Category: Personal Thoughts

Before Undo. Before AI. We Just Had Redo.

Written on February 23, 2026. Posted in Business Leadership, Career, Hands In The Soil Marketing Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

How undo took the permanence out and put the pressure on Forty years ago I was a bleached-headed skater kid in Northern California, which at the time felt like the center of something even if no one would have admitted that out loud, because...

Authentic Growth, Hands in The Soil, Marketing Truth, Personal story, Thought Leadership

Honestly, Losing Momentum Sucks… But That’s Not the End of Your Story

Written on February 17, 2026. Posted in Career, Hands In The Soil Marketing Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

When life derails your carefully laid plans it’s not always about descending into total chaos or facing outright failure – often, it’s an opportunity for something much deeper to emerge. Most of us build our careers around...

Authentic Growth, Career Stories, Hands in The Soil, Personal story

The Human Cost of “Correct” Answers

Written on February 16, 2026. Posted in Brand Marketing, Career, Future Marketing, Hands In The Soil Marketing Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

Early in my career, I became obsessed with unlocking the secrets of our industry’s pioneers — not because I wanted the tactics or the shortcuts or the tidy frameworks you can laminate and sell back to management teams that secretly hopes...

Career Stories, Hands in The Soil, Marketing Truth, Thought Leadership

#OpenToWork: AI Has Reshaped White-Collar Careers

Written on February 16, 2026. Posted in Business Leadership, Future Marketing, Personal Thoughts.

Why Non-Linear Builders Are Both Losing and Winning If you are in the job market in 2026, you already know something has shifted — even if no one is saying it out loud. AI is steadily reshaping traditional white-collar work, and the hiring...

Authentic Growth, Career Stories, Hands in The Soil, Personal story

AI: Some Kind of Wonderful… or Just Static on a Monitor.

Written on February 16, 2026. Posted in Business Leadership, Career, Operational Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

There’s a quiet question a lot of us Gen Xers are asking right now. We built the digital world. Wired it together when nothing worked right, survived the crashes, rebuilt again, and again and again. We weren’t born into tech—we were excitedly...

Authentic Growth, Career Stories, Marketing Truth, Thought Leadership

A Scoreboard Doesn’t Care About Goals, Intentions, or Chaos

Written on February 11, 2026. Posted in Hands In The Soil Marketing Leadership, Operational Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

A scoreboard does not care about your goals. It does not adjust itself for your intentions. It is unmoved by the chaos of the moment. It simply reflects what is true. That is easy to accept in theory. It is harder to accept when you are in...

Why Leaders Still Think HR Is a Speed Bump

Written on February 11, 2026. Posted in Business Leadership, Operational Leadership, Personal Thoughts.

(Leadership Lens: Andrew Bloo | Strategic HR Lens: Reanette Etzler) For decades, leadership culture has been conditioned to see HR as the brake pedal in a business obsessed with speed. Leadership hits the gas.HR reaches for the brakes.And...

Hands in The Soil, Thought Leadership

The Lost Art of Creative Conflict

Written on February 9, 2026. Posted in Personal Thoughts.

Way back at the dawn of time—the late ’90s—I worked for a former Intel engineer. He saw something in me before I saw it myself. I was a wild-eyed, anti-authority creative. Entrepreneurial. Obsessed with marketing. I had an eye...

Trends Are Curios by Nature, AI Makes Them Programmatic by Design…

Written on February 4, 2026. Posted in Brand Marketing, Personal Thoughts, Sales and Marketing.

The Trend: “Hey AI, create a caricature of me and my job based on everything you know about me!” At the surface, this trend looks playful.A fun way to see yourself as a character. A moment of novelty before the next scroll. But...

Authentic Growth, Brand Building, Brand Stategy, Marketing Truth, Viral Marketing

Your “Hustle Harder” Mindset Is Quietly Destroying Everything Worth Building

Written on February 2, 2026. Posted in Personal Thoughts.

Admit it—you still catch yourself thinking: Once this quarter ends… once we close the deal… once we scale… then I’ll finally breathe. It’s the same lie we’ve all been sold. And in 2026, it’s collapsing faster than ever—especially as the...