Open to Close

I grew up homeschooled. My brother, sister and I went to "Timber Creek Academy", the name that my Mom gave to her little school. I loved it. My brother, Ty, is 16 months younger than me and we were best of friends. We also have two cousins, Calvin and Jared, who are roughly the same age as us. This was my community growing up. My mom taught us well, she cared for the home, she supported my dad, and she worked on the businesses with him too. Moms work the unseen work, the most important eternal work. I learned the most important skill that there is from her. I learned to learn.

My dad worked quite a bit when we were growing up. Four main things stand out in my memory.

First, he owned and operated a convenience store on West 'O' Street in Lincoln, Nebraska. It had many names through the years but ended up being called "Rhino Stop" for the final chapter of that journey. If I remember right, Dad named his store that after the ideas in the book Rhinoceros Success. Sayings I often heard from Dad in this place:

• "Sign your work with excellence"
• "You are a champion"
• "Charge On!"

The store opened at 6am. At one point — when he was making breakfast pizza, baking bread for the Blimpie store, and brewing fresh coffee before opening — morning work might start at 4:30am.

The store closed around 11pm.

Often while I was growing up my dad would work from "open to close" as we would say.

Second, he was a farmer. As I have mentioned briefly before, my family has been farming and living on the same piece of property for 5 generations. My dad kept it going with his dad (called 'Papa' in my writings and in life). Planting and harvest seasons were the busiest times growing up. Somehow, my parents covered both the gas station and the farm during these times. There were late nights that kept going until the seeds were planted, or until the elevator closed and the semi, grain cart, and combine were full of harvested crop.

Third, he pushed snow in the winter. This work was done at night in my memory. Riding in the passenger seat of the Dodge 2500, hot chocolate from Rhino Stop to keep us warm, and maybe a cookie or two. While he pushed the driveways and parking lots with the plow, I sat there in my coveralls and coat, chatting his ear off, I'm sure. Sometimes I would get out and scoop with him, or throw down salt on the sidewalks.

Fourth, he helped (and still does help) people get healthier. If you would have asked him at the time, he would have said he did that with Advocare, a supplement and products direct-sales company. He loves people and wants their lives to be better. My memories of this work include his long conversations with complete strangers at the gas station where he would talk to them about their family, their job, their faith, their mental health, and their physical health. He had these cards sitting on the counter of the gas station and would ask these new acquaintances to fill out their name, number, email and how he could help them.

Sometimes the conversation resulted in a sale of Spark, an energy drink, or perhaps vitamins from Advocare. But often, the conversation just ended when my dad wished them the best, took down their information and shot them a text of encouragement. Advocare also got him and my mom involved in groups of people who were trying to grow themselves — a positive thread which continues in their lives today.

That is a lot of work. And looking back now, I am stunned by the way that I remember this childhood of mine because of the way he stewarded his time.

One day, in the play-room of my grandparents' house, a conversation was struck up between myself and a cousin of mine. Two young boys wrestling through one of the questions that most challenges men of every age. We were talking about work. Not our work, of course, but the work of our dads.

Both of them were business owners, both with many irons in the fire. Both working 60 hour weeks regularly and many weeks where "open to close" was the only option. Both my cousin and I had experienced vacations cut short because a staff member quit, or a new fire started — among other less-than-ideal drags on our family's attention.

If I were an outsider looking in, I might have expected the conversation to be one of agreement between these two boys. "My dad works too much", or "I never see him" or "He is exhausted when he gets home and never plays with me".

But instead my young eyes were opened to a reality I hadn't considered deeply before. I knew my dad worked hard, but he always was grateful for the health to do so. I knew he worked a lot, but he took me with him every chance he got. I knew he woke up early and went to bed late and that he could fall asleep anywhere at any time, but I never heard him say he was too tired to care for my mom or his kids' needs.

I vividly remember that conversation because it reframed things for me — or has reframed them for me in adulthood. Working hard is not bad, it is good, but there are certain jobs that don't allow the kids to come along. There are certain jobs that force your hand and your time away from your family in ways that are nearly unrecoverable. And ultimately, you get to frame what hard circumstances mean to you and your children.

In 2019 my dad gave me the book Point Man. In the opening chapters the author discusses the reality of changes that happened to work after the industrial revolution and their effects on the father to son and mother to daughter relational norms that had existed prior to the industrial revolution.

Notice how life was built around the home prior to the Industrial Revolution. Four out of five Americans were farmers. Men worked at home, women worked at home, and so did the children. Their jobs were different, but everyone worked. The pattern remained the same as it had for centuries. The mother raised the children until they were somewhere between five and seven, then the boys would work with their fathers and the girls would work next to their mothers. The point is clear. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the normal pattern was for fathers to raise their sons. Up until this time, children's education came primarily through the tutelage of their parents.

As the Industrial Revolution began to take hold, more and more factories popped up, and now employment became dependent upon these innovative factories. Here the workers were brought together to operate the machines. The ordinary worker could no longer expect to become an independent producer. He was reduced to the status of a factory hand. Factories tended to crowd together in city areas where coal and labor were cheap. Factory towns grew rapidly, and serious social evils developed.

...the pattern of family life, known for thousands of years, was changing. When factories became the source of income, men had to leave home, thus greatly diminishing their ability to influence their sons.

The formula is simple. Less time equals less influence.

In 2019 that book was a good read. I was a newly married young man looking to lead my wife well. I was working in a warehouse packing boxes. I knew that job was temporary.

In 2022 when reading it again, the book was a challenging and inspiring read. I had a daughter on the way. I was working in insurance, a job I could not imagine dragging a child to, but I was starting to earn more and get "golden handcuffs". Reading the book and discussing it with Mike, I had a fire lit under me. That year I worked the summer at Camp Sonshine, began building the coffee cart Solace Coffee, and restarted the family farm as a direct-to-consumer farm, Still Pastures. These were things I would love to bring my daughter to work on with me.

The problem is, working at camp and restarting the family farm would not enable me to achieve one of the most important things I wanted for my family: that my wife could stay home with the kids and not have to work a job of her own so we could make ends meet.

So I followed the Lord's conviction and stuck with insurance, praying that he would open a door for me that could both provide for my family and allow me to mentor my children through that work.

That two year stretch was very challenging and honestly a bit of a whirlwind. I was doing weddings with the coffee cart, selling chicken and vegetables at the farm, and trying to grow an insurance agency. My wife continued doing wedding photography and we tried to pour as much of ourselves into these businesses as we could to make the future we dreamed of.

The Lord started to open a door to work with businesses on their finances in November of 2023. In February of 2024 I was working alongside Mike on Sixteen10 Solutions, a fractional CFO and business finance assistance company. I shifted from insurance to business finance in March of 2024 and dove headlong into educating myself, and being educated, on business finance.

By June I was running the finance department for Carlson Projects and fractionally helping 3 other companies with their finances. January of 2025 I became a partner at Finance Catalyst, the new birth of Sixteen10 Solutions. Now, in April of 2026 the business has been born a third time as 1610 Advisory.

I learned an immense amount from my dad through observing him and how he led his family through periods of increased work intensity, and from my mom in how she supported him and made all of us kids feel safe, nourished and loved.

I am in one of those seasons right now as I attempt to grow 1610. I was in one of those seasons three years ago building the farm and the coffee cart. And I will be in another season of intensity in the future.

But through it all I hope to keep my direction set intentionally, like my father did. I am not growing my business for status. I am not growing it for a big payday. I am intentionally working on growing the business because growing the business is in harmony with the other goals my wife and I have set for our life. It is in harmony with the other types of wealth I want to steward well from the Lord.

I am reading through the book The 5 Types of Wealth right now with a few other men, and also posting about it on my instagram. In periods of intensity it can be tempting for me to ignore other people, to put my head down, to say 'no' to coffee, and to neglect my family. I am not okay with just accepting those temptations and closing down my world like the gurus say I should. I want to be intentional. I want to steward well. I want to live out Luke 16:10 and "be faithful with little" which will form the habits for me to "be faithful in much".

If you are a man who resonates with any of that, I would love for you to join our small quasi-book club and get a copy of The 5 Types of Wealth. I am going to try to get us together in person on the farm before June. Shoot me an email or a text so I know you are reading through it with us.

Have a great day, and thank you for taking the time to journey through my past with me. I often find the greatest education through ruminating on where the Lord has taken me — and on things which at the time seemed either trivial or extremely consequential, both of which have worked out to the glory of the Lord.

I hope you can find a wife like I have with Analise and like my dad has with mom. Without our wives neither of us could do anything close to what we can as teams. Analise's wisdom runs in the background of all of my business ventures, and life decisions. Compounding on the fact that my mom did the same for my dad.

Now, in a big decision, my wife, Dad, Mom, Papa, Nana, Uncles, brother, sister and friends all give me their perspecive. That advisory board is one of my biggest advantages.

If you never had parents like that, you can still provide it for your kids.

You can be that for your friends.

The time to start is now.