A Note Before You Begin
IMUA was about the individual. The discipline. The daily forward motion. The work you do alone, in the dark, before anyone is watching.
Ohana is about who moves with you.
I built my first family by accident. My second by necessity. My third by choice. The third is the one I am writing about.
Ohana, in the Hawaiian tradition, extends beyond blood. It is the people you have chosen, the people who have chosen you back, the web of relationships that holds you accountable to your best self and catches you when you fall. It is the team. The chosen few. The people who deserve your honesty and your time and your presence — not because they are owed it, but because you have decided they are worth it.
This is the book about those people. How to find them. How to build with them. How to lead them without losing them. How to show up for them in the moments that matter.
It is also, honestly, the book about the times I failed to do those things. Because I have. More often than I like.
The goal is not perfection. The goal is to keep moving toward the standard.
IMUA. Move forward. Together.
Essays
Anchor Essay
Who You Build With
At some point — I cannot tell you exactly when — I stopped thinking of the people in my life as context and started thinking of them as choices.
The distinction matters enormously.
Context is what happens to you. The family you were born into. The city where you grew up. The manager who hired you first. Context shapes you, but you do not select it. Choice is different. Choice is the deliberate assembly of the people who will have access to your time, your energy, and your trust. The tribe you build intentionally.
I was gone from my family home at twelve. That is not a complaint — it is the fact that shaped me most. What it meant, practically, was that from a very young age I had to figure out who my people were going to be. I could not rely on proximity or default. I had to look at the people around me and ask, consciously: is this someone I want to build with?
That question has guided me ever since. In the military. In the kitchen. In the office. On the phone at six in the morning making calls. I am always, somewhere underneath the surface, asking the question.
What I have learned is that the people worth building with share a small number of identifiable qualities. They do what they say they will do. They are honest about what they don’t know. They celebrate your wins without measuring them against their own. They tell you the thing you need to hear before they tell you the thing you want to hear. And they show up — consistently, quietly, without requiring applause for the showing up itself.
You do not need many people like this. A few is enough. A few is, in fact, the correct number. The goal is not a large tribe. The goal is a true one.
Build carefully. Build deliberately. And when you find someone who meets the standard — tend to that relationship the way you tend to anything worth keeping.
Ohana is not inherited. It is chosen, and then it is earned, and then it is maintained. That maintenance is a daily practice, not a sentiment.
Choose your people. Then show up for them.
Anchor Essay
The Team as Family
I lead a team.
Not a department. Not a headcount. A team — which means a collection of people who have decided to trust each other with the work and, in some cases, with more than the work.
That distinction is not semantic. Most organizations are collections of individuals operating in proximity, coordinated by process and incentive. A team is different. A team has a culture — a set of shared beliefs about how the work gets done and what it means to do it well. A culture is not built by mandate. It is built by behavior, modeled consistently, over time, by the people at the front of the room.
I think about leadership the way I think about parenting. High warmth, high standards. Both, simultaneously, without negotiating one for the other. The failure mode in parenting — and in leadership — is usually the sacrifice of one for the other. High warmth, low standards produces people who feel loved but are not prepared. High standards, low warmth produces people who perform but do not trust.
The goal is both. Always both.
This is harder than it sounds. High warmth requires genuine investment — knowing the people, remembering what they told you, celebrating their wins specifically and not generically. High standards require the willingness to have hard conversations, to hold people to what they agreed to, to refuse to accept work that is beneath what you know they are capable of.
Both take time. Both take attention. Both are worth it.
The teams that stay together, that perform at the highest level, that attract the best people and develop them into even better ones — they are not teams with the best process or the highest incentives. They are teams where people feel both challenged and valued. Where the standard is real and the care is real and neither is conditional on the other.
Build that. It takes years. It is the most important work you will do as a leader.
Anchor Essay
On Chosen Family
I did not get to keep the family I was born into.
That is not entirely true — I have relationships with my sisters that I value, and I carry my family in ways I am still learning to name. But the family of my childhood was not a place I could stay, and by twelve I was building something else. First out of necessity. Eventually out of intention.
The people who raised me in the ways that mattered were not my blood. They were Brent, who told me the truth about what a man’s life could look like. Sheila, who tapped me on the shoulder at a graduation no one else attended and never really let go. Tucker, who held a standard that asked me to become more than I was.
What I know about chosen family is that it requires a different kind of commitment than blood family. Blood family is yours by default. Chosen family is yours by decision — which means it has to be renewed, actively, by both people, or it fades. The friendship that goes uncalled. The mentor who stops being asked. The colleague who moves on and is not followed up with.
Chosen family requires tending.
I am deliberate about the people I bring close. I am deliberate about staying close once I have decided to. I check in on the people who have shown me what is possible. I celebrate the people who are in the early, hard chapters of their own becoming. I try to be, for the young men and women I lead, what Brent and Sheila and Tucker were for me — present, honest, and genuinely invested in who they are becoming.
That is what Ohana means to me. Not blood. Not geography. The people you have chosen, and who have chosen you back, and who you tend to because they are worth tending.
Build it deliberately. Protect it fiercely. Show up for it even when the work is loud and the moment feels inconvenient.
The window is narrow.
IMUA. Move forward. Together.
Journal Entries
The People Who Run Hard
Today maintained a high operational tempo from start to finish. I am taking a moment to acknowledge gratitude.
I am appreciative of the people on my team for their consistency, urgency, and follow-through. For the willingness to lean in and take action. For the ownership they bring to their work. For those who have stepped forward when it would have been easier to step back.
I am grateful to work alongside people who run hard. Their example consistently pushes me to raise my own standard.
The pattern of my life — from the ranch to the military to the kitchen to this office — has been this: find the people who run hard and run alongside them. Not to compete. To be pulled. To be accountable to the standard their effort sets.
Those people are everywhere, if you are looking.
IMUA.
Holly’s Day
Holly called in the middle of my workday, which is highly unusual. She was offered the GM position at her store — a thirty percent raise, with dramatically increased bonus opportunity as well.
I am elated for her. She wanted this. She pursued it. She politicked for it, strategically and patiently. She has been kind and professional even when others were not. She is a dedicated worker. She is warm, personable, and she remembers the art of salesmanship.
On the phone, in the moment, I don’t think I was excited enough. I was deep in a project and couldn’t pull myself out. After we hung up, I started to think. I thought about how she always shows up for me. How she makes sure I feel celebrated and loved.
So when I sent the last illustration out at seven, I got the kids and we went to the store. Three helium balloons — one is a crown, two say congratulations. A proper card and a gift bag. Sweets she loves. Then I went to ULTA and had the saleswoman help me pull everything she’d like from her favorite brands.
We got home, put it all together. The kids wrote in one card. I wrote in another.
Ohana is not a feeling. It is a practice. It is the decision, made in the middle of a busy evening, to get in the car.
The Pot and the Kettle
Holly was supposed to be home around five. She called to let me know she’ll be staying until close. Ten o’clock.
I had planned to take her out to dinner to celebrate. I was really looking forward to sharing in her excitement.
Then it hit me.
How many times have I done the exact same thing to my own family? Focused on the mission. Working late. Not realizing the people at home were waiting to celebrate with me.
Maybe this is just the pot finally understanding what the kettle feels like.
Being equal partners means each person tries to carry seventy percent of the load for the other. Tonight that means she carries the work and I carry the understanding.
What am I thankful for? My partner is succeeding. My partner is motivated, driven, and willing to lean in when it matters. My kids are healthy and happy.
Harper asked me tonight if we could go outside and ride her bike again, since daylight savings gave us extra light.
We went.
Harper in the Snow
I shoveled the driveway at five-thirty in the morning so Holly could back out. Still made it to the gym. Three people there. I looked forward to expressing my disappointment in everyone else.
But Harper had told me the night before that it was going to snow. She was right. Well over a foot.
School was cancelled.
Harper told me this was her first ever snow day and how perfect the day had been.
Which made me realize: the grumpy man at five-thirty AM shoveling the driveway should have had a little more mahalo for the snow.
Because of the magic and wonder it delivered to the two kids inside the house.
That is Ohana. Not the grand gestures. The willingness to reframe the inconvenience as the gift.
Harper at Martial Arts
Martial arts with Harper today was fantastic.
For months it’s mostly been joyful chaos. Lots of giggling and rolling around. Fun, but not focused.
Today she had fun and started chaining techniques together. I watched her think through her steps. I watched her find her foot in space and move it into position. I watched her shift her shoulders to slide an arm around her partner’s neck. I watched her defend a takedown, forget what came next, and then remember to spin and face her opponent.
I watched that kid actually do martial arts.
The joy on her face when it clicked was electric. Like when a kid finally learns to ride a bike and suddenly the world expands.
The drive to McDonald’s afterward — where she earned a Happy Meal and ice cream — she told me how this was her first ever snow day and how perfect the day had been.
Crazy that both of those moments happened in the same month.
Et Tu, Ohana
The two words that have lived on the edge of my tongue today, never quite escaping, have been: I quit.
I missed Harper’s choke. Missed that moment. Missed that happy kid. Because I chose to be flexible. To accommodate the schedule, the workload, the expectations.
I am one of the greats. And the greats, throughout history, have always fumbled the bag when it comes to family. Their memoirs speak of it — regret in that part of life.
Joshua is urgent and important.
Joshua is rejecting all calendar invites that are next to red.
The culture we create is the one we tolerate. That applies to my own time as much as anyone else’s.