by Rick | Feb 15, 2015 | Blog
I grew up to be the kind of adult I made fun of when I was a kid: a city-slicker. I grew up in the country and learned my work ethic as a kid working for local farmers and ranchers. In the summer, I’d fry like an egg on a John Deere 2050 plowing a Kansas field...
by Rick | Sep 12, 2014 | Blog
I was feeling pretty good about myself when, in fact, I was being an arrogant jerk. I was in a rural Nicaraguan village being interviewed by the government about all we had done to help the hungry people. The village’s crops had been wiped out in torrential...
by Rick | Aug 25, 2014 | Blog
I lost the audience’s attention in about two minutes. Usually, as a speaker, I can keep it for a bit longer than that, but his audience folded their arms and checked their watches. On the long drive home, I pondered what I had done wrong. I was trying to get them to...
by Rick | Aug 1, 2014 | Blog
The legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers- Vince Lombardi- would gather his players around, hold up a football, and say, “This, gentleman, is a football.” I have a woodworking shop full of mechanized equipment, but nothing feels quite as good as...
by Rick | Jul 11, 2014 | Blog
It was January in Kansas in 2010, and volunteers stood in a line one-hundred yards long outside the Kansas Coliseum. As one security guard said to me, “You’d think this was a rock concert!” It wasn’t. It was volunteers who stood in line for hours waiting to package...