Back to the Beginning
Re-Introducing the Builder Behind the Seeds
For the next several weeks, Seed Scapes is heading back into business.
Not the highlight-reel version. Not the tidy LinkedIn bio.
The real thing. The messy middle. The turnarounds. The questions I didn’t know how to answer at the time.
Seed Scapes began almost ten years ago on Medium. It didn’t even have a name then. It was just a place on the internet where I could think in public. Before that, there was an earlier personal blog—long gone now, buried somewhere in the digital graveyard.
Eventually, it became “Seeds to Grow a Life From.” That effort faded. Years later it was reborn here as Seed Scapes.
But I just realized, I never really re-introduced myself.
And the spark that pushed me toward writing more seriously didn’t come from a publishing strategy. It came from a random private flight from St. Louis to Manchester, New Hampshire.
The Flight That Planted a Seed
On that flight, Joe Polish started asking questions to pass the time. The conversation turned into an interview later published on his podcast, I Love Marketing.
At the time, I answered as best I could. Off the cuff. No script.
Years later, Joe wanted to do another interview with me for Genius Network. It never happened.
Life intervened.
But the questions stayed with me.
So for the next several weeks, I want to revisit them—both the ones that were asked and the ones that never were. Not to relive the past, but to go deeper than I did ten years ago.
Because I understand the answers differently now.
The Hardware Kid Who Hated Writing
I grew up an only child.
My father never really took me under his wing to teach me the business. That wasn’t his style. I loved science—especially electronics. I went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated as an electrical engineer. A hardware guy. Course 6.1 at the time.
I also loved photography. The art of freezing light fascinated me. The intersection of precision and beauty. Loved rockets too, but not enough to become a rocket scientist.
Writing? I hated it.
Maybe it was being left-handed and smearing ink across the page. Maybe it was just not feeling wired for words. I didn’t read my first modern novel, Red Storm Rising, until after graduating MIT. When I did, I discovered something shocking: I loved getting lost in a world that existed only in the mind.
That shift mattered more than I understood at the time.
Because the same brain that could reverse-engineer a circuit eventually learned to reverse-engineer decisions, businesses, and even itself.
The Turnaround That Wasn’t Supposed to Work
Our family’s rigid plastic packaging business was founded in 1969. Think The Graduate era. Profitable from day one.
Until it wasn’t.
I joined in 1988 and did a lot of listening. I played many roles before taking on leadership. In 1993, my father passed away. I became Chairman and CEO.
The business was facing bankruptcy.
My first task wasn’t brilliance. It wasn’t vision. It wasn’t some heroic strategic pivot.
It was to stop.
Stop going in the direction we were heading without knowing what the right direction was.
That sounds simple. It’s not.
It requires self-awareness. I knew I wasn’t a natural operator. So instead of pretending to be one, I hired a strong COO and focused on what I could uniquely do: think strategically, read patterns, assess people, and make hard decisions.
Over time, the company stabilized, then grew. Eventually, it sold.
From the outside, it looked like success.
From the inside, it was built on failure, fear, and a lot of uncomfortable conversations.
That experience shaped many of the questions people still ask me:
How do you know if a hired COO is taking a company in the right direction?
How do you begin again after selling a family business?
How do you deal with extremely difficult people who are somehow essential to the larger puzzle?
How do you recognize when you are the bottleneck?
Those are not theoretical questions. They’re lived ones.
Reinvention, Loss, and the Question That Drives Me
After selling the packaging business, I stepped into venture investing. Later, I spent about ten years in what I jokingly called my “day job” in the feature film industry.
Then COVID hit. And by 2023, that business was gone.
It feels like a lifetime ago already.
Success is cool. It photographs well.
Failure builds the foundation.
Some of my biggest internal shifts didn’t come from business at all. In 1998, I attended my first Unleash the Power Within in Orlando. I had two things at the top of my list: anger and fear of rejection.
Through years of work—monstly influenced by Tony Robbins—those traits have dissolved to the point where I honestly wouldn’t recognize the person I was back then. I wouldn’t be friends with him.
That transformation left me with one dominant question:
How can I help?
Not from a pedestal.
Not from an “I know more” stance.
From curiosity.
No matter who you speak to in life, they are better than you at something. Always.
If I can help someone go further, faster—and maybe with a little less unnecessary pain—then these seeds are worth planting.
What Comes Next
Over the next several weeks, we’ll go deeper.
I’ll revisit those questions from the plane ride.
I’ll explore the interview that never happened.
And I’ll try to answer them with more knowledge than I had ten years ago.
Because experience doesn’t just add years.
It sharpens perspective.
🌱Seed Thought: You don’t have to be the best operator, the best writer, or the best anything. You just have to be self-aware enough to know who you are—and humble enough to learn from everyone else
