I remember the night WaveMaker interrupted me.
I was supposed to be writing structure. At that point, I was deep into building what would become ISTS. The focus was operational clarity, decision lanes, dashboards, cadence, and all the things that make a business stable. I was energized by it. It felt strategic and clean. I could see how it would strengthen companies quickly. But every time I tried to push deeper into process, leadership kept pushing back onto the page. I wasn’t struggling with performance metrics. And the org chart training was locked in. Leadership. The kind that exposes character instead of correcting workflow.
At first, I resisted it. Structure was safer to write about. Structure feels objective. It doesn’t ask you to look in the mirror. But the more I wrote, the more I felt a quiet tension in the back of my mind. I was building something strong on the outside, yet I could feel that it would be incomplete if it stopped there. I didn’t have the language for it yet, but I knew this much: you can install structure in a company and still leave the leader unchanged. And if the leader remains unchanged, the structure eventually bends to match them.
That realization unsettled me more than I expected. I had built a career on installing what I now recognize was a rough draft version of ISTS. It worked. It produced results. Clients paid significant amounts for access to my time and insight. But as I sat there that night, staring at a screen full of operational clarity, I felt something pressing on me from underneath it. If I kept teaching structure without confronting identity, I would be reinforcing the very ceiling I was trying to remove.
What scared me most was not the content. It was what the content would cost.
Up to that point, my value had been measured in hours and proximity. I charged substantial monthly retainers for access, and the model worked. Fewer clients at higher rates made financial sense. The company was thriving under that model. It funded my family. It gave me a level of control that felt responsible. Walking away from that structure to build something more accessible, something priced at a fraction of what I had previously charged, felt reckless. I knew exactly what the math said. I also knew that the math was not the full story.
As WaveMaker began to take shape, I realized that if I was serious about empowerment, I could not keep packaging transformation around my personal availability. I could not tell leaders that their growth required internal ownership while quietly reinforcing the idea that they needed me in the middle of every decision.
Setting the pricing for Leaders Evolution forced me to confront that contradiction directly. A full year of access would cost less than a single month of my previous programs. From a traditional consulting perspective, that decision bordered on foolish. From an integrity perspective, it felt necessary.
There was a night when the weight of that decision pressed in on me hard. I remember worrying about how it would be perceived, whether people would assume the work was less valuable because it was less expensive, whether I was dismantling something that had taken years to build. I had a brief and very human thought that I might be making the biggest professional mistake of my life. And then something shifted. I felt a calm that didn’t come from spreadsheets or projections. It came from alignment. Not just alignment to my principles. Alignment to the One that the principles truly came from. Once I accepted that the goal was not to protect my old model but to honor the direction I was being led, the path forward stopped feeling chaotic. It felt clear.
What I did not anticipate was how lonely that clarity would feel.
When you change internally, especially in ways that are not immediately profitable, not everyone understands it. Some people who had watched my career from the outside struggled to see why I would step away from a model that required fewer clients to generate more revenue. On the dashboard, it looked efficient. It was mature and proven in ways that the direction that I was moving was not. Explaining why I was dismantling something that worked in order to build something that demanded more faith has not been easy.
There have been moments, even recently, when I have felt like I am speaking into empty space. I know what I am building. My level of belief and confidence in what it can and will do in the world is immense. I have seen it change people. And still, there are days when it feels like the message is floating without landing. Doubt does not disappear just because conviction exists. They often sit side by side. I have had to learn how to let faith speak louder than fear without pretending fear is not present.
That tension showed up at home in a way I did not expect. My son Jonah is serving an LDS mission in Peru right now. On one of our weekly calls he was wrestling with something deeply personal. He is wired with warmth and humor. He loves people easily. He also carries a sacred calling that demands obedience and discipline. He was trying to reconcile his personality with his responsibility.
The old version of me would have lined out an answer step by step. I would have given him the formula and called it guidance. Instead, I asked him questions and told him what I saw in him, including the part of him I trusted to sort it out. It was harder to stay quiet than it would have been to instruct him. It also felt more honest.
That conversation mirrored what WaveMaker was doing in me. I was learning to stop being the constant answer. I was learning to trust that growth happens when people are invited to own it, not when it is handed to them in neat instructions. That shift sounds simple. It is not. It requires surrendering the part of you that enjoys being the solution.
There are still moments when I am tempted to go back.
Regression does not shout at me. It whispers in a tone that sounds practical. It tells me that I already know how to make money the old way. It reminds me that charging high retainers for proximity required fewer clients and less explanation. It suggests that maybe I am overcomplicating something that used to work just fine. It asks why I feel the need to change a model that funded my family and built a reputation I once worked very hard to protect.
When that voice shows up, it does not accuse me of being wrong. It tells me I am tired. It tells me I am too religious. It tells me I am too old to be reinventing myself. It tells me that people do not want depth, they want direction. It tries to convince me that going back would be easier and that easier would be wiser.
What I have learned is that regression rarely presents itself as rebellion. It presents itself as relief.
There is a version of my former model that would still be applauded in many circles. I could build tight programs, deliver clarity quickly, solve visible problems, and move on to the next engagement with efficiency. I was good at that. I am still good at that. The shame I sometimes feel is not about competence. It is about the realization that competence alone is not transformation.
Becoming a better leader has required me to lose the version of myself that felt remarkable because he was needed. That loss stings more than I expected. It is uncomfortable to admit that part of my identity was tied to being the one people waited for. There is a quiet ego in that posture. Letting it go does not happen once. It happens repeatedly.
The difference now is that I recognize the voice when it shows up. I no longer confuse it with wisdom. I understand that clarity is expensive because it forces you to release the very thing that once validated you. And when you release it, there is a moment where you stand without applause, without the old metrics, without the familiar reinforcement.
That moment can feel like standing alone.
What steadies me is remembering that loneliness is not proof that I am lost. Sometimes it is proof that I have stepped into territory that not everyone is ready to walk. Growth has isolated me in ways I did not anticipate. It has also refined me in ways I would not trade.
The old model promised security through relevance. This new path demands faith through surrender. I would be lying if I said that transition has been comfortable. It has not. It has required me to confront parts of myself that preferred admiration over alignment.
And yet, every time I consider retreating, I return to the same question. Do I want to be impressive, or do I want to be integrated? The first version of my career made me look established. This version is making me whole.
WaveMaker is not about becoming louder or more influential. It is about becoming honest enough to let your structure match your soul. That alignment is quieter than the old success, but it is steadier. It does not require me to perform leadership. It asks me to embody it.
That is the difference.
For a long time I measured success by what could be counted. I watched revenue like a hawk. We measured renewals like they were life and death. We wasted hours talking about retention and how to create value beyond what we had sold people so we could create more dependency on us, leading to more revenue. Those numbers mattered, and they still do. They tell part of the story. What they never told me was whether I was becoming the kind of leader I wanted my children to respect.
The real measure of success is quieter than a dashboard. It shows up in the way you handle tension in a conversation. It shows up in whether you need to be the answer or whether you are willing to let someone else wrestle and grow. It shows up in whether your relationships deepen as your responsibilities increase.
WaveMaker forced me to admit that I had been remarkably effective while still leaving parts of myself undeveloped. I could design strong systems and still avoid certain mirrors. Guiding other leaders forward while staying comfortable in my own habits was something I could do in my sleep. That realization did not discredit my past work. It simply revealed that there was more to do inside me.
If ISTS stabilizes the ground beneath a business, WaveMaker stabilizes the person standing on it. One without the other eventually bends. Structure without internal growth becomes rigid. Internal growth without structure becomes fragile. When they work together, something steadier forms. It creates the space for the business to become less reactive. More importantly, it reveals the path the leader should follow to become less defensive. Decisions carry less ego and more clarity.
You see, the most important thing I have learned in my journey is the true value of “becoming.”
I do not feel louder than I did four years ago. I feel steadier. I am less interested in being admired and more interested in being aligned. I still have doubts. I still have moments where the old voice suggests that the safer path would have been to stay where I was. What has changed is that I am trying very hard to no longer let that voice decide. I’m not perfect at it, and I still have moments of doubt, but I am striving.
If you sense that you are being invited into a deeper version of yourself, do not rush to translate it into a tactic. Sit with it. Growth that matters often arrives before the language for it does. It may cost you comfort. That illusion of being indispensable could be shattered. The cost you will have to pay will probably be a version of success that once impressed you.
What it gives back is harder to measure and far more valuable. You will begin to see integrity that does not depend on proximity. Your leadership will transform to one that strengthens relationships instead of centralizing control. It gives you a life where faith can sit beside responsibility without competing with it.
WaveMaker did not make me more remarkable. It made me more honest.
And that has been worth everything.
WaveMaker did not make me more remarkable. It made me more honest.
And that has been worth everything.