Pat Parnell went to buy a classic car for his wife. He ended up buying a company too.Rain Gear Wiper Systems, the only hidden wiper system company for classic cars in the world.After 42 years hauling and installing high-end appliances, his body was done with the heavy lifting. Within a few weeks of stumbling onto th...

While his nine-year-old son was fighting stage three cancer, Nick Stevens was driving around buying up scrap tungsten carbide just to keep food on the table. It worked well enough that one day, sitting in the hospital room, his son said to him: “Dad, why don’t you just start your own business and be your own boss?”T...

Today’s podcast is about mentorship, finding it, and paying it back. Logan McGhan is an old friend of mine from the used machinery business who is now a CNC programmer at a semiconductor company in Arizona. Along the way he’s had invaluable mentors in martial arts, machining, and sales, and one of his main purposes ...

Sometimes I feel like I’m a good leader. I think I’ve always believed at least that I could be. The insecure statement comes from my conventional view of leading–taking charge to mobilize other people in our businesses, or as a dad or as a thought leader.But my podcast guest Ryan Avery, gave me a new view of what it...

“God, I am so NOT relaxed right now. But I need to just embrace what I read recently — you need the courage to be rubbish. Just relax, stop worrying about everything being perfect, and do it.”I said that to my dad, Lloyd, as we sat down to record our podcast last week–which turned out to be the opposite of rubbish. ...

Today’s AI conversation is about vulnerability—not automation, efficiency, and replacing jobs.Brooks Canavesi, co-founder of Baryons, is taking AI somewhere different. He’s not trying to replace the human. He’s trying to make the human better. I’ve actually been using ChatGPT to supplement my own life coach for a wh...

The most interesting things I’ve ever done — the best conversations, the best podcasts, the best calls — they all required me to be confident enough to move forward, when the results were far from certain. Today I’m going to tell you something I just learned that can get that confidence up when you need it most. (Bl...

The Chicago Cubs’ season begins today in the Windy City on a gusty day. For me, it is New Year’s Day.It is a day of prayer for me. A day I did not think I would reach, after a heart attack with a 9.5 out of 10 lethality rate, prostate cancer, seven retina detachments, and a litany of maladies. But I’m here.The Cubs ...

You’ve been slogging along for 40 years and the cement floor bites harder every day. You are wondering if it is time to sell the company, but you have no idea what it is worth or if anybody would want it.I’ve been helping folks buy and sell machining businesses for quite a while. This blog is a primer on what to con...

When Donald Trump announced his grandiose plan for trade tariffs on April 2, 2025 some people cringed, others cheered, and a few called their lawyers.One of those was Rick Woldenberg, the CEO of a family-owned company in Vernon Hills, Illinois a suburb of Chicago. His firm, Learning Resources, outsources the majorit...