Memoir excerpt
The Mop Bucket MBA (excerpt)
From the published memoir on leaving Microsoft to buy a franchise. A trip to Vegas with my son, and the sentence he said to me that I didn't see coming.
From Chapter 2, “Values, Mission, Vision,” of the published memoir The Mop Bucket MBA: Leadership, Cashflow, and Survival. Lessons from a Guy Who Left Corporate to Buy a Franchise.
But alignment changes everything. Including the relationships you thought you’d already lost.
Andy and I didn’t have the best relationship. I’d accepted that my role was to forge iron. I was the hard element. Allison was the soft one. That’s the story I told myself, anyway.
I was there. I traveled with him to every lacrosse tournament. I drove him to recruiting events and college visits. But being present and being connected are two different things. We didn’t interact much beyond logistics. I was the driver, the planner, the wallet. Not the person he came to talk to.
So when Andy caught me off guard one day and said, “Dad, I want you to take me to Vegas for my twenty-first birthday,” I didn’t know what to say. He has a December birthday, so the timing just worked. But that wasn’t what stopped me. He had never asked to go somewhere with me. Not once. He was literally asking to spend time with me, one-on-one. I could not say no.
We flew into Vegas and checked into Caesars, a definite upgrade from the hotel blocks we’d shared during lacrosse tournaments. Went to dinner that first night. He turned twenty-one the next day.
I taught him to play craps and blackjack. We hit quite a few casinos. He made sure to sign up for every casino rewards card to collect the free slot credits. He wasn’t leaving anything on the table. I bought him his first legal drink.
It was at one of those bars, a couple drinks in, where I was playing drink advisor, picking things for him to try, enjoying the kind of easy moment I didn’t know we were capable of having. And then, out of nowhere, Andy looked at me and said:
“Dad, you were an asshole.”
I was shocked to attention. What?
But then he kept going. He told me thank you. He told me he finally understood what I had been trying to do all those years. That he got it now.
Frankly, I didn’t expect or hope for that level of awareness until he was in his thirties, if ever. To hear it at twenty-one caught me completely off guard.
Then the mood shifted, and he started laughing. He joked about my asshole tendencies while he was growing up, and I laughed with him. OK, I’ll admit it. I was a bit of an asshole.
We spent the rest of the trip the way I imagine most fathers and sons wish they could, dinners, shows, more gambling, more laughing. We came home positive. It was the bonding trip I didn’t know I needed.
Since then, I thoroughly enjoy Andy coming home. He engages with Allison and me. He’s asked me to go to Whistler with him for snowboarding. Hood River for kitesurfing. Not for the activities. To spend time with me. He calls me from college now, more than he calls his mom, if I’m being honest. Asking for advice on cooking, grad school options, his resume, his LinkedIn. Real conversations. Adult-to-adult.
It’s nice not to be the asshole anymore.
The book runs this same alignment discipline through hiring, cadence, quality, and the exit itself. Two pages from the back of the book, for anyone who wants the whole system at a glance.
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