I graduated high school in 1981, which means my childhood ran on rotary phones, rabbit-ear antennas, and the honor system. There was no internet to look anything up on — if you didn't know something, you looked it up in books called encyclopedias.
I started my first job that same year, in June, while I was still finishing my senior year. Nobody warned me that "getting a job" was actually the first domino. By 22 I was married. By 23 I owned a home and had a son calling me Dad. I didn't plan any of that out on a whiteboard — I just kept saying yes to the next right thing, usually while completely unprepared for it, and figured out the rest on the job. Turns out that's most of life.
The Short Version of a Long Story
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1981
Graduated high school and started my first job that same June — before I even had a diploma in hand.
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Age 22
Got married. Had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Ten out of ten, would recommend anyway.
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Age 23
Bought a home and became a father. In the span of a year I went from "kid with a job" to "man with a mortgage and a mini-me." That'll grow you up fast.
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23 years later
Lost my first wife to breast cancer after 23 years of marriage. That's a chapter I don't rush through, and I don't pretend it didn't reshape everything I believe about growth, resilience, and what actually matters.
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Round two
I married my second wife — and liked it so much I did it twice. Once in the U.S. with our friends and family, once in Thailand with hers. So yes, I've been married three times and divorced exactly zero. My wife just really believes in doing things properly, in two countries, with two guest lists.
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Along the way
Worked my way up through corporations like Coca-Cola, Estée Lauder, and AmerisourceBergen — companies you've probably bought something from without ever knowing my fingerprints were on the operation — picked up a stack of certifications, wrote a book, and eventually landed as Engineering and Reliability Manager at Oerlikon, where, appropriately, my whole job is making sure things don't fail.
"I didn't set out to become a leadership guy. I set out to keep machines running and people from quitting on Mondays. Turns out those two things have a lot more in common than anyone tells you."
What I've Built
Somewhere between all that living, I started writing down what I was learning about leadership — the real kind, the kind you pick up on a factory floor and in a marriage and at a hospital bedside, not the kind that only exists in a PowerPoint. That became my book, Leadership Between the Lines. It turned into a workshop I built called LBL-10. And it eventually led me to become a certified Maxwell Executive Coach and a DISC consultant, because I got tired of watching good people struggle for reasons nobody ever explained to them plainly.
Author
Leadership Between the Lines
Workshop Creator
LBL-10
CPMM Certified
Certified Plant Maintenance Manager
John Maxwell
Executive Coach
DISC Consultant
Behavior & communication styles
Day Job
Engineering & Reliability Manager, Oerlikon
A Few Things Worth Knowing
- I grew up in the beautiful village of Lindenhurst on the south shore of Long Island, NY, and still live there today. I experienced classic rock before it was considered classic, and these days I'm open to all genres of music — good is good, no matter the decade or melody.
- When I walk into a room, my theme music is Foo Fighters' "My Hero." I picked it because heroes aren't capes and superpowers — they're ordinary people who just kept showing up. That's the only kind I've ever tried to be.
- I love a good movie — comedy, drama, or anything with a twist I didn't see coming. If you can still surprise me, you've earned my respect.
- I write the way I talk — plain and straight. I learned leadership on a factory floor, not in a classroom, and nobody there ever needed a dictionary to understand what mattered.
Why John's 15 Laws
My wife and I in Hawaii — yes, that's a Lindenhurst cap. It made it halfway around the world with me.
Every law in John Maxwell's framework, I've either lived through the hard way or watched someone else learn it the hard way. This mastermind isn't theory to me. It's the stuff that got me through burying a wife, raising a son, marrying again, and building a career one honest mistake at a time. I'm not up here because I've got it all figured out — I'm up here because I've got the scar tissue to prove I've been paying attention.
If you're ready to stop leaving your growth to chance, I'd be glad to have you in the room.