I started my first company at 16. Was I smart? Nope. Did I know what I was doing? Absolutely not. I had more blind spots than strategy. More energy than experience. More ambition than understanding. If I’m transparent, I survived because of mentors. People who took time to challenge me. Correct me. Question me. Encourage me. Without them, I would have failed much faster and much harder. But I did bring something to the table. Curiosity. Courage. Humility. A growth mindset. I was willing to ask questions. Willing to move before I felt ready. Willing to admit I didn’t know. Willing to learn, typically the hard way. Over the years, I’ve learned a tremendous number of lessons. Some through success. Many through mistakes I would never volunteer to repeat. And I’m still learning. Every single day. The difference now isn’t that I “have it all figured out.” It’s that I can see patterns faster. I can anticipate pain earlier. I can help entrepreneurs avoid scars I had to earn the hard way. That’s the gift of time and humility. If you’re early in your journey, you don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. You need to be the most curious. The most coachable. The most willing to grow. That’s what sustains you long after talent runs out. Grateful for the mentors who shaped me. Committed to paying that forward.

Do you agree? bisblox.com/post/how-does-yo…

A tribute to those that serve! Give a listen.

China rolls out robots that can dance. Do kung fu. Move with precision and balance that didn’t exist five years ago. And most people watch it like it’s a cool YouTube clip. But that’s not the real inflection point. The real societal shift won’t happen when robots can fight. It won’t even happen when they can out-manufacture humans. It will happen when robots are designed to look like us. Or more specifically… When they’re designed to look like what we idealize. When they look like they just walked off the set of Baywatch. That’s when policy changes. That’s when ethics boards panic. That’s when culture fractures. Because at that moment, we’re not talking about automation anymore. We’re talking about attachment. Identity. Desire. Loneliness. Power. Today, robots are machines. Tomorrow, they will be companions. Assistants. Caregivers. Security. And eventually? Emotional substitutes. The question isn’t “Can they dance?” The question is: What happens when millions of people prefer the robot? What happens when robots are optimized not just for strength and logic… but for attraction and influence? Technology rarely changes society at the moment of capability. It changes society at the moment of normalization. We are much closer to that normalization point than most people realize. If you’re in business, policy, education, or leadership — this isn’t science fiction. This is workforce strategy. This is regulatory design. This is human psychology at scale. The kung fu robot is impressive. The culturally accepted humanoid robot? That’s the real disruption. And most leaders are not thinking about it yet.

Time to make a new movie....

Is AI making Dunning-Kruger worse? I’ve been thinking a lot about how tools like ChatGPT are changing something most of us don’t talk about out loud: confidence without competence. The Dunning–Kruger effect has always been around. People overestimate what they know because they don’t yet know enough to see the gaps. Historically, that problem had a natural limiter. If you didn’t know what you were doing, it usually showed. Bad writing. Sloppy thinking. Confused explanations. Reality pushed back. AI has changed that. Today, someone with a shallow understanding can produce something that looks sharp. Polished language. Confident tone. Logical-sounding arguments. On the surface, it all works. Underneath? Often thin. That’s the part that worries me. What I’m seeing isn’t that AI makes everyone smarter. It makes ignorance harder to detect especially in rooms where confidence already carries more weight than truth. Here’s the paradox: the more experienced someone is, the faster they see AI’s limits. They notice what’s missing. The edge cases. The assumptions that don’t hold. AI tends to make real experts more cautious. But for people early in a domain, it feels like magic. The answer sounds right, so it must be right. And if the answer is right, then they must be right too. That gap is widening. AI is incredible at helping you sound like you know what you’re doing. It’s terrible at telling you whether you actually do. In leadership, strategy, policy, and security work, confident wrong answers are far more dangerous than visible uncertainty. The skill that matters most right now isn’t intelligence. It’s humility. The people who will win in this era are the ones who treat AI as a thinking partner, not an authority. Who ask, “What could this be missing?” Leaders who pressure-test ideas instead of performing certainty. Leaders who are still comfortable saying, “I don’t know yet.” AI didn’t remove the Dunning–Kruger effect. It accelerated it. And in a world where sounding right is easier than being right, the real edge is having the discipline to doubt yourself even when the answer looks perfect.

I’ve heard the phrase “Minnesota Nice” since I moved to MN at the age of 6. I always thought I understood it. Friendly. Polite. Easy to be around. No waves. No friction. But recently, I realized I’ve never really stopped to think about the difference between being nice and being kind. Nice is pleasant. Kind takes intention. Nice avoids discomfort. Kind is sometimes uncomfortable because it tells the truth, sets boundaries, or steps in when it would be easier to stay quiet. Nice can be passive. Kind requires action. I think a lot of us grow up assuming those two words mean the same thing. That being nice is the goal. That it’s automatically good. That it’s enough. I’m not so sure anymore. Kindness might mean having a harder conversation. It might mean disappointing someone in the short term to help them in the long term. It might mean choosing clarity over comfort. I’m realizing that some of what I thought was “nice” was actually just unexamined habit. Something taken for granted, not something chosen. So now I’m reflecting on that difference and on what I actually want to be. Not what sounds good. Not what keeps things smooth. But what genuinely helps people grow. I’m not done thinking about this yet. But I know this much, nice is easy to default to. Kind takes courage. And that feels like a distinction worth paying attention to.

What would help you?

A Product Is Worth Money. An Idea Is Not. This one makes people uncomfortable, especially early-stage founders. Everyone has ideas. Some of them are genuinely good. Some are even clever. But an idea, by itself, has almost no value. It’s just potential, and potential, while exciting, doesn’t pay bills. What the market pays for is a product. A product means someone took the idea and did the hard, unglamorous work of turning it into something real. Something that solves an actual problem, fits into someone’s workflow, and creates value they’re willing to exchange money for. Ideas feel exciting because they’re clean. Products are messy. Products force tradeoffs. Products expose gaps in thinking, execution, and understanding of the customer. That’s why so many ideas never make it past a whiteboard. I’ve met a lot of people who are “protective” of their ideas. Afraid someone might steal them. In reality, the idea is usually the smallest part of the risk. Execution is where value is created, and execution is hard to copy. The moment someone is willing to pay, even a little, that’s when learning really begins. Money is feedback. It tells you whether the problem is real, whether the solution works, and whether you understand your customer well enough. Until then, it’s just theory. Just an idea. This isn’t meant to discourage creativity. Ideas matter. They’re the starting point. But confusing ideas with products leads to false confidence and delayed learning, and typically a lot of failure on the part of the entrepreneur. If you want to build something real, stop asking, “Is this a good idea?” and start asking, “What would someone actually pay for, and why?” That’s the difference between imagination and impact.

Thank you for this feature about Cyber Sports and the great benefits it is bringing to children! We are teaching them Cyber Security, AI, and emerging technologies through games! issuu.com/fmspotlight/docs/f…

One of the issues I have with the way our schools teach about bullies, is that we constantly represent them as if they only exist on the 4th grade school yard. They don't. They exist your entire life. We see them in business, politics, and everyday life. We need to acknowledge and stop this ridiculous behavior. bisblox.com/post/why-do-some…

I’ve Always Learned the Hard Way I wish I could say I learned most of my lessons from books, frameworks, or watching others get it right. I didn’t. Like a lot of people, I learned through real pressure, real mistakes, and real consequences. The kind of learning that sticks because it costs you something. Missed opportunities. Broken trust. Decisions you’d make differently if you had the chance. There’s a reason those lessons stay with us. They’re earned, not explained. But as I’ve gotten older and spent more time leading, mentoring, and working with founders I’ve started to wrestle with a harder question: how do we help others learn without making them pay the same price? Because telling someone “trust me, I’ve been there” rarely works. Pain has a way of teaching in a language that advice just doesn’t. What I’ve come to believe is that you can’t remove struggle from learning, but you can remove unnecessary damage. The best mentors I’ve had didn’t shield me from challenges. They helped me see the patterns sooner. They asked better questions than I was asking myself. They let me experience the consequences but at a smaller scale, with guardrails. That’s very different from rescuing someone. Real learning happens when people feel the tension between choice and consequence, but still have the safety to reflect, adjust, and try again. You don’t grow by avoiding discomfort. You grow by understanding it. So when I work with teams or mentor leaders now, I don’t try to save them from hard moments. I try to help them recognize them while they’re happening. To slow down just enough to ask, “What’s really going on here?” instead of just reacting. Because the goal isn’t to avoid pain entirely. It’s to make sure the pain actually teaches something. If we can help people see patterns earlier, make smaller mistakes, and reflect faster, we don’t rob them of learning we accelerate it. And maybe that’s the real work of leadership as we gain experience, turning hard-earned scars into maps, so others don’t have to fall into every hole themselves.

What is that one thing in your home you NEVER want to become "Smart"? For me it is my couch. I can't stand the idea of a smart couch. Just can't do it. If the power goes out and I am stuck in my chair... NO.... when the sensors start telling me how to sit, what my weight is, how many crumbs I have dropped... NO. Just no. What about you?

Introducing BISBLOX We help founders, executives, and governments see what’s actually broken — and fix it fast. Strategy → Operations → Growth No fluff. No buzzwords. Just clarity and execution. If your organization feels stuck, noisy, or slower than it should be… that’s not bad luck — it’s solvable. 🧬 Welcome to BISBLOX. Be Bold. Disrupt Boring. Strengthen Growth.

No money. No mission. Beth Demke likes to remind me of this. She does a great job! Today I need to talk about folks that are not always doing a great job, the community builders that don't remember they need revenue. Community building is powerful. It’s necessary. And it’s one of the most human things we do in business. Communities create belonging. They create trust. They create momentum. They lift people up and give meaning to the work. I deeply respect the people who invest their time and energy into building strong communities, because without them, nothing scales. But here’s the hard truth we have to be willing to say out loud: Community without revenue doesn’t last. Culture alone doesn’t pay salaries. Belonging alone doesn’t keep the lights on. Good intentions don’t fund the future. If we don’t pair community building with a sustainable business model, the organization eventually collapses and the community collapses with it. Not because the mission wasn’t good, but because it wasn’t supported. That’s why the strongest organizations hold two things at the same time: heart and discipline. They invest in people and in revenue. They care deeply and they build sustainably. When community and sustainability work together, missions don’t just survive they scale and thrive. No money. No mission.

An update and a proud father moment. Back on January 3rd, my youngest son, Benjamin, was in a horrific car accident. Literally thousands of you reached out with prayers, well wishes, and messages asking how he was doing. I wanted to share a milestone with you. At the time of the accident, he was airlifted by helicopter to Mayo Clinic with a very uncertain chance of survival. He suffered brain injuries and was completely immobilized, with dozens of broken bones, legs, ribs, feet, and more. About six weeks later, he was able to walk out and return to the farm for outpatient therapy. The first thing he did when he got home? Three pull-ups just to prove he could. Before the accident, he would’ve done fifty. The road back has been hard. Brain-related challenges remain, and his mobility is still limited. But despite all of that, Benjamin wanted to go back to college. He had already graduated high school with an associate’s degree (thirty days before finishing high school) and he was determined to beat his siblings to a graduate degree 😊 So, just eight months after the injury, he returned to Minnesota State University, Mankato. I’ll be honest, I worried. Walking is still difficult. Memory can still be a challenge. His body fights him daily. But his determination to succeed has always been relentless. He just finished his first semester back. Fifteen credits. A 4.0 GPA. He aced the entire semester. I damn near cried.

Owning your mistakes doesn’t make you look weak. It makes you trusted. There’s a myth in leadership that competence means never being wrong. That consistency means always having the right answer. In reality, people don’t lose confidence in you when you make a mistake, they lose confidence when you pretend you didn’t. Consistency matters. Consistency creates stability. Consistency signals reliability. Integrity is revealed in the moments when consistency breaks when something goes sideways and you choose honesty over image. Owning a mistake does three powerful things at once, it shows self-awareness, it shows accountability, and it shows respect for the people around you. Those are not signs of weakness. They are markers of real competence. The leaders I trust most aren’t the ones who never fail. They’re the ones who say, “That one’s on me,” learn fast, correct course, and keep moving forward. That willingness to own the miss is a form of personal growth and it’s one of the fastest ways to build durable trust with your team. People don’t need perfection. They need leaders they can believe.

Stubborn is good. But pig-headed is a recipe for failure. I have watched too many good entrepreneurs kill their company due to pig-headedness. Stubborn people win. Pig-headed people don’t. There’s an important difference, and it matters more than most leaders realize. Stubbornness is commitment to the mission. It’s the quiet resolve to keep going when it’s hard, uncomfortable, or unpopular. It’s staying true to the why even when the how has to change. Pig-headedness, on the other hand, is attachment to ego. It’s refusing to listen. Ignoring data. Ignoring counsel of others. Ignoring real feedback. Ignoring the input of the experienced. Doubling down on a bad decision just to avoid admitting you were wrong. The best leaders I know are stubborn about purpose, but flexible about execution. They hold the vision tightly and the plan loosely. That’s how you build something that lasts.

I think I have figured out how to survive this -40 degree windchill today. 1. Don't go outside. 2. If outside, never exhale. All is well.