A Story of Leadership, Transition, and Renewal

It has been an amazing life thanks to my amazing family

My copilot is asleep on the job after a long day playing at the beach on our 4th of July Motorhome trip.

Sunset on one of our Motorhome trips around the USA.

Zipline - North Shore - Hawaii

Cruise to Turks and Caicos

January 1st, Outback Bowl - Halftime Show

My Son and I at Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, England watching my son's favorite Football team beat Arsenal.

Another beautiful sunset on the lake

Unwinding after completing another sailing credential

I am a great admirer of Walt and Roy Disney and inspired by their life stories

Some personal time enjoying one of my hobbies

Prologue: The Moments that Matter:

These photographs represent more than trips, celebrations, and family milestones. They represent the moments that give life its meaning — the graduations, vacations, birthdays, shared meals, quiet memories, and once-in-a-lifetime experiences that become the story of a family. Looking back, I am grateful for every one of them. But I also remember how difficult it was to make space for many of these moments while carrying the constant weight of business responsibility, leadership decisions, payroll, customers, employees, and the never-ending demands that come with running companies.

That is one of the reasons I built NorthStar. I know how easily a business can consume the owner’s time, energy, and attention. I also know that most owners are not working hard because they want to miss important moments — they are working hard because they feel responsible for everyone and everything. My goal is to help business owners build stronger systems, better support, clearer operations, and smarter tools so the business can run better without requiring the owner to carry every burden alone.

A better business should also create room for a fuller life. Time with family matters, but so does time for yourself — for the hobbies, interests, challenges, and passions that help you release stress and feel more balanced. Whether it is golf, sailing, fitness, travel, or simply having the mental space to enjoy something outside of work, those personal outlets make us more rounded, more present, and often better people to be around. When the business is not constantly draining every ounce of energy, owners can return to their families, teams, and communities happier, healthier, and more complete.

Because the real measure of a better business is not only profit or growth. It is whether that business gives you more freedom to be present for the people, experiences, hobbies, and milestones that matter most.

My Story:

After nearly three decades of marriage, raising a family, building companies, leading teams, and carrying the responsibilities that come with executive leadership, I reached a point in life where everything familiar began to change at once.

For many years, my life had been built around commitment: commitment to my family, commitment to my companies, commitment to employees who depended on me, and commitment to doing what needed to be done even when it required personal sacrifice. My wife and I had moved from California to a small town in Minnesota to raise our children in a quieter, more grounded environment, close to family and away from the pace and pressure of the West Coast. It was the right decision for that season of life. We raised our children, built a home, and gave them a strong foundation.

But as our children left for college and began stepping into their own futures, the life my wife and I had planned for the next chapter began to change. I had always believed that when the kids were grown, we would return to California, where I was from, where the weather, energy, opportunity, and fast-moving lifestyle felt more aligned with who I am. After spending 15 years in the extreme Minnesota cold, I was ready for that return. My wife, however, had come to a different conclusion. She wanted to stay in Minnesota. We had reached a natural but painful crossroads.

After 27 years of marriage, we made the difficult decision to divorce.

At nearly the same time, another major chapter of my life came to an end. Six months before my divorce was final in February 2025, the board of directors of the company I had been working for decided to close the business. The industry was consolidating, and the company’s ESOP structure had created financial pressure as participants took the maximum out of the company. What had once been a stable professional path was suddenly ending, just as my personal life was being reshaped.

In a short period of time, the major pillars of my life shifted. My marriage ended. My company closed. My children were beginning their adult lives. The responsibilities that had defined me for decades were changing.

It would have been easy to see that period only as loss. But I came to understand it differently. It was not just an ending. It was a reset.

For more than 30 years, I had carried the weight of leadership. I had been responsible for payroll, employees, customers, operations, financial decisions, family obligations, and the long list of pressures that come with building and running businesses. I had supported a wife and children, provided a life for my family, and made the decisions that responsible people make when others are counting on them.

Now, for the first time in decades, I had the opportunity to ask a different question:

What do I want the next stage of my life to become?

After my divorce was finalized, my former wife and I divided our assets. She received one of our homes, and I received another. I moved my belongings into the workshop on the property, rented out the house, and gave myself permission to step away from the old structure of my life. I began traveling the world, giving myself space to think, reflect, and rediscover what mattered to me.

Eventually, I returned to California and stayed with a friend while I continued sorting through the bigger question of what I wanted to build next. I knew I did not simply want to retire into comfort or drift without purpose. I still had energy, experience, ideas, and the desire to create something meaningful. But this time, I wanted to build from a different place.

Not from obligation.

Not from survival.

Not from the endless pressure of making payroll and solving problems behind the scenes.

This time, I wanted to build something that reflected everything I had learned.

Over three decades in high technology, executive management, and small business leadership, I had seen a pattern repeat itself over and over again. Many small businesses do not struggle because they lack a good product or service. They struggle because the business around that product is not properly designed. The owner may be excellent at the core craft, service, or offering, but the company itself becomes difficult to manage. Operations become inefficient. Processes are unclear. Systems do not communicate. Teams lack structure. Leadership is overwhelmed. Technology is underused. Owners work harder than they should, often without getting the freedom, profitability, or scalability they hoped the business would provide.

I know this reality because I lived it. I have spent decades consulting good businesses suffering from problems that were not really product problems. They were management, systems, operations, and execution problems.

That insight became the foundation for my next chapter.

I decided to create a fractional management company designed specifically for small businesses with fewer than 100 employees. The purpose is to help owners identify the hidden issues inside their companies, design practical solutions, and then implement those solutions with the right people, systems, and technology.

The way I think about it is simple: when someone builds a house, they start with an architect. The architect helps the owner translate vision into design. If the owner does not know exactly what they need, the architect helps them understand the possibilities, avoid mistakes, and create a plan that works. Then a general contractor takes that design and coordinates the specialists: electricians, plumbers, framers, drywall teams, painters, and everyone else needed to bring the plan to life.

That is the model I am building for small business transformation.

I serve as both the architect and the general contractor for the business. First, I spend time with the owner to understand the company, the goals, the pressure points, the blind spots, and the opportunities. Then I design the plan. Once the plan is clear, I help implement it using NorthStar certified contractors, strategic partners, and, where appropriate, my own employees.

The goal is not to overwhelm owners with theory. The goal is to help them renovate their business in a way that is practical, structured, and built for real-world results.

Alongside this fractional management company, I am also building a Thailand-based company that will support and extend this work. This second company will create custom web portals and AI-enabled tools that business owners can continue using after the fractional management engagement is complete. These tools will help owners make better decisions, manage workflows, track performance, and continue improving their companies long after the initial consulting work is done.

The Thailand-based company will also provide highly trained executive assistants for business owners and executives who need strong support but may not be able to justify the cost of a traditional California-based executive assistant. During my own years running companies, I often found it difficult to find executive assistants with the right education, judgment, business understanding, and training to truly support a CEO, CFO, COO, or CTO at the level required.

I believe there is a major opportunity to solve that problem differently.

Thailand has created meaningful incentives for business development, has a strong educated workforce, and offers access to talented professionals at a fraction of the cost of comparable labor in California. By recruiting well-educated university graduates, training them in business support, executive communication, and the latest AI tools, my goal is to create a new class of AI-enabled executive assistants who can provide high-value support to business leaders at a reasonable price.

Together, these companies represent more than a business model. They represent a renewed purpose.

I want to help small business owners stop carrying unnecessary weight. I want to help them see what is possible when their companies are better organized, better managed, and better supported. I want to help them build businesses that do not consume their entire lives. I want them to experience what many owners rarely get to experience: a company that works more intelligently, creates more value, and gives them more freedom.

In many ways, that mission reflects what I am now doing in my own life.

It took more than a year of reflection, travel, transition, and rebuilding to understand what I wanted this next chapter to be. Now that the professional purpose is clear, I have also turned toward the personal goals I had postponed for years. There are things I have wanted to do for a long time: sailing in Europe and Asia, add to my one million plus miles of worldwide traveling in a more meaningful way, testing myself physically, and possibly completing an Ironman triathlon in my 60s.

Those goals require more than interest. They require discipline.

So I began training again. Over the past year, I returned to the gym, continuing to build my endurance, and committed myself to becoming stronger than I have ever been. I now run four to seven miles three times a week, swim one to two miles twice a week, cycle 10 to 50 miles a week, and weight train three times a week. I am in the best shape of my life, not because I am trying to recreate the past, but because I am preparing for the future.

This period of my life has not been easy. It included the end of a marriage, the closure of a company, the restructuring of my family life, the selling and dividing of assets, the uncertainty of starting over, and the difficult work of asking who I want to become next.

But I do not see this chapter as a story of loss.

I see it as a story of renewal.

After decades of responsibility, I now have the chance to build with intention. I have the experience of someone who has led through complexity, the empathy of someone who understands what business owners carry, and the energy of someone who still wants to create, explore, compete, and contribute.

The next chapter of my life is about freedom, purpose, health, and impact.

It is about taking everything I have learned from building companies, leading people, supporting a family, surviving transitions, and starting again — and using it to help other business owners build companies that work better and lives that feel fuller.

For years I have had an annual pass to Disneyland and D23 and enjoy collecting and trading Disney collectibles