Built It. Led It.
Sold It. Now I Teach It.

I wasn't supposed to be here.

I was 23, back from Dallas, two DUIs behind me, bartending at a place I had no intention of staying. A collision shop owner named Ted Clark walked in for dinner one night. Then came back the next night. Then offered me $400 a week to run his rental car fleet. Six months later, I was running the shop.

That wasn't ambition. That was a man giving another man a chance, and me deciding I wasn't going to waste it.

Over the next decade, I grew Clark's Collision Center from $700,000 in annual sales to over $1.8 million. Then we kept going. By the time I sold and relocated to Conway, SC, we were past $3 million. But the number isn't what I'm proud of. What I'm proud of is John Carroll.

John was a rough, gruff older technician who had zero interest in being told what to do by me. We didn't see eye to eye. I kept pulling him off jobs, disrupting his flow, making his day harder. For months we grinded against each other, until we finally sat down and had a real conversation. He told me how I made him feel. I sat there and took it. That conversation changed how I lead. It taught me that a title doesn't earn you anything. Relationships do.

The clarity about coaching didn't come from the business world. It came from a gym.

I coached my oldest son's basketball team, three consecutive seasons across Mini Metro, school ball, and AAU. That group of kids stuck together the whole year. A few of them really connected with me. I helped them get jobs. Helped them open bank accounts. Helped them get cars. Nothing I had done in business had ever felt like that. Those kids changed me forever. I knew then that developing people wasn't something I did on the side. It was what I was built for.

I'll tell you something I don't put in the brochure. My biological father was an alcoholic. He left in the middle of the night when my mom started the divorce, no warning, no goodbye, just gone. He moved to Florida. We stopped talking after he forgot to call me on my birthday for the second year in a row. I was 19. He passed away about a month ago. In twenty years, even at the end, he never called.

My stepfather did his own version of the same thing. Slowly withdrew after his new life got in the way. Stopped calling. Stopped showing up. I was 10, maybe 12 when I decided I would not be that. I would make every practice. Every game. I wouldn't leave the state championship early to beat traffic. I wouldn't do any of it.

Fatherhood is coaching. That's it. Every business owner I sit across from, I'm asking the same questions I ask myself as a dad. Are you showing up? Are you leading by example? Are you building something that outlasts you?

I have high expectations. People who know me will tell you I'm straight with them, I back them up even when they make the wrong call, and I'm a lot to take. I don't see problems. I see things that need to get handled. My wife told me the other day she was impressed by what I'm able to accomplish. That hit me harder than I expected. I don't think of myself that way. But I know I operate at a level most people don't.

That's exactly why I coach. Because I know what it costs when a leader doesn't show up. And I know what's possible when one does.