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Key Takeaways Build on your past — don’t erase it. Painful experiences and past failures remain valuable teachers long after they happen. Forgiving a bad decision helps you grow past it, but forgetting often leads you to repeating it.
Growth means staying consistent while improving accountability. The question is: How can you tell what has to stay and what must evolve? Anything purpose-aligned should stay; everything else is just a distraction.
Rather than telling people how to improve, ask them to reflect on shared values and identify their own gaps. This builds self-accountability and keeps people invested in their own development.
Some people try to grow by leaving their past behind. They constantly rebrand or reinvent themselves. They replace previous versions of who or what they were with new ones that they think will be more successful.
But you can’t keep growing if you’re hitting the reset button every few years.
In my role as CEO for PhoneBurner and ARMOR®, I’ve always tried to use the past as a foundation on which to build future success. My years of experience in the telecom world and my lifelong obsession with technology were what prepared me to lead a power dialing platform. In turn, that experience led to developing a call deliverability solution that helps legitimate outbound teams avoid false spam flags.
I didn’t change at a fundamental level as my career progressed. I just became more of what I already was: curious about technology and interested in helping people reach each other.
And what applies to me also applies to anyone who works for one of my companies. I never ask people to leave behind what makes them effective or authentic. Rather, I only ask them to recognize what that is and lean into it.
Here’s how that’s helped me grow our business without compromising anyone’s culture, integrity or core values.
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