👣 Step 57: Prioritize, Then Prioritize Again Last Saturday, I ran the Courir a la Musique 8k and had a blast! Beautiful weather, amazing friends, a rich Cajun culture, and I actually hit my pace goal with 10:31. Even though I had fun and did pretty well, I wasn't nearly as trained as I planned to be. Over the past month, I've had to prioritize other things, and running just fell into the maintenance category. And that's okay. Prioritization has been a big thing for me the past few weeks, and...
11 days ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 56: Doing Nothing is Doing Something A few weeks ago, I talked about one of my mottos: "If you want to, you will." I want to note that the opposite is also true: "If you don't want to, you won't." The first form of the phrase denotes action. Doing. The second form denotes inaction. Not doing. But both are still action. And it is very important to truly understand that. As humans, we struggle understanding things that we can't see or measure. We understand when someone's broken a bone,...
18 days ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 55: Focus on What's the Same The world is constantly changing at what feels like an ever-increasing pace. But some things will always be the same. I just finished reading Morgan Housel's Same as Ever (highly recommend), and I've been analyzing how to tie in these concepts into leadership and personal development. Morgan covered a lot of ground, and most of it dealt with psychological biases of the human brain that cause people to act or think the way they do. The parts of the brain...
25 days ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 54: Feedback is a Puzzle Feedback is crucial to improvement, and I’ve been seeking it in a lot of areas recently. Feedback on VibeTribe’s story, product, marketing, and monetization strategy (yep, that’s my app! Launching in November). Feedback on GoodPrints marketing approach, operations, and customer experience. Feedback on running and how I can reduce my ankle pain. Feedback on my 705 Presidency and how I can improve as a leader. As I’ve thought about feedback, I’m reminded of a...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 53: If You Want To, You Will Running in River Ranch helps me visualize the lifestyle I want I’ve been thinking a lot about my future lately through multiple different means. Wedding planning with Ashley. Building my social media app (coming soon!). Growing with Goodwill. Wrapping up my 705 Presidency and looking for what’s next in community engagement and value creation. In thinking through these things, I’m very confident that I will create the lifestyle and impact that I want for my...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 52: You Are What You Repeat 1 year of the Step Up! WOOP WOOP! I’ve had an absolute blast this past year sharing my thoughts with you, and I’m so glad that so many of you have enjoyed reading them. It truly means the world to me when you text/email with how that newsletter’s topic resonated with you. I started the Step Up with a goal to help others along the same life journey that I’m on, as well as help me better solidify and refine my own thoughts and beliefs. One thing that’s been...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
👣 Step 51: Choose Abundance, Not Scarcity Ash and I celebrating our friend Taylor's birthday in NOLA There are two common mindsets (coined by Stephen Covey in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People): abundance and scarcity. And you can't have both. Each serve their own purpose. I'm going to talk about why an abundance mindset is the way to go. Let's start with the scarcity mindset, because it's the most "human." It's evolution at play. Think about it: when our hunter-gatherer...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 50: Processing Complex Emotions These past few days I've experienced a handful of things where I just haven't immediately known what to feel. This newsletter is both an act to sort out my own thoughts while hopefully helping you do the same. Here are some of those experiences, and my complex feelings around them: 1. My dad's dad passed away Monday night. We weren't close with him - really no one in the family was (long story short: his own choices). My dad and I hadn't seen or talked...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
👣 Step 49: Bring the Mountain Home Seth Adams, Zack Kurowski, and I at Horizons In 2021, I was blessed to attend Sigma Chi’s Horizons Leadership Summit in Snowbird, Utah with two close fraternity brothers. As I look back on the past 5 years, that trip was my inflection point. Horizons was my light switch. Before Horizons, I was a leader, but it was more out of happenstance. I was innately good at things, but I never really invested in them. I was the kid who got good grades but never really...
2 months ago • 2 min read