I wrote a book on attention.

I still can’t put my phone down.

I was Head of People at a rocket company.

I burned out.

I’ve given more than 500 keynotes

…and I still get nervous before every single one.

I share this because I don’t pretend to have it all figured out. I can tell you what’s worked, what’s failed, and what I’m still learning.

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Camp & College“Are you in a cult?”
DebateThree speeches a week
BureauSaw the best… and the rest
CoachingHall of Famers to founders
MillennialsTalkin’ ’bout my generation
06Current missionThe ADHD GuyExplore attention
07Current missionRocket ManExplore Venus

Skill unlocks 0 / 5

Culture Design
Rhetoric & Stage Mechanics
Industry Intel
Storytelling & Entrepreneurship
Generational Divide

Camp & College

I went to summer camp in Kerrville, Texas, at eleven and kept going back for twelve summers. Tribes, chants, traditions you could never explain to someone who wasn’t there.

Then I chose a college most people describe as a cult. Texas A&M. I was elected class president, which meant I wasn’t just participating in the objectively odd traditions. I was planning them. I learned the features that create culture quickly, and the value that comes from building a distinct culture in terms of loyalty, meaning, and connection.

Debate

I was a debater in high school at one of the top programs in the country. The requirement to be on the team was three speeches a week, graded by the best debate teacher around. By the time I was seventeen, I couldn’t watch someone give a talk without dissecting it in my head. It taught me how to structure arguments to help others, and how to feel comfortable on stage by eliminating the habits that get in the way.

Bureau

I went to work at a speakers bureau. And I watched the best thinkers in the world deliver keynotes every week. Some of them were extraordinary. Some of them had incredible ideas and still couldn’t hold people’s attention. I learned everything about how the industry of paid speaking and thought leadership works—what makes it difficult, and what makes it easy for someone to work with a speaker.

Coaching

I started coaching in 2008. Hall of Famers, Olympic gold medalists, Fortune 500 CEOs, and founders. I don’t actively promote this work, but it’s still one of the most rewarding things I do. It gave me an inside advantage, hearing the stories and challenges of some of the highest performing people on earth. It was also the first time I stepped out and became an entrepreneur.

Millennials

I looked fourteen. Nobody was going to hire someone who looks fourteen to talk about anything other than millennials. So I started speaking on millennials as part of the top generational research firm in North America. It put me on stages, changing the trajectory of my career. But more importantly, it let me dive deep into the research, connecting with senior leaders to see how hidden drivers create divides inside the work environment.

How I Became the Focus Guy with ADHD

ADHD didn’t keep me from doing well in school or making friends. Running a business was different: hundreds of tiny tasks, with technology making it easier for everyone to add more.

Productivity advice promised a way through, but the systems seemed designed for a future version of me who would actually follow them. Trying to understand why they didn’t work sent me deeper into attention. Then I taught what I’d learned, as the productivity-tips-and-tricks guy. Eventually, I realized I was part of the problem.

Getting more done was the least of it. What we pay attention to shapes our decisions, relationships, and experience of work. That led to Can I Have Your Attention? (Wiley), which became a bestseller. My wife finds the idea of me writing the book on attention funnier than I do.

Then I became a rocket scientist

(not really, but I did hire a bunch of them)

I left speaking to become Head of People at Venus Aerospace, building the teams behind the world’s first flight of a high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine—a generational leap in rocket engine technology.

The mandate: “Build the most unique culture in aerospace: a female-friendly organization in the most male-dominated industry in the US.”

I wrote and implemented the Venus Flight Plan to guide how we worked, who we hired, and what we tolerated. We raised millions in a cold venture market and held offers together against SpaceX money. It was the hardest work I’ve done, and I’m proud of it. I went in convinced HR needed to change and left with proof it could.

I burned out. I learned more in those three years than in the previous fifteen. Both of those things are true and I haven’t fully sorted out what to do with that yet.

Venus Aerospace: world’s first high-thrust rotating detonation rocket engine flight, May 2025.

Off the Clock

I live in Frisco, TX with my wife and kids. I coach baseball and basketball. I’ve offered to coach football too, but Justin Forsett (fellow speaker, former NFL Pro Bowler) insists he doesn’t need the help. Apparently being a borderline starting free safety in middle school doesn’t carry the weight it used to.

I’m working on a fun project called Bad Ideas to play my own small part in combating isolation and echo chambers.

I’ve gone my entire career without a cold plunge, and I have no plans for that to change.