It was 1937 in a city just east of Glendale, California, two brothers, Dick and Maurice, opened the doors to a new drive-in restaurant serving burgers and milkshakes. Seeing immediate growth, they expanded their menu and relocated to San Bernardino in hopes to attract more customers and increase revenues. That they did. Within 5 years, this small startup burger joint was earning over $350,000 annually.

The brothers attempted to start a second location on numerous occasions but simply couldn’t get one off the ground. The reason was simple. Dick and Maurice knew how to run a single-store business extremely well, but what they lacked was the capacity to grow beyond their initial dream and turn the company into a successful franchise.

However, this same restaurant exists today in 119 countries with over 31,000 locations. It is considered one of the most recognized brands in the entire world. You know this restaurant Continue Reading…

Sometimes we as leaders are put in a position of authority and suddenly we realize we’re called to lead our friends. It’s in this moment it all hits us… How do I lead those who are friends of mine? Will they respect me? Will they follow my lead? How do I get them to invest in my plan?

Maybe you were just promoted and the rest of your ‘past co-workers’ now work for you instead of with you. No matter what the situation, sometimes we are faced with the challenge of leading our own friends and peers.

Leadership, as we all know, is much more than a position of authority. It’s so much more than a title.  There’s a big difference between boss and leader. The struggle with your friends working for you is that it is far more difficult to gain their respect as their leader and not just their boss.

There are four key areas of focus that will help each one of us when we find ourselves in these situations. Today I am only discussing one of them… Continue Reading…

I used to blog fairly consistently… While I’m busy writing new blogs I thought it would be fun to post a few older ones from a few years back.

Originally written on August 8, 2008: 

Over the last several months I have been a part of the Orientation Council at Belmont University. During my time on this team, I have had the opportunity to grab a hold of a whole new understanding of leadership, and furthermore, a whole new vision for my life. I have been entrenched in deep community with 25 others over the past few weeks and I am want to share one small aspect of what I have learned during my time here this summer.

I know that many people who read this are most likely in a leadership position in some way, shape, or form… but if not, I trust that we all will experience leadership somewhere, somehow. For some, it may be on a project at school…. or at work… but a lot of us will get a chance to lead in our family, in our friends and around our communities as we grow older. This is the Team-Minded Leadership model.

TEAM-MINDED

Our schedule this summer was pretty tight, and by that I mean extremely tight. we were usually up by 5:45 a.m., Continue Reading…