I remember staring at the ceiling—mind racing, heart heavy. The silence was loud. Failures lined up like old war wounds… missed chances, half-wins, the kind of regret that knows your name. I wasn’t new to pressure—but this? This was different. This was burnout laced with shame. And yet, right there, flat on my back, I felt it—success was close. I could taste it. But somehow, it still felt out of reach. Like I was climbing, but the summit kept shifting.

That feeling—that pit in your gut when you know you’ve got potential, but your path keeps slipping—isn’t rare. It’s where most leaders quietly break. Or quietly begin.
Because leadership ain’t always born on a stage. Sometimes, it’s born in the middle of the mess. In the breakdown before the breakthrough.

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🎩 Early 1900s CEOs: When Leadership Wore Boots Before Suits

Back then, CEOs weren’t bred behind keyboards—they were forged in barracks, battlefields, and boardrooms built on discipline. These were men who had marched in formation before they ever managed a payroll. Folks like Robert E. Wood and Edgar Gorrell didn’t just walk into leadership—they carried the weight of it on their backs from their days at West Point.
Their education? Hard-earned. Military academies shaped their minds. Business schools sharpened their strategies. But what made them leaders wasn’t just the diploma—it was the code they lived by: honor, clarity, and command presence.
They knew how to lead because they had followed. They knew how to build because they had served. And they made decisions not just with data—but with backbone.
That kind of leadership? It left a legacy. One rooted in service, not status.

🏢 1950s: The Golden Era of Grit, Suits, and Strategy

The 1950s didn’t just produce CEOs—they produced commanders in business attire. Many of these leaders came out of the war zones straight into boardrooms, swapping field orders for fiscal strategy. West Point grads were still steering the ship—only now the mission wasn’t combat, it was commerce.
This generation believed in discipline, duty, and doing things the right way—even when it wasn’t the easy way. They had scars under their suits and stories in their eyes. Their leadership style was shaped by foxholes and formation drills, not just spreadsheets and sales charts.
And when it came to education? The standard was rising. Business and engineering degrees weren’t just nice to have—they were expected. Earning an MBA became the new proving ground for minds built on precision and logic.
These CEOs didn’t lead from behind a desk—they led from the front. They made decisions that echoed across companies, industries, and cultures. Not perfect men, but principled. Steady hands during turbulent times.
They weren’t just chasing profit. They were building institutions meant to last. And that meant leading with both intellect and integrity.

💼 Early 2000s: Degrees, Titles, and the Rise of the Corporate Ladder

By the early 2000s, leadership had become polished—maybe a little too polished.
Nearly every CEO walking into an S&P 500 boardroom had a degree stamped on their résumé. Business. Engineering. Liberal arts. You name it. The degree wasn’t just a stepping stone—it was a status symbol. By 2004, 98% of top execs had one. And by 2006, MBAs were showing up like lapel pins—around 35% of them wore that badge proudly.
The battlefield was no longer military—it was corporate. But even then, you could still spot the grit. About 8% of those leaders had served. They brought a different weight to the room. They didn’t just know strategy—they knew sacrifice. They understood structure, delegation, and how to lead under pressure.
But something else started shifting. Leadership was becoming more about optics—how well you navigated performance reviews, quarterly reports, and investor calls. Less about soul. More about scale.
You saw less character being forged in fire—and more being filtered through frameworks. Smart folks. Talented folks. But the deeper, human parts of leadership? Those started thinning out.
Titles got fancier. Boardrooms got sleeker. But a quiet question started creeping in: were we still raising leaders—or just managers with nice credentials?

💡 Today’s CEOs: From Basements to Boardrooms

Today’s corner offices don’t look like they used to. And truth be told, some of 'em never left the basement.
We’re in a new era—one where leadership isn’t earned in the field, but coded in the dark. Many of the CEOs shaping our economy didn’t come through the ranks of military service or people management. They came up building apps, gaming platforms, AI engines—most of it self-taught, isolated, and hyper-focused.
Now don’t get me wrong—brilliance deserves its shine. You can create something world-shifting from a garage or your mama’s back room. But here’s where the friction starts: building a product doesn’t mean you know how to lead people.
A recent study showed about 8% of CEOs today don’t even hold college degrees. Military backgrounds? Down to around 6.2% by 2006 and still dropping. These aren’t seasoned leaders—they’re sharp creators. But without the pressure-tested qualities leadership requires—resilience, empathy, conflict navigation—they lead from behind a screen, not beside a team.
What we’ve gained in innovation, we’ve lost in human connection. We’ve traded presence for performance, wisdom for velocity.
So what happens when the code breaks? When people quit? When culture crumbles?
Too many of today’s CEOs never learned how to bleed with their team, how to steady the ship in real storms, how to earn trust when it ain’t easy. That’s the leadership gap we’re staring at.
And that’s why I built the Circle of Growth™—to reintroduce what the tech age skipped over: real-life, real-time, people-first leadership.

🧭 Why It Matters: Leadership Has Weakened

Here’s the hard truth—we didn’t just lose leadership, we let it slip away while we were busy chasing what’s next.
Some of the sharpest minds running billion-dollar companies right now can code circles around most folks. But give 'em a room full of people needing vision, direction, or straight-up accountability—and they freeze. Not because they’re bad people. But because they were never taught how to lead people.
We’ve built a generation of CEOs who know how to scale platforms but not how to steady people.
They’ve got technical brilliance but little training in the trenches—no reps in emotional intelligence, no scars from leading through failure, no real-world wisdom earned from having to sit eye-to-eye with a struggling team and say, “We’ll get through this.”
See, real leadership ain’t just about launching the next thing. It’s about lasting impact—culture, clarity, care. It’s about knowing how to build not just products, but people.
And right now? We’re seeing the fallout. Toxic workplaces. Burnt out teams. Leaders who retreat behind strategy decks and Slack threads, hoping the numbers will fix what only presence can heal.
That gap—it’s wide. And it’s hurting performance, morale, and the long-term strength of our organizations.
But it doesn’t have to stay that way.
Because leadership can be taught. And more importantly, it can be reclaimed.

🛠️ How We Fix It

Leadership ain’t something you stumble into—it’s something you forge.
Not in a Zoom room. Not behind a codebase. But in the day-to-day grind of showing up for others. Of learning when to speak, when to listen, and when to lead from the front even when your knees are shaking.
We fix this crisis by getting back to what leadership was always meant to be: built on discipline, refined through failure, and fueled by purpose.
That’s why I built the Circle of Growth™.
It’s not a feel-good workshop or another shiny slide deck. It’s a real-world leadership system designed to fill the gap—especially for the modern, tech-first executive who’s brilliant at building product but untested at leading people.
What Circle of Growth™ does is simple but powerful:
It anchors your excellence in something bigger than output—purpose.
It sharpens your emotional intelligence, so you stop managing and start truly leading.
It installs the systems that help you scale, without losing your soul.
And most importantly, it reminds you that leadership ain’t about titles—it’s about transformation.
Because the boardroom doesn’t need more developers-turned-CEOs who can launch a product. It needs leaders who can build a legacy.

⛳ Your Call to Action

Now listen—this ain’t about blaming the new generation or worshipping the old. It’s about calling time on leadership that’s all sizzle and no soul.
We’ve got CEOs running billion-dollar companies who’ve never led a real team through a real storm. They know how to build, sure—but not how to bear weight. And that gap? It’s costing people their jobs, their joy, and their trust.
So here’s the call:
If you’re a founder, an executive, or a team leader who’s tired of feeling like success came without the roadmap...
If you’re brilliant at building things, but quietly wondering if your leadership can match your vision...
If you want to grow with clarity, lead with conviction, and build something that lasts longer than the next market trend—
Then I built this for you.
📍 Schedule your free discovery call
Let’s talk about building the kind of leadership that doesn’t just survive change—it shapes it.
Because legacy ain’t a logo. It’s how you lead when no one’s watching.