At 6 years old, I wrote a note to my parents telling them I was running away to be an “Ice cream man.” I never left the note for them. It stayed hidden in my dresser, which says a lot about how committed I was to the plan.

I also dreamed of one day owning Toy City, my go-to toy store where I spent hours looking over the latest 1980s Transformers. I never dreamed of working there. I dreamed of owning it, but I had no idea what that took. I just knew I wanted to build something of my own.

At 21, I started my first business and began finding out. After 25 years in business, I can say that building the business was one challenge, but building a culture that held up when things got hard was a bigger one.

I have spent the last 20 years speaking on leadership, and the people I get to work with are all different. They share one thing: they want to make the world around them better, and they want the people they lead to do well too. They also share one challenge. Good culture is hard to build, harder to scale, and hardest to protect.

That is why I do what I do. I get to help leaders shape, scale, and shield a culture where the values on the wall match the values people live.