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Hi! I'm Mike

My mission is to help fathers be more intentional and impactful in their role. I am a father of 5 (husband of 1) and I live in Grand Rapids, MI. Check out the resources I offer below and sign up for my newsletter!

Featured Post

Thinking Long-Term with your family

How would your behavior change if you were really thinking long-term? What would you stop doing and what would you start doing? This is a question I have been wrestling with a bit. Maybe it comes with age (my own, my parents, my kids, etc) or maybe it's a response to everything being so current in today’s culture. A while back I chatted with Jeremy Pryor about the topic of a “Family Team” which is the manifestation of long-term thinking. The family is a team that is building something, that...

Happy 2Cent Tuesday Outputs are always downstream of inputs. I typically don't like to use absolute statements (and that is something we try not to do in our house), but this one is always true. Think about any system. The way the system performs (the outputs) are a direct result of the inputs. You can't put water into your gas tank and expect your car to run. In the same way that you can't scream at your kids all the time and expect them to grow into mature adults. The place I get tripped up...

Imagine thinking it will be easy… Being a father of young kids is hard. Not hard in that it’s a negative experience, it’s just full. There is a lot going on and if you’re doing it well you should feel stretched. That is a feature, not a bug. You are building something significant. Imagine having the mindset that it would just be easy all the time? Even though you know the truth, it is all too easy to digress mentally. Intuitively you know that it’s hard, but you lose focus. Perhaps you're...

Being a father is a thankless job. Of course you don’t need me to tell you that, you live it day to day. I am not saying that yours kids are never thankful, just that they don’t really appreciate what you’re doing for them. Nor is it their place to do so…they are kids. Contrast that feeling of being taken for granted to the moment you come home and your kids rush to the door and greet you with a big hug. Emotional battery instantly full! To say that fatherhood is an emotional roller coaster...

Happy Tuesday from Michigan, When we had our first child, he was a terrible sleeper. I mean terrible. He would scream for hours at bedtime, regularly. I remember pacing around our apartment with him in my arms thinking I was going to lose my mind. I had no idea how to calm him down or what to do. People would give all sorts of advice and tell me to try random things but nothing seemed to work. He just screamed. Every night. For weeks. Those were some adverse conditions. I had to figure out...

Good evening from Michigan, It’s been a while, sorry for being away for so long. Way overdue. Like 2 years overdue. There is a lot to share in terms of updates in those 2 years (one of which is having my 5 child). For now, here is one update/learnings to share as you plan for your 2023 goals. In October of this year I completed an Ironman 70.3 triathlon in Waco Texas. Why do an IM70.3? Precisely because it was a scary goal, and something I thought impossible just earlier this year. So why is...