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Junkyard Management

Junkyard Gift List

You ever look at the online gift guides for guys? Wow, what a waste of time. Whoever makes these lists aren’t the guys I know. Actually, I suspect they aren’t guys at all.

So I decided to make my own list. A junkyard gift list. Not the traditional nonsense like silk ties or metrosexual garbage like personal grooming tools. This is a list inspired by the guys I knew growing up in the wrecking yard (minus the obscene and illegal…well, mostly).

Twelve gifts, different price ranges, all equally cool:

Stocking stuffer (around $10): A basic Zippo Lighter. He …

Junkyard Management, So you think you're a writer?,

Book Update – Making Progress!

It’s been a crazy Summer and continues into a crazy Fall, so I haven’t posted much about the book I’m writing. Between the fun of vacation, the hectic work at PathLight, and a few deals brewing at Goble Properties, I just haven’t had much energy to talk about it. So it’s time for a book update.

The book is progressing. Faster now than ever, actually. And it is coming together nicely.

Looks like it’s going to be 9 chapters, of which the middle chapter is really just one page long (a transition piece). We’re currently working on chapter 7 so …

Junkyard Management, So you think you're a writer?,

Progress on the Book

Today is the last day of my writing sabbatical and I head home this afternoon. The book is coming together really well and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed collaborating with David. We worked well together with many laughs and almost no disagreements. And the result is we have a solid working outline, more stories than we know what to do with, and all the Scripture references to back up the lessons in the stories.

One other positive step is a highly respected thought leader has agreed to write the foreward. I’m not sharing who it is just yet because so much …

Junkyard Management,

Book Update

For some time now I’ve been thinking about a book and drafting ideas. A few months ago I hired a ghost writer, David, to help. And next week I begin the formal process of working with him.

In advance of our time together David gave me homework assignments to write stories, ideas, chapter outlines, etc. Which was fairly easy because I’ve been doing that a long time.

What surprised me was how much I’d written. It was around 35,000 words! To get a handle on all of this David created a word cloud to see what jumped out. Here it …

Book Reviews, Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts,

Journey of Hope

What is hope? The meaning of hope has been on my mind lately, so I’ve decided to think more on the topic in 2015. It seems both healthy and timely.

We live in an era when millions of good things are happening, yet we grow weary with despair. We worry about our broken political system, the rise of extremism, the violence in our schools, the pervasiveness of greed in our culture, the wealth disparity, high taxes, ISIS, the Byzantine health care system, immigration reform, Putin/Russian aggression, measles outbreaks, and out of control social media.

It’s endless what we can find …

Goble Properties, Junkyard Management,

How to Get Rich

The question comes in all kinds of forms. Sometimes subtle, sometimes direct, sometimes wrapped in noble hopes of changing the world, sometimes in naked self interest. However it’s asked, it is one of the most common questions I hear.

“How can I get rich?”

The answer is complicated and spiritually loaded. Context is everything. But this is a blog, and blogs need to stay simple. So at the risk of sounding triumphalist, here you go. Ten tips on how to get rich:

1) Get as much education as you can reasonably afford and realistically achieve. It’s not only for the …

Junkyard Management, Random Thoughts, The SOLD Project, Uncategorized,

How Did Jesus Handle Change?

I first met Ken Wytsma in Northern Thailand as we traveled with The SOLD Project. We quickly became friends and he has recently agreed to join the SOLD Board of Directors. Ken is the founder of The Justice Conference, the President of Kilns College, and is the lead pastor of the church he planted in Antioch, Oregon. And that’s just for starters. Like me, he doesn’t know how to do just one thing at a time. That’s probably why we quickly became friends.

Ken headshot I’ve always enjoyed Ken’s writing (check out his book Pursuing Justice) and recently …

Book Reviews, Goble Properties, Junkyard Management,

Are Corporations People?

Are corporations people? When the Supreme Court made their famous Citizens United ruling, this question set off a firestorm. The flames were renewed, at least partially, with the Hobby Lobby decision.

I have opinions from the perspective of a small business owner, of course, but my opinion isn’t all that important. I have little to add beyond what you can read elsewhere.

That said, I will share one insight worth mentioning.

Corporations tend to have a life of their own. This corporate heartbeat is created by the founder and perpetuated by others in the company.

But like anything with a …