, the exact thing that keeps CEOs and CFOs up at night.

Why This Distinction Matters

I think this gap — between what the title implies and what the job actually requires — causes real damage, in both directions.

For organizations, it means project managers often get hired, trained, and evaluated like administrators when the role actually demands business judgment. Companies look for someone who's organized and detail-oriented, and then hand that person authority over six and seven-figure financial decisions, cross-functional leadership, and stakeholder management — without ever naming that this is what they're actually being asked to do. The skills gap that shows up later, when a PM struggles to hold the financial narrative together or freezes during a stakeholder conflict, often isn't a competence gap. It's a role-definition gap. Nobody told them the job was bigger than the title.

For the PMs themselves, the cost is different but just as real. Plenty of capable project managers undersell what they do, because they've absorbed the narrow version of the title. They describe their work as "keeping the project on track" when what they actually did was build a business case, negotiate scope with skeptical stakeholders, manage a portfolio of vendor contracts, and forecast cost-to-complete on a moving target. That's not project coordination. That's executive function, just without the executive label or compensation that usually comes with it.

The Practical Upside of Naming It

I don't think this is just a semantic argument. Naming the job accurately changes how people do it.

A project manager who understands they're running something closer to a business than a checklist starts asking different questions. Not just "are we on schedule," but "does this project still make financial sense given what we know now." Not just "did the work get done," but "did it deliver the value we promised the people who funded it." That shift — from task tracking to value ownership — is the difference between a PM who executes a plan and one who's actually accountable for an outcome.

It also changes how PMs should be developed and supported. If the role genuinely requires business case development, financial forecasting, stakeholder negotiation, and conflict resolution across competing interests, then training people exclusively on scheduling software and risk registers is preparing them for maybe half the job. The other half — the part that looks a lot like running a company — usually gets learned the hard way, through painful experience, because almost nobody teaches it directly.

I've seen this play out on projects ranging from a single residential build to multi-million-dollar industrial installations, and the underlying pattern doesn't change with scale. The PM who treats the role as administrative — track the schedule, log the issues, report the status — does an adequate job. The PM who treats it as a temporary CEO role — own the business case, manage the relationships, forecast the financial trajectory, and stay accountable for the value delivered — does a fundamentally different one.

Same title. Very different job.

The Reframe

If you manage projects for a living, I'd encourage you to sit with this for a second: you are not just coordinating tasks. You are running a temporary business with a defined start, a defined end, a P&L of sorts, and a board of stakeholders you have to keep convinced. The scope changes. The stakes change. But the core function — make the case, secure the resources, coordinate the execution, manage the money, deliver the value — is the same function a CEO performs, just compressed into a shorter timeline and a narrower mandate.

It might be worth describing your work that way. Not to inflate the title, but because it's a more honest description of what you're actually accountable for. And the organizations that get this right — that train, support, and compensate PMs as the business leaders they actually are — are the ones that will consistently deliver projects that don't just finish on time, but actually deliver the value they were funded to create.

He was thrilled. And honestly? So was I.

That text is exactly why I do this work.

The Project

A few years ago, I built a 1,500 square foot, three-car garage addition onto an existing house, enclosing the old porch area in the process. We modeled the entire thing in 3D AutoCAD before a single footing went in the ground, and we spent real time on the front end — walking through every detail together, all the way down to paint colors and roofing material.

The owner was part of the design from day one. My role was to guide him through the decisions: here's what this costs, here's what it gets you, here's the tradeoff. That kind of collaboration is where the good stuff happens.

A few of the choices we made didn't add much cost but added a disproportionate amount of value:

• Oversized 9'x18' garage doors — practical, but also just a more impressive presence for the space

• Trey ceilings — small architectural upgrade, big visual payoff

• Extensive electrical circuits — built for how he'd actually use the space, not just the minimum code

• Belt-drive garage door openers with built-in cameras — quieter operation, plus the ability to monitor the garage remotely

• A metal roof, cut in cleanly under the existing house windows, instead of the cheaper standard option

None of these were the cheapest path. Altogether, they probably added 10–15% to the project cost. But that 10–15% is the difference between a garage that functions and a garage the owner is still texting me about, unprompted, years later — happy, enthusiastic, genuinely satisfied.

Why This Matters More Than the Garage

Here's the thing — this project happened to be residential, but most of my work has actually been industrial, specifically in food manufacturing. And the lesson is identical: projects are about value, not just completion.

A project that gets finished on time and on budget but doesn't deliver real value isn't actually a success. It just looks like one on paper. Those are two very different outcomes, and the gap between them is where most of the real risk in project work actually lives.

Where Value Gets Lost

I've seen this play out too many times in the industrial world. A business case gets written, value gets projected — sometimes accurately, sometimes not — capital gets approved, and the asset gets installed. And then one of a few things happens:

The business changes. A line gets built to run a specific product at a specific volume, and eighteen months later the product mix shifts, a customer contract ends, or the company pivots strategy. The asset still works perfectly. It's just no longer pointed at the right problem.

The original assumption was wrong from the start. Maybe the volume projections were optimistic. Maybe the business case leaned on a sales forecast that never materialized. Maybe nobody stress-tested the assumption hard enough before the capital was approved, because the project had momentum and nobody wanted to be the one to slow it down.

Or the value was real, but it never got fully captured. The equipment goes in, it runs, but the operational changes needed to actually realize the projected savings — staffing adjustments, process changes, training — never happen. So you've got a capable asset being run in a way that leaves most of its value on the table.

Any one of these results in the same thing: a piece of capitalized equipment sitting on the floor, partially used or not used at all. That's not a hypothetical. That happens more than most people in this field want to admit, and it's rarely because anyone did anything wrong on purpose. It's usually a slow drift — a good plan meeting a business reality that moved faster than the project did.

What Good Value Capture Actually Looks Like

The garage project worked for a simple reason: the value case was clear from the beginning, and every decision — even the more expensive ones — was made in service of that value, not in spite of it. The owner wasn't paying for upgrades for the sake of upgrades. He was paying for a space that would actually work the way he needed it to, for years, in ways he could feel every time he used it.

I try to carry that same discipline into industrial work, even though the stakes and the scale are completely different. Before a project gets capital approved, the questions worth asking are the same ones we walked through in that garage design: What does this actually need to do? What's the real cost of getting it slightly wrong? Where is the value actually going to come from, specifically, and who is accountable for making sure it shows up once the equipment is running?

That last one matters more than people give it credit for. A business case isn't a one-time document you write to get approval and then file away. The value has to be tracked after startup, not just projected before it. Otherwise you find out two years later — the hard way — that the case never materialized, and nobody noticed until someone went looking.

The Standard

That's the standard I try to hold every project to, whether it's a homeowner's garage or a processing line running food product. Did this actually deliver what we said it would? Is someone genuinely better off because this got built? Is the asset doing what it was capitalized to do, or has the business quietly moved on without anyone updating the plan?

When the answer is yes, you get a text message with a photo of kayaks coming down out of a garage ceiling, from someone who didn't have to send it.

That's the whole job, right there.

Subscribe

I expected to need time to think about it. I didn’t. The answer arrived almost instantly: FOCUS.

Not a person. Not a circumstance. Just the simple, maddening inability to be where I am, doing what I’m doing, without my attention fracturing into a dozen directions.

The Noise Is the Goliath

We live in a world engineered to interrupt us. Social media, push notifications, texts, emails, the news cycle - every minute carries some small vibration demanding a piece of our attention. None of these interruptions feel like much on their own. A glance at a notification. A quick check of email. Thirty seconds, easy.

But thirty seconds, a hundred times a day, isn’t thirty seconds. It’s death by a thousand cuts to your concentration.

Here’s the thing I keep coming back to: mental energy is finite. You wake up with a certain amount of it, and every interruption, even the ones you barely register, spends a little of it. By the time you sit down to do the work that actually matters, or look up at the person who actually matters, you’re running on fumes you didn’t know you’d burned.

If mental energy is that valuable, why do we spend it so carelessly? We protect our money. We protect our time, at least on a calendar. But we let our attention get picked apart by anything that buzzes.

The Friday Afternoon Email

I’ll give you a specific example, because abstractions are easy to nod along to and hard to actually feel.

It’s Friday afternoon. An email comes in. I open it, because of course I open it, and it’s something that genuinely cannot be addressed until Monday. There is nothing productive I can do with this information right now. And yet I carry it. Into the weekend. Onto the trail while I’m hiking. Into the boat while I’m fishing. Into time with my family, where part of my brain is quietly chewing on a problem that hasn’t even started yet.

That’s not diligence. That’s just noise I let win.

So I’ve started asking a different question: what if I changed the system instead of trying to white-knuckle my way through more willpower? What if I checked email once a day, at a set time, with intention, instead of letting it check in on me all day long? Whatever doesn’t get handled that day simply waits for tomorrow, because it was always going to wait until Monday anyway. The only thing that changes is whether I spend my weekend pretending otherwise.

This isn’t really about email. It’s about designing a life where the noise has to ask permission to come in, instead of just walking through an open door.

What Presence Actually Feels Like

Early in my career, I worked relentlessly. I told myself — and honestly believed — that I was present for my young family, because I was there. Physically, mostly. But looking back now, I can see the gap between being in the room and being in the moment. I was thinking about work while I was playing on the floor. I was halfway somewhere else during dinner. I don’t say this with heavy regret — I think most of us go through a season like that — but I needed to live it before I could see it clearly.

Fast forward to now. We just had another baby. And I’ve noticed something different in myself this time: I am here in a way I wasn’t before. Fully absorbed in this tiny person, soaking up the moments instead of just logging them. It’s surreal, honestly, how much more there is to experience when you’re not dividing your attention three ways. The bonding feels deeper. The beauty of it actually lands instead of skimming past me on the way to the next thing on my mental list.

I had a similar moment earlier this month on a hike. No phone in hand, no mental tab open in the background. Just sun, trail, and view, fully absorbed in what was actually in front of me. It was a small thing. It was also one of the best feelings I’ve had all year.

And here’s what I want: I want that to be my baseline, not the exception. I want that same quality of presence when I’m holding my newborn and when I’m buried in a spreadsheet, tuning setpoints on a processing line, or building out a project Gantt chart. Presence shouldn’t be reserved for the moments that are obviously beautiful. The task in front of you, whatever it is, deserves the same full attention as the mountaintop.

Fighting Goliath

David didn’t beat Goliath by matching his size. He used something smaller, faster, and more precise. I think that’s the move here too. We’re not going to out-muscle the noise of modern life by trying harder or gritting through it — there’s always going to be more of it than there is of us.

The win comes from small, precise choices: a set time for email instead of constant checking. A phone left in the other room during dinner. A walk taken without a podcast in your ears, just to let your mind actually be quiet. None of these are dramatic. All of them, repeated daily, are the stone in the sling.

I don’t have this fully figured out. I’m writing this as much to hold myself accountable as anything else. But I know what I’m aiming for now: to be present with whatever is in front of me — baby, hike, spreadsheet, family dinner — instead of mentally somewhere else entirely.

What’s your Goliath? I’d genuinely like to know what you’re wrestling with, and how you’re fighting it.