Hey, I'm Chad

I grew up on a cattle farm in West Virginia, which teaches you a few things early. The work doesn't care how you feel about it. Animals have strong opinions and no interest in yours. And there's a very specific distance between "the plan" and "what actually happened," and that distance is almost always mud.

I ride a Harley, which surprises people who meet me first and see a guy who looks like he should be driving a Subaru to a soccer game. I have a deep and possibly unhealthy respect for Basset Hounds, who have figured out something the rest of us haven't: conserve your energy, take up your space on the couch, and never apologize for either. Iowa cornfields, it turns out, are weirdly good for the soul. Wasn't expecting that one.

I'm glad you're here.

Now for the part that might actually be useful to you.

My career has never gone in a straight line, and for a long time I thought that was a problem. I've run a business and sold it. I've built a program out of little more than paperwork and stubbornness. I've taught, driven long roads for work most people never see, tried my hand at e-commerce for reasons I still can't fully explain, and ended up running operations for one of the largest academic veterinary hospitals in the country.

None of it was the plan.

All of it turned out to be the training.

Here's what I've come to believe, and it applies whether you're in a hospital, a warehouse, a courtroom, or a barn: leadership starts long before anybody hands you a title for it. A career can wander all over the map without ever being lost. Ordinary work teaches lessons that look small at the time and turn out to be everything. And most of us are drastically underselling how much our own lives have already trained us for what's next.

Which is why I write.

Most people are sitting on more than they realize. Skills they quit counting because they got used to having them. Things they lived through and filed under "not a big deal" that were, in fact, kind of a big deal. Everybody thinks their own version of hard-won is just common sense, and everybody's wrong about that in exactly the same way. Doesn't matter what industry you're in.

I think about unique ability a lot: the one thing underneath all your other things, the skill that follows you no matter what room you walk into.

I write about leadership, work, careers, and the parts of a life that don't show up on a résumé but end up running the whole show, usually by telling on myself first.

This isn't a highlight reel, and it isn't advice from a guy who's got it figured out. It's just somebody who took the long way, paid attention along the way, and is hoping some of it is useful to you too.