Still in the chair.

I learned the order by getting it wrong.

I started as a systems administrator at Sun Microsystems, went to law school at CU, and spent the next twenty years building companies.

Some of those companies worked. Some imploded while they were making money. A few turned toxic because I hired teams before the business was ready for them. I built multi-state companies in one of the most regulated industries in America, and I learned more from the ones that broke than the ones that sold.

In 2016 I co-founded a plaintiff's law firm with my brother, Kevin Cheney. In 2023 I took over its operations. Revenue had been flat for two years. Since then we've grown it 4x, from low seven figures to eight, by working the order: Self, Customer, Machine, then Team.

That firm is where TheMBP became a practice instead of a theory. It's also why I still keep one foot in operations. The day I stop running something is the day this advice goes stale.