I’ve been sitting on this one for a while but maybe someone needs to hear it.

As I sat listening to the Easter message last year a verse that was quoted struck something inside of me. The verse was Romans 3:23 - for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. A very simple and straight forward verse but so very

I don’t really care what other crews do or don’t do, I don’t care what is minimally acceptable, and I definitely don’t care what people think of me for how I lead my crew.

It is frustrating to see crews

What do you wanting people to think of you and what do they actually think of you? Between the answers of those 2 questions lies a gap and that gap should tell us exactly where we should focus our growth.

As leaders we can also

I’ve always loved this quote, it pretty much defines the “growth through humility” mindset that I always talk about.

Chances are we don’t know as much as we think we do. There’s always something that we can learn

Once again Humility is huge in Leadership or at least that’s what I believe. How can we expect others to be willing to push themselves betting their comfort level if we don’t? How can we expect others to open up and be honest about their mistakes and negative experiences if we aren’t? And how can we expect your team to be as strong as possible if no one knows each other’s strengths and weaknesses? Those are all pieces

Not much reason for a big wordy blog post for this one, I think it pretty much speaks for itself. I just wanted to throw this out there as either something to reflect on or something

I doubt that it will surprise anyone when I say the idea of servant leadership is pretty much what Crew 1st Culture was based on. Taking care of others, putting others first, and being a servant to those you lead has always been the type of leader that I wanted to be. That became very clear while working for servant

What is your mission? I think that’s a very important question that we all need to have an answer for. If I don’t have a personal mission then how do I know where I’m headed and if I’m taking the right path or not. My mission statement is my target, it’s what I’m aiming for. Having that mission or target allows me to see if I start veering one way or another off track so I can

I’ve been asked several times over the past couple of months what advice I would give to new firefighters. The more I thought about it the more clear my answer became.

Never lose the drive to learn and

“Don’t think of it as leading up the chain of command but INFLUENCING up the chain of command.” This was a great nugget that I pulled from the First Responder Training this week that Echelon Front put on was this. Jason Gardner brought this point up and it really spoke to me in a way that I needed to hear.

I’m terrible at followership, it’s easily one of my worst

Great crews do consistently what the others do occasionally (or not at all). This is a thought that was taken from one of the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. A pretty simple statement but so very true, and like so many things in life consistency is key. Unfortunately consistency is very tough to achieve for so many of us.

In C1C Episode 106 I want to talk about building crew pride and more specifically ask the question “what can I personally do to help build crew pride where I’m at?”. Most of us would love to be able to do what we wanted, if that was the case we could have endless options for building crew pride but we all have to operate under a set of rules and guidelines that often

No one knows the true intentions of our thoughts and actions except for us. The scary thing is that we as humans are exceptional at finding justification for our thoughts and actions no matter how distorted and dysfunctional they may be.

I read (listened to) an awesome book last week called “Leadership and Self Deception” by the Arbinger Institute, actually I

It’s easy for us sometimes to focus too much on the next promotion or the next stepping stone and in doing so we lose focus on just enjoying being where we’re at. I think a lot of that is human nature, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to be more intentional about enjoying the moment both at work and at home.

We might not be where we want to end up or where

I like taking well known quotes and clichés and flipping my perspective of them. For the most part they’re all either true or relevant to some degree but many times there’s much more to them. It’s easy to see a good quote and only look at it from one perspective, which is usually guided by our own personal experiences, beliefs, and needs. But I think it’s fun to breathe different life into something we’ve all heard a thousand times. This is one of those times for me.

“FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION!”

We’ve all heard it right? It’s almost like the universal motto

With us set to do some live burns with our current rookie school in a few months we will be focusing on getting my firefighters more comfortable in a teaching role. It’s great to have people on your crew who approach training with a positive attitude and are eager to learn but there comes a time that they need to start maturing into teachers as well.

Until someone pushes us towards discomfort, many of us are more than happy to stay in the status quo. But when we are pushed past that level of comfort and into the edges of our ability we start to realize what all is truly possible for us.

Continually push yourself to that edge, great things are on the other side!

Respect those who came before you, respect those putting in the work today, and respect those who’s careers will be built in the fire service that we leave for them.

I hear it all of the time; “What difference can one person make?” The answer to that every time as far as I’m concerned is ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

One person can make all the difference in the world and in fact one person has made a difference in the world over and over again. Just think of how many great things we experience on a daily basis that exist because one person stepped up

No matter what your family Is like or what choices have been made for generations, or what has always been done at your department; we always get to make our own choices.

So is there something that needs to stop at home or