John has helped more than 40 business owners get their freedom back. Entrepreneurs start businesses for freedom, yet too often they wind up wearing too many hats and stuck in the weeds. John helps them create a self-managing business that frees them up to grow in the direction they want, at the speed they want, while spending more time with the people they love.

Before focusing his growth guidance business on private companies, John served for seven years as an executive coach to visionary nonprofit CEOs. During that time he wrote four books for nonprofit professionals, including a how-to guide for developing the crucial CEO-board chair relationship called Better Together.

John is deeply loyal to his adopted hometown of Lincoln, Nebraska. He met his wife of nearly 25 years there; had his three kids there; and earned all three of his degrees there at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As a military brat who never lived anywhere more than three years, he is over-the-moon delighted that his kids will attend the same high school that his wife attended.

When he’s not coaching business owners and their leadership teams, you can most often find John bicycling with his kids or cooking for a crowd, the bigger the better. He was never more satisfied than the day 150 people came through his backyard and he had to pull out the emergency lasagnas he keeps in the deep freeze so he never runs out of food.

Other tidbits and bullet points:

• Leadership team coach and executive coach for more the owners, CEOs, and leadership teams of more than 50 business and nonprofit organizations
• Group decision-making expert. I have 16 years’ experience facilitating small- and large-group decision making. Since 2017, I’ve facilitated more than 250 full-day business strategy and execution planning sessions.
• I’ve written thousands of news articles about group decision-making—I wrote for newspapers in my first career, specializing in legislative politics.
• Group decision-making was the focus of my academic research, as well:
  • My master’s degree thesis was on a group decision making process often used by medical advisory groups to create standard-of-care policies.
  • My doctoral dissertation examined state policies regarding insurance coverage for infertility care.
• I’ve written four books on not-for-profit organization leadership and management:
  • Better Together: How Top Nonprofit CEOs and Board Chairs Get Happy, Fall in Love, and Change Their World.
  • Better Together: The Companion Workbook.
  • Advance Your Career through Nonprofit Board Service.
  • The Nonprofit Book of Awesome.
• I’ve co-written one book on rural economic development:
  • Energizing Entrepreneurial Communities: A Pathway to Prosperity (third author, with Don Macke and Deborah Markley)
• I taught nonprofit management courses for the corporate university of NeighborWorks America.
• Taught political science for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
• TEDx speaker and men’s infertility advocate
• Speaker on business operating systems, leadership team development, nonprofit board development, and the male experience of infertility
• Happy husband, proud papa, fun-loving foodie, advocate of alliteration