My Influences

The way my brain works is like a whirlwind vacuum: it collects more than you’d expect, but where things came from just gets mixed together. “You synthesize on the fly like a mo-fo” the head of UX at a recent company told me after my first week on the job.

I spent most my life thinking that was normal, but have learned that I process without words in images/thoughts/extrapolations first, and attach words to those thoughts second. So where did that come from? Half the time I don’t know! I’m often frustrated by this and start drawing on the whiteboard to help organize and draw what’s stuck. My own mystery lol.

These are the people, books, and experiences that most shaped the key areas I work.

Tech/Leadership

• Leadership and Self-Deception, by The Arbinger Institute
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni
• The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield
• Inspired: How to build tech products customers love, by Marty Cagan
• 9Lenses: Insight to Action, by Edwin Miller
• Turn the Ship Around, by L. David Marquet
• R.A.R.E. Leadership, by Life Model
• Principles, by Ray Dalio

Communications

• Presentation Zen, by Guy Reynolds
• Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath
• 60 Ways to Turn a Phrase, by Arthur Quinn
• Rhetoric, by Aristotle
• Classical Rhetoric texts… lots and lots of them
• Back of the Napkin, by Dan Roam
• Confessions of a Public Speaker, by Scott Berkun
• The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle

Individual Improvement

• Immortal Diamond, by Richard Rohr
• Nichomachean Ethics, by Aristotle
• Jewish New Testament
• S.C.O.R.E. for Life, by Jim Fannin

People

• Dr. Steven Tomlinson, elite communications coach, playwright, consultant, theologian
• Dr. James Tallmon, professor of rhetoric, leadership theorist, debate director
• Gordon Middleton, Strategic Intelligence program director
• Michael Farris, founder HSLDA/Patrick Henry College/BRBC/NCFCA
• CEOs I served as right hand: Robert Thoburn, Dan Zimmerman, Edwin Miller, Don Shaffer, Nathan Baumeister, Jeff Allyn, Dane Witbeck
• Most of all, my Rabbi: Yeshua