THE BUSINESS CONSULTANT:

They call me "The Sparkplug" because I make ideas happen. I am the entrepreneur who helps the other entrepreneurs. My joy is helping small business owners who work hard to realize their dreams. Every business owner has responsibilities beyond measure from day one, but not everyone is an expert at business operations, human resources, marketing, and finance.

I was born a small business developer in 2005 when my friend Davy Calloway came to me with a brand-new taxpayer ID card and a vision. "I am tired of cleaning pools for other people who don't appreciate me," he said, "I want to work for myself now. I have everything I need but I don't know what to do to get started." He bought me a printer and some paper and Calloway Pool Works was in business the next day.

Our little experiment was short lived though, because the big pool companies had noticed our bite in their market share by the end of the summer. One of them made David an offer that would change his life, and he sold his business after just four months of sweat and hustle.

Since then, I have helped many small business owners to leave their comfort zones and realize their ambitions. My experience reaches across many industries and involves every function of business. Business takes more than instinct. Technical skills, adaptability, and control are vital to keeping a competitive advantage. I provide a balanced scorecard by identifying key performance indicators and developing metrics that push businesses forward.

THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR:

A good education teaches you how to think, not what to think. Recently, I have started teaching college part-time. Being a student for so long gives me a great perspective on being a professor. My curriculum vitae now includes an array of business classes on five different campuses. In less than year, I have been responsible for growing more than 300 hungry minds. Teaching has given me a pride and purpose that gets me out of bed early and eager to attack the day. Students in my class all learn about leadership and the importance of effective communication in business.

Classes I have taught to date include:

BUSN 1301 - Principles of Business

BMGT 1301 - Supervision

BMGT 1331 - Operations and Production Management

BMGT 1327 - Principles of Management

BMGT 1337 Human Relations

Each class is different and teaches me something new. Our program of study focuses on entrepreneurship. My classes all focus on scientific management, conceptual problem-solving, and teamwork. The Toyota Production System (TPS) is a useful model to teach would-be business owners the most important word in business: control. All of the students who graduate from my class can boast they are now "six sigma guys." Kaizen and tools for continuous improvement are burned into memories from day one.

THE WRITER:

When I was 11 years old, my teacher had every student in the class write a speech for our 6th grade graduation. All of the speeches were judged by faculty and administrators, and they chose mine to be read at the ceremony. It became obvious quickly that I had an exceptional gift for writing and giving speeches. My greatest talent has always been as a public speaker, a speech writer, and a speech coach.

I have also written over one hundred academic research papers. A few of them can be found under the "research papers" section of this site. Writing stimulates me like nothing else. When I see a blank piece of paper, I am in awe of the potential it holds. Formal research is actually a learned skill and I have spent decades honing mine. The papers I write cover all kinds of subjects, from philosophy to the genome of the Arabidopsis plant. My academic writing is not political, nor does it seek to persuade. Empirical data for my writing is collected personally or taken from peer reviewed sources that are cited within my work.

In 2005, my speech professor asked me to help get a campus newspaper going. Journalism has never been my aspiration, but some of the faculty noticed my writing skills were above par. The college brought in the local newspaper publisher/editor to teach us how to be effective journalists with integrity. We took classes and we made mistakes in the beginning. I became the first editor to regularly publish a student-run newspaper on my campus. We started with four pages, but by the time my tenure as editor was over, we had a forty-eight-page layout and a 'Second Best in Show' award from the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association. Our stories ranged from the spring fair to the execution of a man who murdered a fellow student. We put everything we had into making it a respectable, informative, and entertaining newspaper.

One of the stories I wrote for the paper gained national attention, and I was given an 'Excellence in Student Journalism' award from USA Today for my efforts. The college gave me an award for "significant and lasting contributions to the campus and community." When I look back at my time as editor, I am most grateful for the life-long friendships it gave me. Being the leader of such a great team helped to shape who I am today.