Today I believe.
Short essays on the convictions that shape the work. Each is dated to today on purpose — held with confidence, open to revision when the evidence asks.
- Library size
- 25 essays · expanding
- Companion
- In His Own Words →
- 01EssayRead the essay →
Why curiosity matters more than confidence
Confidence repeats what it already knows. Curiosity finds the part of the room that nobody has explored yet.
- 02EssayRead the essay →
Most people are good
If you spend a working life with that as your default assumption, you will be right more often than you are wrong, and the people you are wrong about will reveal themselves quickly.
- 03EssayRead the essay →
Why work ethic still matters
Talent is fashionable. Work ethic is permanent. The market eventually pays the second one more.
- 04EssayRead the essay →
Building systems instead of shortcuts
A shortcut solves today and bills tomorrow. A system costs today and pays for years.
- 05EssayRead the essay →
Helping homeowners make better decisions
The job is not to sell a roof. The job is to make a homeowner more capable of deciding about their own home.
- 06EssayRead the essay →
Learning never stops, and neither should you
The day you decide you have learned enough is the day the work begins to pass you by.
- 07EssayRead the essay →
Leadership is responsibility, not authority
Authority is what the title gives you. Responsibility is what you accept whether or not the title arrives.
- 08EssayRead the essay →
Teach what you learn
If you do not teach what you have learned, the knowledge dies with you and the people behind you have to pay tuition for it again.
- 09EssayRead the essay →
Respect creates opportunity
How you treat the people who can do nothing for you is the most reliable indicator of what your career is actually going to become.
- 10EssayRead the essay →
Humility is strength, not weakness
The strongest people you have ever worked with were almost always the ones least interested in being the strongest person in the room.
- 11EssayRead the essay →
Details matter, and the small ones matter most
The roof fails where the attention failed first. So does almost everything else.
- 12EssayRead the essay →
The honesty discount
Telling the truth, especially early, is the most underpriced business strategy available.
- 13EssayRead the essay →
The trades are noble work
The country is built and rebuilt by the people in them. That should be obvious. It often isn't.
- 14EssayRead the essay →
Play the long game on purpose
The short game plays itself. The long game has to be chosen, repeatedly, against pressure to do otherwise.
- 15EssayRead the essay →
The grandfather standard
Before you say it, ask whether your grandfather would have said it. Most modern communication problems disappear inside that one question.
- 16EssayRead the essay →
Build benches, not stars
A team built around a single indispensable person is a team one bad week from collapse.
- 17EssayRead the essay →
The first hour of trust
The first hour after a homeowner calls you is when the relationship is actually decided.
- 18EssayRead the essay →
Kindness is operational, not decorative
Kindness is not a nice thing to add to a business. It is part of how the business actually works.
- 19EssayRead the essay →
Say the tradeoff out loud
Every decision has a tradeoff. Naming it converts a future resentment into a present understanding.
- 20EssayRead the essay →
Rest is not the opposite of work
Rest is part of the work, and treating it that way is more honest about how careers actually function.
- 21EssayRead the essay →
Borrow generously, credit fully
Originality is overrated as a goal. Honest borrowing is underrated as a method.
- 22EssayRead the essay →
Write it down to think
If it only lives in your head, you have not actually finished thinking about it yet.
- 23EssayRead the essay →
The mirror test
Before you ask your team to look honestly at their work, look honestly at your own.
- 24EssayRead the essay →
Small improvements, stacked for a decade
Reform is overrated. Compounding is not.
- 25EssayRead the essay →
Leave it cleaner than you found it
It is the same rule you teach a child. It is also the rule that quietly builds companies worth working at.