My strongest work begins before the answer is obvious. I look for the opening others have missed — friction accepted as normal, capacity treated as fixed, a category waiting to be defined, or a behavior not yet organized into a business.
The settings change. The pattern does not.
Every opening in the work below began the same way: with a question about the customer that no one else was asking.
Strategic insight is only valuable when someone can organize people, systems and execution around it.
From the age of three until I was twenty-two, I lived with a severe stutter. It taught me to observe before I could participate — to read people, behavior, and the things left unsaid.
I coach executives, founders, employees and mentees — usually at the moment someone is facing a decision they have not faced before, or carrying more than they believe they can.
Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of a creator-owned entertainment company built around the storytelling catalog of New York Times bestselling author JaQuavis Coleman — 37 controlled intellectual properties, an audience already earned, and a foundation in Flint funded by the business it belongs to.
Read the storyHealthcare does not lack resources. It lacks alignment. A shared platform can create leverage without erasing independence.
Read the storyFamilies were already solving the problem through personal networks. The behavior existed. No trusted system organized it.
Read the storyA 39,000 square foot club was losing members and at risk of closing. Its most valuable asset was the time nobody was using.
Read the storyA new investment platform competes first for confidence. Before capital moves, the market needs a reason to believe in the people behind it.
Read the storyLarger developers had more capital and more land. We had fewer than seven months, and the chance to shape how the entire area would be understood.
Read the storyThe category competed on discounted access. The real opportunity was relieving an administrative burden.
Read the storyDavid is smart, tenacious, determined and focused and always achieved the results we were seeking. He is also an out-of-the-box thinker which helps you see things from different vantage points.
David is one of the rare business people — excellent not only at business development, but also ongoing client management. As a division head, he required top performance of his staff, while always being supportive. He had the ability to uniquely motivate each individual on his team.
He treated each regional director who reported to him as an intellectual equal, gave value to our diversified experience and never presented an ego when new ideas were brought to the table. Although I was in the fitness industry long before meeting David, I consider him to be my mentor.
David recognized leadership qualities in me that I had not yet fully appreciated myself. His encouragement gave me greater confidence in my capabilities and ultimately led him to recruit me to join the Crunch Fitness International management team.