I was born and raised in Southern California during its glory years (for which I am grateful), and now reside in Laramie, Wyoming, with my wife Cindy, our Australian shepherd, Ollie, and Markie-Mark the cat.
My first career was in business, for some 27 years. I had one helluva run for those two and a half decades, and while I was rarely any good at it, I was certainly always the most eager (believe me, the mistakes and terrible decisions made vastly outweighed the good ones). In 2006, I shifted gears and entered the helping professions as a mental health practitioner (becoming after a while a Life Coach) and, later, as a part-time teacher at The University of Wyoming. I have both an MA and a Doctorate (PhD) in the discipline of Educational Psychology. I also have an essentially worthless MBA (to which end I try and tell budding business professionals to avoid the now-useless MBAs offered by American universities, and, instead, to focus on a specialty of some sort, like welding or plumbing – some sort of really, truly useful trade).
Those 27 years in business taught me a lot. I had a lot of great mentors – people like Ric Brutocao and Louise Martire; Jerry Kleeman at Vistage International; Gerry Klein at Brutocao and Klein, Attorneys at Law; and Mike O’Hara and Dan Fowler at Microsoft. They remain very much on my mind now that I’m closing in on my 70s and entering the last third of my life (my dad lived to almost 90). With what they tried to teach me, I try and help those coming up behind.
My doctoral dissertation focused on counselor ethics in the social media spaces.
Note: The Blog was discontinued on August 30, 2025.