I've learned as much from getting it wrong as I have from getting it right.

Some of the moments I'm proudest of don't appear on a financial statement. At Equinox, I inherited underperforming markets and realized that fixing the business meant developing the people running it. We rebuilt the leadership team, invested in developing managers and created a leadership pipeline that allowed the company to fill market-level positions from within. Sales increased 131%, but I'm more proud of the leaders who were ready when their opportunity came.

That experience reinforced something I've come to believe deeply: sometimes people don't need someone to give them the answer. They need someone to help them become ready for the opportunity.

I've seen that throughout my career. A manager stepping into leadership for the first time. An employee learning to have confidence in a sales conversation. A business owner trying to become the leader their growing company now needs. A college student walking into an interview and trying to explain who they are and what they can contribute. The circumstances are different, but the feeling often isn't. You're stepping into something you haven't done before and wondering whether you're ready. I've been there too.

People need opportunity, but opportunity without preparation can be a pretty painful teacher. That's where process comes in. I've spent much of my career walking into situations where something needed to be built, fixed or scaled.

At Hertz, I was recruited back to build a global car-sharing business from a blank sheet of paper. We launched across six countries in less than a year with a team of more than 75 people spanning technology, operations, finance, marketing and customer service. There wasn't an old playbook sitting on a shelf. We had to build it while we were moving.

Building something across six countries teaches you quickly that you can't personally solve every problem. You need good people, clear expectations and processes they can actually use. Then you have to trust them to make decisions. That's where I learned that good process isn't bureaucracy. Done right, it gives people the clarity and confidence to perform without waiting for someone above them to tell them what to do.

Later, at Pure Barre, I walked into a very different challenge. Rather than sitting at headquarters and assuming I knew what was wrong, I spent my first three months visiting more than 200 franchise locations, talking with owners and teams and watching how the business actually operated. What we learned became the foundation for a standardized sales system, manager development and Pure Barre University. Within eight months, trailing same-store sales went from negative 13% back to positive growth.

That experience reinforced a lesson I've carried with me ever since: get close to the problem, ask questions, listen to the people doing the work and then build something they can actually use.

I'm still competitive. I like a scoreboard, I like goals and I like winning. That hasn't changed.

At EL1 Sports, I became CEO one week before COVID shut the country down. Whatever plan I thought I had for becoming a CEO disappeared almost immediately. We had to protect the business, make difficult decisions and keep moving at a time when nobody really knew what came next.

Over the next four years, we grew revenue from $2.3 million to $26 million, expanded from four locations to 25, completed 21 acquisitions, raised more than $20 million and built partnerships with Major League Baseball, the Mariners, Pirates and Dodgers. Those were meaningful wins, but some of my best lessons came from the things that didn't work.

I've made bad hires. I've trusted the wrong people. I've moved too quickly on some decisions and waited too long on others. I've backed ideas I was convinced would work that didn't. I've also learned that you can hit the number and still realize you didn't handle everything the right way. That changes you if you're willing to learn from it.

I still want to win, but today I believe you either win or you learn. Both make you better.

One of the biggest changes in me as a leader has been learning to be more curious. Earlier in my career, I thought experience meant having the answers. The funny thing about getting more experience is that eventually you realize how dangerous that can be. You recognize a problem you've seen before and immediately assume you know the solution. But businesses are different. People are different. Circumstances are different.

So I learned to slow down enough to ask better questions. What is really happening? What are we missing? What does the person closest to this know that I don't? What are we avoiding because the answer might be uncomfortable? And probably the hardest one: What if I'm wrong?

I don't think curiosity makes a leader less decisive. I think it makes the decisions better. Today, experience doesn't mean I walk into a room with all the answers. It means I've been in enough rooms to know which questions are worth asking.

There's a line on my résumé that means more to me today than any of the numbers: Building Companies by Building Leaders. It took me a long career to understand how connected those two things really are.

Businesses don't execute strategies. People do. People have the difficult conversation, make the sale, stand in front of the room, make the decision when the boss isn't there and create the experience the customer remembers. Ultimately, people determine whether a great idea ever becomes a great company.

That's why I believe the order matters: People. Process. Performance. Find and develop good people. Give them a process that helps them succeed. Then hold yourself and each other accountable for performance.

I've watched those principles work in a $500 million operation, a global startup, a 1,500-location franchise system and a four-location company trying to survive a pandemic. The scale changes. The fundamentals really don't.

After decades of leading businesses, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want to do with everything I've learned. The answer is pretty simple. I want to pass it on, and not just to CEOs or big companies.

Maybe you're a college student preparing for your first real interview and nobody has ever actually taught you how to interview. Maybe you're smart and capable but uncomfortable speaking in front of a room. Maybe you were great at your job, got promoted and suddenly discovered that doing the work and leading the people doing the work are two very different skills.

You might own one boutique fitness studio and be trying to figure out how to grow it into three. Or you might already lead a significant organization and want someone in your corner who has been through growth, turnarounds, acquisitions, difficult people decisions and a few mistakes of his own.

Those people may look very different on paper, but they're usually facing some version of the same question: Am I ready for what's next?

That's where I want Ascend41 to help. Not by standing on the sidelines and telling people what they should do, but by preparing and practicing with them. We'll practice the interview before you sit across from the recruiter. We'll practice the presentation before you walk in front of the room. We'll work through the leadership conversation before you sit across from the employee. And if you're building or growing a business, we'll get into the people, process, numbers and decisions with you.

Because knowing what to do and being able to do it when the moment matters are two very different things. Preparation builds confidence. Practice builds capability. Experience helps you know what to practice. That's what we bring.

Forty has represented periods of testing, challenge and change for thousands of years. What interests me is what happens next: day 41.

Whatever happened has happened. Maybe you won. Maybe you lost. Most likely, you learned something. Now you get to decide what you do with it. That's what 41 means to me.

Take what you've learned. Stay curious. Get a little better. Prepare for the next opportunity and then step into it.

I've had some incredible people invest in me throughout my career, and Ascend41 is my opportunity to pass some of that forward. Not by telling people what to do, but by helping them become ready to do it themselves.