IMUA — Dispatches from the Path Forward

A Note Before You Begin

This is not a self-help book. I want to be clear about that from the first sentence, because the world has enough of those.

What you are holding is a record. A logbook kept by a man who is still in the middle of becoming. Not the polished retrospective of someone who figured it out, but the raw field notes of someone actively building the life he chose.

I am a finance and insurance executive. A managing director. A father. A training partner. A former military man. A former ranch hand who broke horses and planted fence in the cold. A man who left home at twelve and never looked back. I am also a man who has failed publicly and privately, who walked through a prolonged divorce with grace that sometimes cost everything I had, and who found — to his own surprise — that the hardest seasons were also the most clarifying.

The Hawaiian word IMUA means to move forward. It is the word our organization uses as a cultural anchor. It became mine. Not as a motivational slogan, but as a discipline. A quiet, daily reckoning with the question: did I move forward today?

I started writing these reflections for myself. Then I was told they might be worth sharing. The argument went something like this: if a young man — a young advisor, perhaps, somewhere in his first or second year, grinding through cold calls and client rejections and the slow accumulation of competence — if that man could read something that helped him understand that the friction is the path, that might be worth putting into the world.

I think that argument is correct.

So here it is. My thinking. My training. My failures and the lessons that followed. The weeks that felt like drowning and the weeks that clicked. The philosophy I built from borrowed wisdom and original scars. And in the final section, the practical field manual I wrote for the people I lead — the unfiltered version, because that is how it was written and that is the version that works.

Read it however you like. But if you are a young man trying to figure out who you are becoming — I wrote it for you.

IMUA.

Anchor Essay

Discipline Before Identity

Most young men I meet are looking for an identity. They want to know what kind of person they are before they have done the work required to become that person. They want the label — leader, achiever, professional — before the evidence.

This is the wrong order of operations.

Identity is not something you find. It is something you build, and it is built in the dark, in the repetition, in the absence of validation. It is built in the gym at 5 AM when no one is watching and the motivation has long since evaporated. It is built on the phone on the forty-third cold call of the day when the previous forty-two ended in a hang-up or a redirect. It is built when you keep the commitment you made to yourself when it would be easier not to.

I run a push-pull-legs split. Have for years. I train on machines and dumbbells at a Planet Fitness. There is nothing glamorous about it. The point was never glamour. The point is to show up every day and do the work, and to discover — through that repetition — what you are made of.

Tom Platz, who had the most developed legs in the history of bodybuilding, talks about achieving failure. Not avoiding it. Achieving it. The idea is that you push the muscle until it can no longer function — until there is nothing left. And in that moment of complete muscular failure, you discover something. You discover that you are still there. That the conscious, willing part of you outlasted the physical limit.

That is the lesson the gym teaches, if you let it. Not that you are strong. That you are durable.

I have found that the men who develop real confidence — not performance, not arrogance, but the quiet kind that doesn’t need to announce itself — are almost always men who have achieved failure somewhere. On a ranch. In a military barracks. Under a bar. In a sales conversation. They have reached the bottom of something and discovered they could still act.

Discipline is how you get there repeatedly, on your schedule, without waiting for the crisis.

Before you know who you are, build what you do. Identity follows action. It always has.

The Warrior and the Quiet Work

I went to the gym alone this morning. I didn’t want to go at all.

Lately, I have been struggling to find the drive to silence my brain. I am lifting the heaviest weight of my life. I am more diligent and structured than I have ever been. I am the best version of myself that has ever existed, each new day. Which is notable. But I have been struggling to reach that place of pure exhaustion — to push the muscle past its limit, to lose the muscle entirely.

For the first half of this year, that came easily. Every day I could find that place inside my mind. The place where the warrior lives. The kid who broke horses, planted miles of fence, graduated high school at sixteen. The kid who left his family home at twelve and never went back — who simply started on his journey. That kid has grit. A metric fuckload of it.

It has always been about being stubborn. I can be locked in longer. I can push further. I can wait. I can get back up.

Usually, the gym is where I visit that warrior. Where the brain recedes into the depth of the body. The muscles, the nerves, the breath — all of it drives the brain instead. All that exists is the moment. Thinking ends. Surviving begins. The other side of that is euphoric in its release — the cascading relief of the world washing back, and realizing the competence, durability, and capability of my own spirit. Reminding myself each day that I am the unbroken.

Today, alone, I found it. And it was fantastic.

It’s not about the body — though I’ll say this: body dysmorphia is real. In my case, I see myself as a Greek god. I am British, French, and German, so by all accounts I should be skilled at economics, strategy, and surrender. Bracing each day with brawn and grit is how I build the American into me.

Go find the warrior. Then go to work.

Anchor Essay

Leadership as Stewardship

The version of leadership most young men are sold is about authority. About being the one who decides. About the title, the office, the deference of others. It is an appealing vision, and it is almost entirely wrong.

Real leadership — the kind that builds something durable, the kind that earns trust over years rather than demanding it by position — is closer to stewardship. You are managing something that is not entirely yours. People’s time. People’s development. A client’s financial future. An organization’s culture. You are the temporary custodian of outcomes that will outlast your tenure.

That reframe changes everything.

When you think of yourself as a steward rather than an authority, you start asking different questions. Not what do I want this person to do, but what does this person need to become capable of? Not how do I get credit for this outcome, but how do I build the system that produces this outcome without me?

I spent part of last week working through a broker meeting, with five deliverables on the back end. All day, I wanted to execute them personally. Outline, plan, draft, send. Instead, I paused. I called Nadia. We mapped the system that would allow Elias to own it. At 5 PM, Elias received a structured email with defined tasks, expectations, and meta-tasks — SOPs to build, agreements to refine, reporting structures to create.

I am not trying to do more. I am trying to multiply capacity.

That is the discipline of stewardship. You give away the work you are capable of doing so that the people around you can grow into it. You invest time in transfer rather than execution. And in six months, the organization is stronger than if you had simply done everything yourself.

Young advisors ask me how to build a book. The answer is the same as building a team: serve the client’s interests with the same rigor you would apply to your own. Do not optimize for the commission. Optimize for the outcome. Trust follows from that, and trust is the compounding asset in this business.

Lead like someone will audit your decisions in twenty years. Because someone will. It will be you.

Directing, Delaying, Deleting

I appreciated the time with Owen and Nadia today. Helpful validation that I am directionally correct in shaping Nadia’s role — defining clearly what it is and what it is not. I need to continue doing the same for myself. This week I have made meaningful progress in separating what I should do from what I should not.

We met this morning with a new broker. Initial signals were strong. I left that meeting with five deliverables owed.

All day, I wanted to execute them personally. Instead, I paused. I called Nadia. We mapped the system. At 5 PM, Elias received a structured email with defined tasks, expectations, and meta-tasks — SOPs to build, agreements to refine, reporting structures to establish.

There was teaching involved. A forty-minute session walking through the questions I asked in the broker meeting and why they mattered. We reviewed the comp grid. I shared tools to anticipate information gaps before they require follow-up.

Growth is not comfortable. It feels like shin splints — expanding faster than the structure is ready to support.

Directing, delaying, and deleting before doing will become easier. One delegated task at a time. One system built instead of one task completed personally.

When we walk through the desert, may manna fall.

The Answer Is Already No

I spent time with Nina this morning. She requested feedback on several topics, which led to a broader discussion around decision-making and action.

One item she raised was whether to ask Beth to return temporarily for support. Nina hesitated, assuming the answer would be no.

I shared a simple but effective principle: the answer is already no unless the question is asked.

The only way to change the probability of a no into a yes is to make the ask. Even after the ask, the answer may still be no. But without action, there is no possibility of a different outcome.

I explained how this mindset applied to cold calling. Before dialing, the answer is already no. Taking action is the only variable that can change that. It may remain no. But it could become yes. The only way to know is to take the action.

This is a simple lesson — one that is easy to overlook and highly effective when applied. It remains one of my preferred frameworks for driving decisive action when fear of rejection creates paralysis.

The phone call you didn’t make didn’t save you from rejection. It guaranteed it.

Anchor Essay

The Quiet Work of Reinvention

There is a version of reinvention that gets celebrated — the dramatic pivot, the public comeback, the TEDx talk about hitting rock bottom. That version is mostly fiction, or at least it is the highlight reel edited from something much slower and more private.

The reinvention I know is quiet. It happens in the mornings before anyone is watching. It happens in the decision to return to the gym after a week where you had every legitimate reason not to. It happens in the choice to keep your tone level in a conversation that deserves your anger. It happens in the incremental recalibration of who you are deciding to be, each day, in the absence of applause.

I went through a prolonged divorce. I am not going to dramatize it here, because it does not deserve additional drama. What I will say is this: it lasted longer than it should have, required more endurance than I anticipated, and taught me more about my own character than almost any other experience in my life.

At some point — I cannot give you an exact date — I stopped being destabilized by it. The chaos became context. The uncertainty became familiar. And I realized that what I had mistaken for suffering was actually the slow formation of something I could trust.

That is what adversity produces, if you don’t run from it. Not resilience as a concept. Actual, earned, verified confidence. The kind that knows what it cost.

I spoke recently with the spouse of the person involved in the affair. She had just learned the truth. What struck me most was not the content of the conversation but the contrast it revealed — I was hearing a version of myself from a year ago. Destabilized. Searching. Disoriented. And I no longer recognized that man.

You will not recognize him either, if you do the work.

The path I can offer you is not a shortcut. It is more direct than the alternative, but it requires full contact with every difficulty. No bypasses. No emotional anesthesia. You go through it, and you come out the other side carrying something portable and permanent.

Hard lessons do not need to be wasted. If I paid for this wisdom in full, then I have no intention of hoarding it. If another man can stand taller, decide sooner, or avoid walking into a storm he does not need to face because of something I chose to say, then the cost was not in vain.

I walked the path. I earned the lesson. Now I pass it forward.

Earned Confidence

I did a significant amount of reflection over the weekend.

The divorce remains unresolved. We have been separated and without contact for a year. Shortly before the affair was discovered, she gave me a copy of Never Split the Difference. At the time, I read it as a signal: stand firm, negotiate from strength, pursue what is fair rather than concede for expediency. That read turned out to be correct.

Over the weekend, the spouse of the individual involved in the affair reached out. She had just learned the truth herself. We spoke for three hours.

What struck me most was not the content of the conversation but the contrast it revealed. I was hearing the version of myself from a year ago — destabilized, searching, disoriented. And I realized I no longer recognize that man in the mirror.

I no longer work from anxiety. I work from earned confidence. Confidence built through adversity. Through breakdowns. Through being stranded on a rural Illinois road with a blown tire and no safety net. Through sweat, failure, and rebuilding.

Tom Platz says you have to achieve failure. Once you have met it fully, the only direction left is forward.

Adversity has been my teacher. The lessons were earned the hard way. That is where my confidence comes from. Not from titles. Not from validation. From surviving what was meant to break me.

Hard lessons do not need to be wasted.

Asset Protection

Tomorrow I am taking a sick day.

I caught a cold and it is winning tonight. Head heavy. Body slow. Emails are current. Nothing urgent is burning. The right move is to rest and recover.

That sentence should be simple. It is not.

Because even as I write it, the reflex fires: What isn’t moving? Who’s waiting? What edge is dulling? What opportunity is slipping?

That reflex has built everything I have. And it will run me into the ground if I don’t manage it.

There is a discipline to pushing. There is also a discipline to stopping.

Taking a sick day is not indulgence. It is asset protection. If I treat myself like a machine, I will eventually get machine failure.

I often confuse constant motion with virtue. They are not the same.

Recovery is part of sustained performance. Stewardship includes self-stewardship. Even disciplined men need to heal when the body says slow down.

Growth requires failure. It does not require self-destruction.

Tomorrow I rest. Then I iterate again.

Anchor Essay

A Philosophy of Forward Motion

IMUA is a Hawaiian word. It means to move forward. Our organization uses it as a cultural anchor. I have made it something more personal — a daily standard, a quiet question I ask before I close the day.

Did I move forward today?

Note what the question is not asking. It is not asking whether you won today. Whether you were the best. Whether you hit your number or impressed someone important or felt confident or avoided failure. It is only asking one thing: did you move forward?

This is a more honest metric than most of the ones we use to evaluate ourselves. Revenue targets can be missed through no fault of execution. Confidence fluctuates regardless of merit. Feelings lie constantly. But the question of forward motion — that one you can answer accurately. You know if you moved or stood still.

For a young advisor, this framework is particularly useful in the early years, when the evidence of progress is slow and the feedback loops are long. A new client takes months to close. A referral network takes years to build. A reputation takes a decade to establish. If you evaluate yourself only against final outcomes, you will spend most of your early career feeling behind.

IMUA gives you a different frame. Did you make the calls? Did you send the follow-up? Did you prepare for the meeting more thoroughly than last time? Did you ask the uncomfortable question instead of letting the conversation stay comfortable? Did you show up to the gym even when you didn’t want to?

Forward. Not perfect. Forward.

Alexander wept, the story goes, because there were more worlds to conquer. I always preferred Plutarch’s version — that he wept because he had not yet conquered even one. The distinction matters. The first version is about satisfaction. The second is about urgency.

There are always more worlds. There is always more ground. The only honest question is whether you are moving toward it.

IMUA. Move forward.

When Things Start Clicking

Sometimes things just start clicking. Not everything — but enough to feel it.

The team completed the internal team agreements, vendor relations and outreach agreements, the internal finder-minder-binder handoff process, and the CRM and Asana build-outs. On my personal Asana board — which at times felt like death by a thousand small cuts — we cleared roughly 90%. Heading into the final 24 days of the quarter, that feels like solid footing.

I submitted a speaker proposal for MDRT Edge. And somehow, operating an entire week without an the internal team, we still supported every advisor — and grew the business.

This is what clicking looks like. Not fireworks. Infrastructure working. People winning. Systems running without supervision.

IMUA.

Anchor Essay

The Field Manual — A Note on This Section

Everything in this book up to this point has been philosophical. Reflective. The long view.

This section is different.

What follows is the field manual I wrote for the people I lead — new advisors, interns, junior team members entering a professional environment for the first time. I wrote it the way I talk. I have not cleaned it up for publication. The directness is intentional. The profanity is earned. The bluntness is the point.

Philosophy tells you who to become. Field manuals tell you what to do on Monday morning.

You need both.

Read this section as exactly what it is: hard-won operational advice from someone who has been in the work long enough to know what actually matters and what is theater. Some of it will feel obvious. The obvious things are the ones people consistently fail to do. That is why they are in here.

Take notes. Then go execute.

The Field Manual — Rules 01 through 04

Rule One: Five Minutes Early Is On Time. On Time Is Late.

You should never show up late to a meeting. Especially virtual. Showing up late to a virtual meeting will either announce you with a chime, or cause the squares of everyone to shift. You’re already late, and now it’s spotlighted. The last thing you want at the start is to spotlight yourself for a lack of punctuality, integrity, and having your shit together.

The reality of life is that first impressions matter greatly. You are a raindrop in a flood. Your first impression will be the most important factor in your ability to navigate a relationship.

Showing up early also promises very real benefit. Those who show up early are often the drivers of the project or agenda. Usually the muscle. The boss might be late because their other meeting ran over. But the team that’s there early is often going to become your key asset.

Being early affords you the opportunity to relationship build. Use these few moments wisely. Camera on. Engaged. Personable. Talk about the weather. Talk about the kids. The summer plans. Whatever. Learn about them. Clock it. Note it. Circle back on it later. So many people in their lives do not feel heard or valued. Your work to do that little piece can have dramatic impact. Doing that as a habit means you are laying a million tiny seeds. Tend to them — and soon your crop yield will build your tribe.

Rule Two: Have a Fucking Agenda.

Do not stroll aimlessly through meetings. Do not talk just to add your voice into the airwaves. Come to every engagement with appropriate prep and study. Be prepared for one pointed and nuanced question — a question that displays that you have researched, pondered, and prepared.

This can be handled passively. Add contacts to your Google Trends daily brief. Follow them on social media. Review prior to meeting, the night before. This will allow your brain to make chained connections. Studies show most of the chaining of ideas happens during sleep.

Your question should not simply regurgitate a factoid. It should be at minimum one layer deeper. In a meeting with the partner firm, Gavin cited their recent fund rollout — the specific dollar amount — and correlated how it might impact the fund we were forming together. The attendees all leaned back, smiled, and reflected before speaking. Gavin’s prep made them feel seen and valued. They became more open to our asks. That one moment will have impact for our clients for years.

Last-minute prep is a futile effort. That time would be better spent calming yourself. Getting a glass of water. Doing your ritual.

Rule Three: Maintain a Focused Practice for Study and Work.

Studies show that maintaining a standard time and place for study and work leads to increased productivity and retention. Work from the same place. Have a preparation ritual — get dressed in the uniform of the day, drink water, gym, shower, whatever. Sit down at the same place. Limit distractions. Radio, TVs, phones silenced or removed.

One should never work from the couch or bed. Your place to work and study should be your place to work and study.

The ritual trains your nervous system. Over time, sitting down at that desk becomes the trigger for focus itself. You are conditioning yourself the same way you condition a muscle. Repetition, consistency, load.

Rule Four: Have a Ritual Before Meetings, Calls, or Public Speaking.

If you are nervous before these engagements, take advantage of how the human brain works — and how it can be tricked.

Stupid monkey brain gets scared of rejection. Trick it.

My ritual: sixty push-ups before a call or big meeting. I jump up and yell — starting from my stomach and rolling out my chest. The physical activity and blood flow dump the happy chemicals into my brain and allow me to overpower the anxiety and push past.

For some it’s quiet reflection. Or a heavy song. Sitting with a pet. Whatever ritual you find that works — do it. Do it habitually. Reinforce it. Soon your brain will learn it doesn’t need to be nervous, because it hasn’t been nervous the last ninety times it went through this activity.

The ritual is not superstition. It is neurological conditioning. Use it.

The Field Manual — Rules 05 through 08

Rule Five: Modulate Your Communication Strategy Based on Your Audience.

There are absolutely different ways people prefer to engage with material. You should work to understand and appreciate what works for each audience. A/B testing will serve you well.

Communicating up to a leader or mentor — your email should be extremely succinct. They do not need narrative. Key items distilled into simple lines will go farther for engagement and response than large blocks of prose. This takes considerable effort. Ask yourself: can you take a paragraph and reduce it to one clear line? Do you have a clear call to action?

Use BLUF and BAF. Bottom Line Up Front. If you need to make an ask — format for BAF: Benefit, Advantage, Feature. Start with the hopeful outcome. Not the product.

Communicating down — do the inverse. Provide narrative. Provide context. Write so that someone brand new to the conversation can understand it all. Assume your recipient will forward your email to their mother-in-law. Will it still be understood? Refine until it is.

Your communication will be the largest driver of your success in this business. Do not cheat yourself by not actively working on this skill.

Things you should never write: Just circling back. Following up. I hope this email finds you well. Most executives review email on mobile, late in the evening. If your preview doesn’t signal relevance and impact immediately, your email sits. Who does what by when. Log it. Circle back on it. That is how things get done.

Rule Six: Dress and Appearance.

Dress like you respect yourself, the mission, and the members of your audience.

Just look like you give a shit.

There’s almost zero excuse for looking like a bag of ass. If your shirt is wrinkled, toss it in the dryer while you shower with a wet dish rag. Wear hard pants — even for Zoom and remote work.

There will be a day where the dog barks, the doorbell rings, or something causes you to need to get up. Don’t be the person wearing basketball shorts and a dress shirt.

If I see you can’t unwrinkle your shirt or put on proper pants, I am also going to assume you put the same shortcuts into your deliverables.

If you dress like you have respect for yourself, it will lend the belief that you have the same respect for your outputs.

Rule Seven: Integrity for Commitments.

If you make a promise, say you will be there, state your availability — keep it. If you promise a due date, be ready prior. Early is on time. On time is late.

People would rather work with someone of high trust and medium production over high production and low trust. Your integrity and follow-through will drive your career. If you start on shaky ground, good fucking luck recovering.

If you have to break a promise or miss a due date, communicate that early. You don’t need to justify. Honor your partners by coming with accountability, apology, and as much advance notice as possible.

Often, I find the greatest relationships I have are the ones where I made a mistake, took accountability, worked to rectify it, and then followed through on fixing it. The rupture and repair cycle, handled with integrity, builds deeper trust than a flawless record that has never been tested.

Rule Eight: Deliverables.

When we work at the email and Excel factory — your work must shine.

If you aren’t sure, don’t ship it. If you can’t defend it, don’t ship it. If you don’t understand it or can’t confirm it, don’t ship it.

The work we do has drastic ramifications for our clients’ lives. It provides the mechanisms to feed coworkers’ families and build a future. If you ship something that is wrong, not researched, not solid — you can have a dramatic negative effect on the viability of the business.

It is better to say you are unsure of something and need to consult than to say something with certainty you do not have. People don’t want to be sold hope. They want to buy confidence.

If you are building something with conscious weak points and want a directional review, preface it upfront. Use a placeholder rather than a guess: Needs validation — assumed X.

We all have the same twenty-four hours. If you spend fourteen of them working as hard as possible on the wrong thing, you have provided less value than someone who spent three hours of focused work on the right thing.

There is no gold star for digging a trench ten thousand miles from the front lines. You’re a warrior. Make sure you’re coordinating your attack with others. Make sure you’re at the right front.

A Final Word and Closing Note

You are here for a reason.

You were chosen after a careful and diligent review process because your worth and value showed through clearly. You are capable. You are talented. You are worthy of the opportunities in front of you.

You are owed nothing.

Capture the opportunities. Make the most of the hours you have. Find harmony between the work and the life around it. Maintain good habits for diet, exercise, and reflection. Take time for family, friends, and community.

Your network will be your net worth.

All of your relationships are seeds of opportunity. Tend to your gardens accordingly.

IMUA.

A Note to the Young Advisor

You are going to have a day — perhaps you have already had it — where you sit at your desk at the end of a full day of work and your list is longer than when you started. Where you made forty calls and talked to three people. Where a client didn’t sign. Where a colleague got the recognition you thought you earned. Where the compensation you were promised has not arrived.

On that day, the industry will feel like a lie. The dream of building something will feel naive. The gap between where you are and where you want to be will feel permanent.

It is not permanent. But I cannot tell you how long it will last.

What I can tell you is that the gap closes through the same mechanism every time: disciplined forward motion in the absence of external reward. You build the habit when there is no payoff yet. You make the call when you don’t want to. You show up to the gym when you are the only one who will know whether you went. You keep the standard when no one is watching.

That is how the compounding starts. Not with a breakthrough. With a quiet decision, made alone, that no one will acknowledge.

I left home at twelve. I broke horses. I served. I cooked. I sold. I failed in all of it at some point and kept moving anyway. I am thirty-five and I am still building, still failing, still iterating.

The men I respect most are not the ones who had the fewest failures. They are the ones who treated every failure as tuition and extracted full value from the lesson.

You are not behind. You are early.

The work is in front of you. The only question that matters is whether you will move toward it.

IMUA.

Move forward.