Lessons from Dr. Brand’s Chalkboard

All Those Quotes I’ve Saved? Turns Out They Actually Mean Something.

My favorite professor in college was Dr. Brand.

He was an older, soft-spoken guy who would begin each class with the same routine: right when class started, he would quietly walk to the board and write down a quote. To most of us, these quotes seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere – snippets from movies, fragments from authors, musings of historians – leaving us at first a little confused. I remember once staring at a Mary Poppins quote while clutching my copy of Crime and Punishment, wondering what the hell?!

But that was Dr. Brand's gift. As the class went on, he'd somehow weave that random-seeming quote into everything we were discussing. It was his way of building bridges between the familiar and the foreign, between pop culture and classic literature, between our lived experiences and the wisdom of the past. He wasn't just teaching us about books; he was teaching us how to find meaning in unexpected places. I loved his classes so much that I followed him around the course catalog, eventually earning a minor in literature as a result.

And that style of teaching stuck with me. In all the years since (and yeah, it's been a minute), I've found myself doing the same thing. I like to collect quotes using them to make sense of whatever's happening in my life or work. They've become my own personal repository of wisdom, helping me connect dots across time and context.

So this week, I'd like to try something different. Consider this newsletter my homage to Dr. Brand. I'll share a few carefully chosen quotes, and we'll explore how they connect to the stuff we sometimes talk about. It's going to be eclectic and random, but I hope to do my old college professor proud.

On Leadership

“The joy of leadership comes from seeing others achieve more than they thought they were capable of.”
— Simon Sinek

For those who don’t know, I spent several years coaching Ultimate Frisbee, and honestly, it probably taught me more about leadership than any business book ever could.

Imagine working with a kid who has been struggling with their forehand for weeks. They’ve thrown it hundreds of times at practice, mostly into the ground or wobbling sadly through the air. But they keep at it—showing up early, staying late, and asking questions. Then one day, in the middle of a game, they throw a perfect, beautiful arc that hits their teammate in stride several yards downfield.

In that moment, they light up with a mix of shock and pure joy. For a split second, they look over at you on the sideline with a “Did you see that?!” expression. Yep, I saw it.

I was fortunate to witness a lot of these moments on the field, and it’s incredible how much they relate to my job. Leadership isn’t about making people follow your path or do things your way. It’s about creating the conditions where they can surprise themselves. It’s about standing on the sideline, watching someone do something they swore they couldn’t, and smiling because you knew it was within them all along.

The thing about those moments—whether they happen on a field, in an office, or as a parent—is that they’re never really about the specific skill being mastered. It’s not about the perfect throw. It’s about the kid realizing they can do hard things if they stick with them. It’s about them learning that “I can’t” often just means “I can’t yet.” And maybe that’s what Sinek was getting at. The real joy of leadership isn’t just watching people exceed their own expectations—it’s knowing that once they do it once, they’ll never look at challenges the same way again.

I think Dr. Brand might say that the best lessons about leading people can come from the most unexpected places—like a muddy Ultimate field on a random Saturday afternoon.

On Loss

“I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,
I loved my friend.”
— Langston Hughes

When I was twelve, my best friend died suddenly and unexpectedly. One day he was there, the next he was not. In those raw, confusing months that followed, I stumbled across these words from Hughes. Somehow, in that way that only poetry can, these six simple lines reached my pre-teen soul and gave me something to hold onto. They spoke to the quiet sadness I was feeling and reminded me that what mattered most was the love that had been there.

This past week, in one of those cruel echoes life sometimes throws at us, I lost someone else suddenly. A young man who worked for me – we had just chatted on Friday, and then a few days later, I got the news. And our team is reeling, trying to make sense of a world that suddenly has this person-shaped hole in it.

And so, decades later, I find myself turning back to Hughes' words. They're still here, still true, still offering that same gentle wisdom. The poem ends "soft as it began," just as it tells us life sometimes does. No drama, no grand finale, just the quiet truth that we loved, we lost, and that love remains.

It's not much, in the face of such profound loss. But sometimes, when the world stops making sense, it's enough to hold onto at least for me. And maybe that's something Dr. Brand was trying to teach us – that sometimes the most profound comfort can come from the simplest words, reaching across time to remind us we're not alone in our grief.

On Gratitude

“Gratitude is the healthiest of all human emotions. The more you express gratitude for what you have, the more likely you will have even more to express gratitude for.”
— Zig Ziglar

I think a lot about gratitude, and it has led me to start this slightly weird experiment at work. I created a Slack channel called "Three Good Things" (TGT for the cool kids). The rules are simple:

Post three good things every single day (preferably morning) from the day before. Note this should only take 2 minutes to do. Please follow the format of:

Good Thing
Good Thing
Good Thing

Anything you post is public, so make sure you are OK if other people see it
If you want to comment or discuss someone’s post, use replies.
Once you have posted every day for 7 days straight, you get two invites. If you are an existing TGT person, you get one additional invite for each 7 days.
Please only invite someone who you feel confident will post daily and follow the rules.
No good thing is too small to post.

The channel has taken on a life of its own, as people are posting the tiniest victories: "Got the yard raked and cleaned up a bit." "Geno Smith’s game-winning drive." "Good parent teacher conferences for the kids." Again, no good thing is too small.

What's great is watching how this simple practice starts rewiring people's brains. One team member told me they caught themselves mentally bookmarking good moments throughout the day, thinking 'Oh, this is definitely going in tomorrow's TGT.' Another mentioned they began noticing more positive moments simply because they knew they'd need three items for tomorrow's post. It's not that being grateful magically creates more good things in your life (though hey, ya never know). It's that gratitude makes you a better spotter of good things.

And what’s more is that the channel is becoming this sweet little time capsule of joy. On tough days, I like to scroll back through old posts and find reminders of yards raked and Seahawk wins. It's like we're building this collaborative archive of tiny victories, one good thing at a time.

On Growth

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
— Amelia Earhart

Back in mid-February, I sat staring at a blank screen, cursor blinking somewhat accusingly at me, trying to write the first edition of this newsletter. I'd been thinking about starting one for a while but you know how it goes. "I should really..." "One of these days..." "When I have more time..."

Man, those "someday" projects, they have a sneaky way of staying in that comfortable future space where everything is perfect but nothing is actually happening.

I remember hovering over that send button. What if nobody cared? What if people unsubscribed? What if I ran out of things to say? But then I remembered that no one knew I was gonna do this and I didn’t have an audience. The stakes were actually very low.

So I clicked send.

And then something kind of great happened – I kept clicking send. Every week. No matter what. Some weeks the words pour out of me. Other weeks it's like trying to squeeze water from a stone. But I show up. The tenacity part of Earhart's quote isn't about being stubborn or forcing creativity – it's about making a commitment to yourself and honoring it, one week at a time.

And it blows me away how many of you have joined me on this journey. Every time I see a new subscriber notification, I get that little hot zing of "wait, really? People wanna read my random thoughts?" It’s pretty great.

Growth isn't always about the big leaps. I think it's more about the small, consistent steps. Writing this newsletter has become more than just a weekly task – it's become my way of processing the world, of sharing what I'm learning, of connecting with all of you in ways I never expected.

Starting something new is scary. That cursor is still blinking at me every week. But now, instead of feeling like some scary challenge, it feels more like an invitation. An invitation to grow, to share, to connect, to figure things out together.

To those of you who've been here since that first (admittedly not great) newsletter in February – thank you for being part of this experiment. To those who've joined along the way – welcome to our little corner of the internet. And to those who've been thinking about starting their own "someday" project – maybe today's the day to turn that cursor into something real.

After all, the decision to act is the hardest part. The rest? Well, that's just showing up, week after week, one blinking cursor at a time.

In Conclusion

And so, we return to Dr. Brand and his quotes on the board.

Looking at the themes we’ve explored—leadership, loss, gratitude, and growth—I can’t help but think that what he was teaching us wasn’t just about literature. It was about uncovering the threads that connect everything: how coaching Frisbee informs leadership, how an old poem helps us navigate new grief, how a simple Slack channel can change our perspective, and how a blinking cursor can become a weekly ritual. Each thread is a different path to the same truth: that change, growth, and meaning often come from the most unexpected places.

I believe the best wisdom doesn’t come from textbooks, lectures, or meetings. It comes from muddy fields and morning gratitude posts, from poetry that finds us at exactly the right moment, and from professors who understood that the best way to teach us about life was to let us discover the connections ourselves.

So, thanks for letting me channel my inner Dr. Brand this week. Same time next week?