Sam Gembel 
The more I know, the more I realize I don’t know! Leadership reminds me a lot of climbing up a mountain. When you first start the climb, the excitement is high and the path feels very manageable. You’re energized by the progress, encouraged by the early wins, and confident about where you’re headed!!! But the … Read more
“Most leaders try to predict people. Great leaders build people.“ You can learn a lot from history. But you can also get yourself in trouble when you start treating history like prophecy. In the financial world, people stare at charts, trends, and past cycles and assume the next season will behave like the last one did. “This … Read more
Leadership is strange – you can be winning on paper and still feel like you’re behind in your soul. As leaders, we tend to live in the grey. We stay away from the red… but we rarely get to feel black-and-white “done.” We’re not usually failing. We’re just constantly carrying the next thing. The next … Read more
Some people are meant to walk with you at the beginning… but not everyone is meant to stand with you at the top. There’s a story Joel Osteen shares that has stuck with me for years. He talks about scaffolding on a skyscraper job site. I have referenced this before many of times in some … Read more
Leadership regression has no warning light, no email sent to let us know, no moment where you wake up and decide you’re going to be a worse leader today. It happens quietly and gradually, one small compromise at a time, often while we’re telling ourselves we’re doing the right thing. Most of us start our … Read more
“Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained over time.” ~ John C. Maxwell We are officially past the halfway point of the first month of the new year. And if you’re being honest, some of the things you said you were going to do this year already feel uncomfortable to think … Read more
Last week, we talked about the question that quietly sabotages more leaders than almost anything else – “What could go wrong?” That question feels responsible. It feels wise. It feels safe. But in reality, it often becomes the very thing that cripples growth. Because when leaders fixate on what could go wrong, they stop taking … Read more
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” -Winston Churchill What Could Go Wrong? That’s usually the question we ask when we’re staring into a new year, a new opportunity, or a new decision. What could go wrong?What if it doesn’t work?What if we fail at it?What if … Read more
Every January, millions and millions of people make bold declarations. “This is the year.”“This time I mean it.”“This time it will be different.” And yet… the success rate sits somewhere around 20%. That means one out of five people actually follows through. If we were grading that on a report card, we’d call it what … Read more
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences.” – Margaret J. Wheatley Let me give you permission you shouldn’t need – but probably do. PAUSE.Not because you’re lazy. Not because you’re falling behind. But because you’re a human being. And because real leaders don’t just run hard… they recover on purpose. Christmas … Read more