Angry Olive Consulting

10/22/2026

There’s something comforting about knowing this route.

The familiar streets. The turns we barely think about anymore. The things we expect to see along the way.

My newest essay, “I Know This Route,” began with an ordinary morning walk.

It didn’t stay there.

I’d love to have you join me.

Read the essay through the link in my bio.

10/21/2026

We become familiar with the places we go, the people we see, and the things we do.

Sometimes so familiar that we barely think about them anymore.

There's comfort in that familiarity.

My newest essay, "I Know This Route," began with an ordinary morning walk.

I'd love to have you join me.

The Ring doorbell chimes behind me.I turn around, slide the key back into the lock on our sage green front door, then push the wrought-iron screen door closed.Not a cloud in the sky.I head down the concrete steps, turn left, and walk toward Virginia. At the corner is the stop sign everyone ignores.....

10/06/2026

Restaurants have taught me a lot about belonging.
Not because restaurants always get it right.
But because they give us so many opportunities to notice what happens when people are invited into a room—and what happens after they arrive.
My newest essay, So Far, begins with a restaurant I thought I knew.
It moves through a few others I’ve known along the way.
And eventually, it arrives at a door.

Click on the full Essay below.

The RestaurantIt was just before nine on a gray fall morning when I handed my car keys to the parking lot attendant.I clicked the car locked, turned over the keys, and walked toward the back door.The alley smelled exactly like a downtown Denver alley should smell. Dumpsters. Overflowing bags and box...

09/30/2026

I used to think becoming the next version of myself meant becoming different. I’m not sure that’s true anymore.

Sometimes we learn something new and change. Sometimes we look again and discover that what we believed still holds.

Both require the same thing: A willingness to notice.

Version Previous owes Version Next everything it has learned. Version Next owes Version Previous the willingness to keep looking.

Version Next - Tell Me What You’ve Noticed.
Full essay at the link in bio.

09/29/2026

One of the more dangerous things experience can give a leader is certainty.

Not because experience doesn't matter. Because it does.

But what worked before is still evidence—not proof that it will always be true.

Leadership asks something more difficult of us:
To bring everything we've learned with us without requiring what happens next to agree with it.

That doesn't mean abandoning experience. It means remaining available to revision.

Sometimes what we've learned still holds.
Sometimes someone on our team sees something we've stopped seeing.
Sometimes the next piece of evidence changes the conclusion.
And sometimes, after examining all of it, we discover that nothing needs to change.

Version Next does not require Version Different. But it does require us to keep noticing.

The Essay: Version Next — Tell Me What You've Noticed.

I was fifteen years old in 1982, lying in one of the twin beds in my bedroom, listening to Bob Uecker call a Milwaukee Brewers game on a little black transistor radio with two dials—one for tuning and one for volume.The radio sat on the nightstand beside my bed. Next to it was a Brewers pocket sch...

09/10/2026

None of us ever becomes entirely by ourselves.

There are things I carry that began with someone else. A question someone taught me to ask. A way of seeking I didn’t have before. Something someone believed about me before I knew how to believe it myself.

Sometimes I can still tell you exactly who gave it to me. Sometimes I’ve carried it for so long that I no longer remember where it began.

But it’s still here. Still shaping how I lead. How I love. How I make room for someone else.

Maybe becoming isn’t only about discovering who we are. Maybe it is also about recognizing who is already here with us.

What are you carrying because someone else placed it into your life?

We Were Never Meant To Grow Alone - What We Carry Into One Another’s Lives. An Essay.

Link in bio.

09/08/2026

We tend to talk about growth as something we do ourselves.

We learn. We gain experience. We become better at what we do. We grow.

But look closely at almost anything you know how to do well, and there’s probably someone else somewhere in the story.

Someone taught you. Someone challenged you. Someone trusted you before you were completely sure you were ready.

Someone asked a question you’re still asking. Someone showed you a way of doing something that eventually became your way of doing it.

And eventually, you probably began giving some of those things away yourself.

That’s how so much of what matters continues.

None of us ever becomes entirely by ourselves.

We Were Never Meant to Grow Alone: What We Carry Into One Another’s Lives — An Essay

I was sitting on the couch when the text came in. Nothing particularly interesting was happening. It was an ordinary day. Maybe even a Tuesday.Across from me was the television. On the stand beneath it was a framed photograph of Jody and me on our wedding day. It had been there long enough that I pr...

09/02/2026

Some people know the person you were twenty years ago.

Some know the person you became afterward.

Some know the version of you who laughs harder, thinks differently, asks better questions, or says the thing you wouldn’t say anywhere else.

None of them knows all of you.

But none f them knows a false version of you, either.

I’ve been thinking about that.

Maybe different relationships don’t change who we are as much as they make different things in us visible.

We become visible differently through one another.

That’s the recognition at the heart of “The People We Keep Meeting.”

And perhaps there is someone in your life who knows a version of you that no one else does. Who comes to mind?

Read the full essay through the link in my bio.