Find Your Legacy
“A Militant Commitment to the Basics”
Recently I had the pleasure to have one of my Bolthouse Farms leadership team partners ( and good friend) Zak spend some time with me in Atlanta! We have been “working our brains out” since well before we closed on buying back the company from Campbell’s last June and it was a real treat to […]
Your first loss is your best loss”
It’s been three months since we closed on the purchase of buying Bolthouse Farms back from Campbells and what a ride! The work has been beyond intense, the team dynamics inspiring on the whole to say the least, the short term business challenges have been extreme ( products of very poor business decision making by […]
“Alacrity”… a critical word and idea for leaders…
It has been eight weeks since we closed on the purchase of Bolthouse Farms, and what a wild ride it has been! The business is in rough shape and needs a lot of work. The organization is in flux, and has been through a lot over the past few years, and the team and our culture needs […]
Ten years later…. Bruce Paynter’s legacy is alive and pushing me forward!
Its hard to imagine that ten years ago the week, my good friend and old boss passed away after his fight with the disease, ALS. It was a unique and complicated/challenging time, and I view it as a real treasure of my life that I was able to spend a lot of time with Bruce […]
Significant Digits for 6/17/19: 200, 11, & 2 !
June 17, 2019 is going to go down in my personal history as a notable day on a wide number of fronts, and while the closing of the transaction to buy back Bolthouse Farms from Campbell’s (more on that later) it isn’t the only significant event (or figure) that needs to be be noted today! […]
Cherry Pie and a glass of milk…. interview tips from a diner counter…
As I have mentioned in previous essays, I have had the chance to work from a very early age. Somewhere close to my 11thbirthday, I took over my brother’s paper route when he got a “real” after school job. After a few years delivering papers, I moved up in the world and got a job as a […]
A generous and gentle act of kindness at the Bakersfield airport…
Let me start by saying the past few weeks and months have been a wild ride, culminating in signing a big deal that lead me to Bakersfield last week. While I am sure that I will cover this “new deal” in coming essays, I want to share a story that happened very early Saturday morning as […]
“It’s really hard to be late when you are 8 minutes early….”
To start, this essay is not a rant, nor a tirade on the lack of punctuality broadly in professional environments across America. In fact, inspired by a coffee “meeting” this morning, it is a reminder of the power and impact of timliness and punctuality in our everyday personal and professional lives. Earlier today, I had […]
The “Silver Arrow” dynamic in planning
It may seem an odd place to start, but this essay comes from an experience I had at a boy scout camp in Western Pennsylvania as a kid. The setting is the early 70’s, I was a young scout and my brother was five years older than me and an emerging Eagle Scout ( who […]
“Optimism, a force multiplier for Leaders:” Redux
A number of years ago I wrote an essay on the powerful impact that “optimism” has on organizations and how “optimism” is a powerful tool for leaders broadly. ( see more at https://fylegacy.blogspot.com/2016/03/optimism-force-multiplier-for-leaders.html )The center point of the essay emanates from a quote of former Secretary of State Colin Powell on how he felt that a […]