PONO — On Doing Right

Anchor Essay

What You Hold

My great-grandfather Jack was not a fighter pilot.

I spent the better part of my childhood believing he was. My great-grandmother City — whose real name was Francis, but whose baby sister couldn’t say sister, so City she became — would tell me stories about him from the back patio of her condo on a golf course in Reno. I was maybe eight years old, hunting golf balls along the stream behind the fourth hole like they were Easter eggs, and she would talk about this man I had never met. He died when I was two. Everything I knew of him was filtered through the sweetest woman I have ever known.

In my head, I built him enormous.

Army Air Corps. World War II. A man who was wise and strong and soft in equal measure. Bigger than the photos. I was certain he was a pilot. I don’t know if someone told me that or if I simply decided it was true — the way boys decide things before they understand the difference between what is and what they need. Either way, the story took root.

When I was in my twenties, I pulled his service records.

He was a typist.

A male typist in the Army Air Corps during World War II. I laughed the first time I read it. And then I thought about it more carefully. The Army didn’t assign men to type because they were unremarkable. They assigned them because they were precise. Because accuracy mattered. Because someone had to hold the record correctly, even when everything else was chaos. He was the man they trusted to get it right.

He also sold Ferraris after the war. I know this because I had his business card. I had his dog tags. I had his medals — a National Defense ribbon, a few others. I kept them like relics because they were the only physical evidence that this man had existed and that I was made, in some small part, from the same material he was.

I lost the business card in a halfway house in Chicago when I was twelve. Someone decided my great-grandfather’s things were worth taking. The dog tags I still have. I still carry them.

When I graduated Air Force basic training, I did three things.

One of them was getting the Hap Arnold wings tattooed on my chest — the old Army Air Corps insignia, not the modern Air Force version. Everyone tells you not to get a moto tat when you graduate basic. Everyone is right. I did it anyway. I did it because it was his, and I had already lost his business card, and I wanted to carry something of his on my body that no one could take from me.

The second thing I did was start learning about watches.

My buddy Hesket found a Casio on the ground during our deployment. Literally picked it up off the ground. He handed it to me. I started researching.

Somewhere in that research, I found out that Bulova made the official watches issued to Army Air Corps soldiers in World War II. The 10K military models. The watches men like my great-grandfather Jack would have worn.

I bought one. A modern homage version — acrylic crystal, quartz movement, not the same as the original — but still. I bought it to mark something. To say: I did what he did. I carried it forward. I wore it like it meant something because it did.

That watch cracked open something I have not been able to close since.

I will spare you the full taxonomy of my collection, except to say this: every watch I own now is a timestamp.

A Bulova Minuteman from 1952 — hand-wound, cleaned and oiled — that I wore on my last trip to the missile field, because we maintained Minuteman missiles and the watch deserved to be there. A Bulova Presidente from the 1960s that I wore the day I received my DD-214 and walked out of the Air Force for the last time. A Christopher Ward chronograph I bought the week Evelyn was born — she’ll get it someday, or I’ll be wearing it when they put me in the ground and she can take it then. A Tag Heuer my ex-father-in-law pressed into my hands on my wedding day, bought on a base exchange in Germany when he was in the Marines. The marriage is over. The watch is still on my wrist. What it honors isn’t what I thought it honored when I received it, but what it honors is real.

I also started two companies inside the watch community. The first with a man named Cole — we built an affordable automatic chronograph out of the last 200 Seagull movements in existence, sold 150 watches, and lost money on every one. We were twenty-two years old and had no idea what we were doing, and we did it anyway.

The second was watch straps, with a man named Dane.

Dane wasn’t supposed to drink. His liver was the way it was and the deal was clear: if you drink again, you will die. Dane went to Vegas with our inventory and our money anyway. My friend Harkins flew out, went bar to bar until he found him, pulled the inventory out of trash bags in the back of Dane’s Jeep, flew it home to Pennsylvania, and we rebuilt from a garage. Then Dane got sick. We sold the company. Gave him every dollar from the sale so he could get the care he needed.

Dane died anyway.

I have straps left from that inventory. I will never sell them. I will never need them. I am keeping one of them on the watch I bought to honor my great-grandfather — the watch that sits on my dresser right now waiting to go to someone else.

Pono means righteousness. Doing right. But in the way I have come to understand it, Pono is less about moral performance and more about stewardship.

You do not own the things entrusted to you. You hold them.

You hold them with care because someone before you held them with care. You hold them because the people who come after you will need what was preserved. You hold them because the moment you decide that what you’ve been given is yours to spend rather than yours to tend, the line breaks. The thing that was meant to compound quietly over time — the trust, the standard, the knowledge, the watch — it stops compounding. It just ends with you.

The shortcut is always available. Every time you don’t take it, you build something in yourself that doesn’t announce itself. There is no ceremony. No one sees it happen. It accumulates in silence over years, until one day you realize that what you have — the reputation, the clarity of conscience, the ability to look at yourself without flinching — cannot be purchased or accelerated or recovered once lost. It can only be built. One choice at a time.

I have not always chosen correctly.

I have taken shortcuts I knew were shortcuts. I have told myself comfortable stories about why the easier path was actually the right one. I have felt the weight of a Pono choice and set it down because the cost was inconvenient, and I have lived with the tax on that for longer than the shortcut was ever worth.

What I can tell you is that the cost of Pono is real and the reward is delayed and the reward is not always what you expected. Sometimes it is just the fact of still being able to look at yourself clearly. That is not nothing. In some seasons, it is everything.

I have an intern named Theo.

Theo lost his grandfather last year. He is a child of divorce, parents who pit him against each other, standing at the edge of graduating college and figuring out who he is going to be. This semester he cut his hair, ended a relationship that wasn’t right, stopped habits that weren’t serving him, and locked in — fully and visibly — on becoming the man he wants to be.

I have watched this happen. It is something to witness.

A few weeks ago, in a group meeting, I was walking through a training deck. Laying out the structure, the positioning, the expected outcomes. And Theo spoke up. Respectfully. Tactfully. And correctly. He told me the approach was too technical for the audience. That we needed to lead with the value, not the mechanics. He was shaking slightly as he said it — you could hear it — because he understood the position he was in. An intern, taking his mentor to task in front of peers. But he was right, and he knew he was right, and he said it anyway.

That is Pono. That is exactly what Pono looks like — the shakiness in someone’s voice when they do the right thing at personal cost because their integrity won’t let them do otherwise.

I have been thinking about what to give him.

And I have landed on the Bulova 10K.

The watch I bought when I came home from deployment. The watch I bought in honor of a man I never really knew, built from stories a great-grandmother told me while I collected golf balls along the fourth hole in Reno. The watch I bought to say: I am trying to become something worthy of him. On the watch is a green NATO strap — from Dane’s inventory, from the company we built and sold so that Dane could die with some dignity. Every layer of that watch is a record of becoming.

Theo is at his beginning.

He doesn’t need my history. He needs his own timestamps. But I want him to know that the watch he’s holding was worn by a man who was also twenty-something and also trying to figure out what he was made of, who was also carrying things he had lost and things he was still building, who was also becoming something he couldn’t fully see yet.

I want him to know that I see him.

Pono is not about being right.

It is about being accountable to what was entrusted to you — and making sure the line doesn’t end with you.

My great-grandfather Jack typed the records correctly when it would have been easy to cut corners. He held the standard in a war zone, in a time when no one was watching. He sold Ferraris after. He loved my great-grandmother City in a way that made her spend the rest of her life telling a small boy stories about him.

He is the reason I joined the Air Force. He is the reason I bought a watch. He is the reason I am standing in front of a twenty-two-year-old with a green NATO strap and a quartz movement and forty years of accumulated timestamps, trying to find the words to say:

This is yours now. Take care of it.

You are worth it.

Go become the man you are trying to become.

I See Him

I am so proud of the Pono Theo displayed today.

I assigned the spring interns with polishing, updating, and presenting the Private Placement training deck. As I walked through the aspirational outcomes, the outline, the style and positioning, Theo spoke up.

He stated, respectfully and tactfully, that the structure was too technical — that the audience would benefit more from leading with BAF and the end value than with the mechanics. The shakiness in his voice made it clear this was not easy. But he was confident in his reasoning and correct in his assessment.

That is what I need most. We have tools that agree with us. I need people with the courage to tell me when I’m not aligned.

I have landed on what to give Theo as a thank you for his second semester.

I am going to give him a watch. My great-grandfather served in the Army Air Corps in World War II. When I graduated basic training, I bought a modern replica of the Bulova 10K to signal to myself that I was becoming the man I set out to be. On the watch is a green NATO strap from the company I launched with my friend Dane Maddox. Dane passed away during our venture together.

Theo lost his grandfather last year. He is about to graduate college. This is his moment of becoming. He cut his hair this semester. Broke up with his girlfriend. Stopped smoking. Locked in entirely on who he wants to be.

I want to give this to him to let him know: I see him.

Now to change the battery. This is why you never buy a quartz watch. Only automatic or hand wind.

The Dogs

Pono means integrity. Honoring commitments. Being a good steward of all you oversee, even when it is inconvenient.

There is nothing more inconvenient than a Husky. In the arithmetic of inconvenience, two Huskies is somehow less inconvenient than one. The best thing for a Husky is another Husky. The second best thing is a job.

Kodiak and Juno are two of the most different dogs I have ever owned, for the same breed. Juno is the old man — steady, enduring, a slow burn that seems to have no ceiling. I did fifteen miles with him once. He was not the one who stopped.

Kodi is pure heart. Fast, springy, passion without limit. He throws himself into the next step like it is the only thing that exists.

Running them together is a chore and the world’s greatest joy. Two dogs built differently from their very souls, coming together as one unit.

Pono is putting on the coat, stepping away from the emails, and going for a pull with the boys. Giving them the work they need. Taking the break I need.

Not because anyone is watching. Because it is what they need, and I said I would.

Either Way, It Will Be Resolved

It’s Friday. IMUA was earned today.

The situation with my problem agent has been stabilized. A meeting is scheduled with the agency leader to clarify agreement terms, scope of work, and expectations. We will either increase spread or decrease workload. Either way, the issue will be resolved.

I want to hold on that sentence.

Either way, it will be resolved.

That is Pono in a business context. Not avoidance. Not escalation. A clear-eyed assessment of what the situation requires, followed by a direct conversation about what is and is not working, followed by a commitment to a resolution that is fair to both parties.

I approached it with one question: what is the right outcome here, and what does it take to get there?

The right outcome was clarity. Mutual clarity about what each party owes the other.

That is available in most difficult professional situations, if you approach them with that question rather than with a position to defend.

IMUA.

The Return on the Investment

The recognition is the return on the Pono investment.

It does not arrive as a trophy. It arrives as clarity. A quiet, solid knowledge of who you have been throughout a season that was designed to compromise you.

I paid for this stability in full. The currency was patience, restraint, and the repeated choice to respond with proportion when disproportionate responses were available and arguably justified. Every time the easier path appeared, I looked at it and kept walking.

The account is not closed. But the balance is real.

I walked the path. I earned the lesson.

Now I pass it forward.

That Is Pono

Despite the friction this week — teams not executing, documentation mishandled, due diligence failures from parties who created the process — it has been a great week.

There has been real forward movement. Tough conversations were had. Problems were brought into the light instead of ignored. Everyone showed the willingness to get up and go back after it.

That is Pono. That is IMUA.

The rest is just work we need to clean up. We will do that through honest conversations within our Ohana. With Mahalo for the effort people bring when they lean in. With Pono to make adjustments and honor commitments. And with Aloha — because we care about ourselves, each other, our clients, our communities, and the world we are building together.

It will come together sooner than we think.

IMUA.

Anchor Essay

The Internal Scoreboard

It is easy to have values when you know the scoreboard.

It is easy to have integrity when no one is watching, because you are watching. The internal scoreboard never goes dark. You know when you cut the corner. You know when you held the standard. The accountability is real even in private, because the person you are most accountable to is the one who has to live in your skin.

That is the version of Pono I am good at.

I know how to perform. I know how to deliver. I know how to show up for the thing that has a measurable outcome, a clear expectation, a defined consequence for failure. Give me a client, a deadline, a standard to meet — I will meet it. Give me a room full of people expecting something from me and I will give them more than they expected. The checklist runs automatically: Am I doing everything possible to maximize my value for this person, this thing, this entity?

It runs constantly. It runs well.

It does not run at home.

With the people closest to me, there is always tomorrow. There is always acceptance. There is no performance required, because the love is not conditional on performance. It was not earned and it cannot be revoked by a missed text or a distracted evening or a week where I showed up as less than my best.

That is the gift. That is the thing I searched for my entire life.

And what I have discovered, to my considerable embarrassment, is that I have been spending it wrong.

The room that grace creates — the slack in the rope that unconditional love provides — I have been using it to rest. To let the checklist go quiet. To be the version of myself that doesn’t have to try, because trying isn’t required, because I am loved anyway.

Which sounds like peace. It is not peace.

What it actually produces is this: the people who love me most get the leftovers. They get the tired version. The distracted version. The I’ll get to it later version. They get the dumping ground for every hard thing I won’t bring to the professional world — the fear, the frustration, the grief, the days when the warrior doesn’t show up in the gym and doesn’t know where he went.

They get the bummer parts.

The spark — the version of me that is lit up and alive and genuinely joyful — that version goes to work. That version shows up for clients, for advisors, for interns in a conference room who need someone to believe in them. That version gives its best hours, its sharpest thinking, its most present attention to people who are, at the end of the day, on the other side of a transaction.

And the people who have chosen to love me without a scoreboard? They get whatever is left.

There is a specific unfairness to this that I have been sitting with.

The unconditional love of the people closest to me is the thing I spent twenty years trying to find. It is the thing my great-grandmother City gave me freely that my mother made me earn. It is the thing I built an entire inner life around acquiring — the safety of being loved not for what you produce but for what you are.

I found it. Multiple times, in multiple people.

And the reward I give them for it is the worst of me.

Not the worst in a dramatic sense. Not cruelty or neglect. The worst in the quiet sense. The distracted sense. The taking-for-granted sense. The you’ll understand, you always do sense.

My sister texts me logistics for a favor she is doing me, and I don’t answer, because she will forgive me. My partner carries my darkness because I trust her with it, and I forget to bring her the light. The people who have given me the thing I wanted most get the version of me that has decided it doesn’t have to perform.

That is not grace. That is an extraction.

I think about what Pono actually requires here.

It is not the performance of love. It is not running the checklist for the people at home the way I run it for clients. That would be its own kind of failure — love reduced to service metrics, presence reduced to task completion.

What it requires is something harder and simpler than that.

It requires showing up with the spark. The actual spark — the version of me that is interested in things, that has opinions, that laughs at absurd situations in parking lots, that gets lit up by a watch or a book or an idea or a dog running full speed in fresh snow. The version that is genuinely alive.

Not the dumping ground. Not the place where the weight gets set down because this is the safe place to set it down.

The whole person. The full thing.

The people who love you unconditionally are not asking for your performance. They are not asking for your excellence or your deliverables or your maximized value.

They are asking for you.

And if what they keep getting is the version of you that shows up when there is nothing left to give — the tired version, the hollow version, the version that trusts their grace just enough to stop trying — then the reward for the thing you spent your whole life searching for is the most bummer parts of you.

Why is the reward I give them, for the thing I have sought my whole life, the most bummer parts of me?

I don’t have a clean answer to that. But the fact that I can ask it clearly is probably where the work starts.

Where Pono Should Show Up Most

It’s Pono Thursday.

We did it.

Had to run to Walgreens for a battery. Got pulled over on the way home because my headlights weren’t on. Had a quick Pono lesson with myself about keeping insurance in the car. As someone who works in insurance — that one’s on me.

Then we finished it.

I gave Theo three things: a watch strap from the company I built with my buddy Dane. The watch I bought after basic training to honor my grandfather. And a letter.

The letter mattered most.

I told him that watch marked the moment I realized I was becoming the man I intended to be. I told him I’ve watched that same thing happen in him over the last few months. That it’s been an honor to witness.

His grandfather passed last summer. He’s in the middle of his parents’ divorce. The timing mattered.

Before he opened it, I sat him down and told him it was coming. Didn’t tell him what it was. Just told him to read it, sit with it, and we’d talk the next day. I wanted him to have space to process it on his own terms.

He cried.

It was right.

That was Pono. Not just the gesture, but the intention, the timing, the follow-through.

And today, across the board, I operated like that. Every meeting. Every call. Every follow-up. I showed up with the right energy. The right intent. Trying to actually improve the outcome for the person on the other side of whatever I was doing.

You could call it manipulation. You’re shaping outcomes. Influencing behavior. Engineering results.

But if it’s done with care, with alignment, with genuine desire to help someone get where they want to go — that’s Pono. That’s not selling. That’s service.

Maybe that’s why I love work so much. Because it’s clear. You did it or you didn’t. You delivered or you didn’t. You won or you didn’t.

Everything else is messier.

Take my sister.

She’s pregnant. First child. I’m excited. Truly. We’ve had a complicated history. A lot of resentment growing up. A lot of things that happened that shouldn’t have happened. We’ve both done work. We’ve rebuilt. She matters to me.

She offered to watch the kids so Holly and I could get away for a night.

She’s a planner. Deep detail. Everything mapped out. That’s how she operates. She’s been texting me trying to get logistics sorted. Multiple questions. Long messages.

And I didn’t respond.

Not because I don’t care. Because I saw it, didn’t have all the answers, told myself I’d come back to it — and then it disappeared into the scroll.

ADHD. Out of sight, out of mind.

She called today. I missed it. Called her back later. She was short. I asked what was up.

She told me.

I’m trying to do you a favor, and getting information from you feels like pulling teeth. It feels rude.

She’s right. It is.

Not intentional. But impact over intent.

I apologized. No excuses.

I see a pattern.

I show up with discipline, energy, and intention for everyone else. Clients. Advisors. Team. But the people who love me automatically? They get what’s left. The tired version. The distracted version. The I’ll-get-to-it-later version.

Because there’s no scoreboard there. No immediate consequence. No win/loss column. So I let it slide.

That’s not Pono.

If anything, that’s exactly where Pono should show up the most.

So yeah. Today I had Pono in a lot of places.

Just not in the ones that matter most.

I’ll fix that.