At 21 I was broke, stubborn, and welding Jeep bumpers in my mom’s one-car garage with nothing but grit, eBay, and a borrowed extension cord. No business plan. No leadership training. No clue.

That garage turned into JcrOffroad, then Fat American Manufacturing, Victory 4x4 and Squatch Proof, right here in Kalamazoo. Growing that fast exposed every bad habit I had. When stuff went sideways, I blamed the team. I blamed the market. Mostly I just did the work myself so it’d get done “right.”

In 2024 the folks at Mazak invited me to Japan, and I got to see real Lean leadership up close. The humility. The people-first stuff. It hit me like a freight train: I had become the bottleneck. I was the constraint in my own business.

Lean by Doing is me sharing what happened next. The wins, the face-plants, the shop makeovers, and conversations with people way smarter than me. If it helps one leader skip a few of my mistakes, it’s worth it.