(This post is my first joint piece between LYEATT and Engedi Artistry. In this post, I'll be covering why Diet Coke needs to rethink its branding, and in the other post, I actually redesign Diet Coke's logo using the ideas discussed here. Check out that post at this link .) If you're like me, you're probably a big fan of Coke's products. I am not really a coffee drinker, so if you see me with a cup of anything in the morning, it's most likely a cup of pop. As you all know, I lost 100 pounds between January 2015 and March 2016. Prior to that, I was a big fan of Mountain Dew and regular Coca-Cola. In my attempt to be healthy, I cut out all regular pop and switched to diet. Not being all that big a fan of Diet Mountain Dew, I mostly stuck with Diet Coke and Coke Zero. (Side note: I know there are tons of studies saying that diet colas are bad in their own right, but I'll be honest: they seriously helped me to lose weight and maintain my weight loss. I...

A little over two months ago, I started this blog not knowing what to expect. There were times when I worried about not being able to produce enough content, unsure if anybody would ever read the blog, or if I would even have any interest in maintaining this blog. In a little over two months, here we are at post #50. (Well, #62 if you technically count my other blogs.) Here are a couple interesting highlights that have occurred in the past two months: Just this past week, I hit my 1000th view. (Granted, I bet a third of them are from me.) I now average about 12 views per post whereas I averaged about 3 per post in the beginning. (We all have to start somewhere!) I started a second blog focused on art called Engedi Artistry, which is quickly out surpassing the readership of this blog. (Even though I genuinely love both blogs equally.) My last album review of The Dear Hunter's album was liked by two of the actual bandmates from The Dear Hunter. (Neat!) While most of these are...

I got called un-Christian today. Now, I'm purposefully going to conceal the details of the person and situation because I do not seek to shame him, but I still tell this story because I learned a big lesson today that I think we can all learn from. (I will share that this was not a work-related situation, and I only share that in case my employers read this post.) This person approached me about doing two tasks for his benefit that I personally did not think are all that important. He actually pulled me away from another important task I was he saw me working from (for my wife) to explain his concern. The conversation quickly devolved into an argument where he accused me of being un-Christian. I'm not going to lie: I did not handle that situation the best. At the time, I was infuriated, and while I didn't fully backlash on him, I was definitely not nice about it. To that end, I do regret how that conversation went. I wish I would have kept in mind what I'm ...

A quick disclaimer: This post is largely going to work through the analogy of faith, but the implications for business and beyond are huge. Please stick around to the end. A while back, a friend and I were chatting about the church in a public place, and another friend who wasn't a Christian but happened to be listening in decided to chime in with his two cents. He talked about how he grew up in the church and basically was glad he got that out of his way so he'd never have to subject himself or his kids to that ever again.  Granted, I genuinely don't think this person was being malicious or trying to be offensive. I think he just turned off his filter and started rambling off stuff that some would deem offensive. But I don't get offended because I understand many people echo this sentiment. Honestly, if anything, it makes me sad because these people have closed off that part of their minds to the idea of church. I didn't argue back with the person at the ti...

Last week, Nintendo unveiled to the world its next generation of home console: the Nintendo Switch. They did so in a roughly three minute video not specifically talking about the features but rather showcasing what gamers will be able to do in real life situations. If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch the video below: Amidst lots of other chatter about the unveiling, Nintendo was widely praised amongst many outlets for purposefully not using children in their initial unveiling. This is because, as you may be aware, Nintendo has been largely viewed as the video game console maker for kids recently, especially when compared to the likes of PlayStation and Xbox. As a big Nintendo fan myself, I, too, had the same reaction when watching that video. I thought, "Finally, Nintendo is looking to break the mold they set with the last console generations." Here is where things get interesting.

As somebody who uses an elliptical daily, I watch a lot of YouTube videos to pass the time. I'm generally pretty good about making sure I have my content picked out prior to stepping on the machine, but every once in a while, I resort to tapping on random videos to get me through the end of my workout. Most of the time, I inadvertently pick some videos that end up being pretty lame, but yesterday I watched a video from leader Jon Acuff about questions every person should ask themselves. One question that stood out to me in particular was the one in the title.

It's no secret that I think that the ultimate key to be successful in everything (especially business) is humility, but of course, humility is nothing if it stands alone. A person can be humble, but if they are quiet and introverted, people will walk all over them. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about my life as well as the lives of other super successful individuals to see other key competencies they all have in common. This post will be the first in a series God-knows-how-many posts where we'll take a look at some key competencies that you may or may not expect a leader to hold, and we'll start with one you might not expect: gratitude.

The top of my iPhone screen currently says 4:04am. It's not like I set an alarm to wake up at 4:00am. Or that I've particularly gotten plenty of sleep. In fact, I went to sleep at about 10:30pm last night, which is much later than I normally go to bed. It's not as if our bedroom is too hot or anything, too. Our thermostat indicates it is a comfy 72 degrees in our bedroom, and, like most nights, the ceiling fan is spinning in full force above our heads. There's no doubt though, I'm not getting back to sleep.

No matter what job or industry you may work in, chances are that you will be asked at some point to create help document for a specific process. It could be for anything as simple as how to work a cash register at a fast food restaurant or as complex as how a car is assembled from end-to-end. As good as somebody may be at executing that process, many people struggle to share that knowledge in a clear, concise way. Oftentimes, there may far too much wording bunched together. Or it is ambiguous when to go to the next step. Or multiple roles may be involved, but you're just not sure who is involved at each step. The list of these confusions and ambiguities can go on for days. I'm a pretty meticulous guy. As one who appreciates fine design even within things like corporate help documents, I have spent several years refining the way I create process guides, and I think I have cracked the code on creating truly helpful process guides. As a guy who wants to see you succeed, I...

Meetings.  When you read that word, I am sure divisive images come to mind. Some of you might love meetings. They're an opportunity for everybody to get together and talk through a certain topic. It's a real time interface that doesn't get lost in a plethora of emails, IMs, and other communication channels. Some of you may think differently of meetings. You may think they are the biggest waste of time on the planet. It's just a way for Person A to talk out loud but not add any real value to anybody's work. Perhaps an email would have sufficed instead of full meeting. Where do I land? I do find meetings valuable, but I can empathize with the groups that don't like meetings. I've been in well run meetings, and I've been in meetings that were, well, awful. The interesting thing is that, regardless of the topic, poor meetings and effective meetings generally share certain attributes applicable to all types of meetings. Instead of focusing on the bad,...

A few days ago, I wrote a post about how corporations need to be mindful of not holding too fast to a legal mindset because it may end up doing more harm than good. When I wrote that post, I did not have the Galaxy Note 7 in mind at all, but that post has huge implications on that issue.

It's no secret that legality has become a huge, huge deal in the United States. We have become a highly litigious society where a person will sue another person at the drop of a hat. Lawyers don't come cheap either. The best lawyers come a significant premium, even costing well into millions of dollars for the biggest companies. Obviously, nobody wants to pay those exorbitant fees, least of all major corporations, so ensuring legality is enforced is super high priority in this companies. I can't blame them, but I also can't help but wonder... Is legality actually killing companies?

I did my undergrad at Lincoln Christian University (LCU). For those of you unfamiliar with LCU, it is a legitimate Christian university. It's not one of those that have heritage in Christianity but basically looks and functions like a secular school today. No, it's very focused on Christian ministry. Just look at some of the majors: Preaching ministry Youth ministry Worship ministry I originally went to LCU with the intentions of becoming a full-time church pastor, and so I majored in preaching ministry for the first two years. Long story short, I found I wasn't really cut out for it, so I switched to Business Administration. (One of the few majors there that isn't specifically church occupational.) I really appreciated a lot of my education. It was interesting to get everything filtered through a Christian perspective. But it was also a bit of a detriment.

When I grew up, my mother told me about this club. It was a ritzy club that had very exclusive, prestigious members. It was praised by the masses as something that everybody wanted to be in. Every day, she would encourage me to do everything I could to join. Fortunately, membership had a relatively low barrier of entry, but it required an ongoing activity. One that would be the death of me, but my mother assured me it was worth it. The name of the club?

As much as the Google Pixel and its implications for Google's future in hardware exites me, I honestly can't see myself moving away from Apple. At least, not for a very long time. There are still several reasons I am tied to Apple. These may or may not apply to you, too. Let's get into the specific reasons why I'll be sticking with Apple.

If you haven't heard about it already, Google announced their first in-house developed smartphone: the Google Pixel (and Pixel XL). There have been other phones that were branded as "Google-made phones" (most notable the now defunct Nexus line), but in reality, those were phones created by other companies like HTC and Huawei. Notably the brains and brawn behind Android, this is the first noteworthy phone to have the hardware and software made by the same company since the iPhone. I think this is a pretty big deal, and the implications of this have me excited for what the future has in store. So in this post, let's delve into the five reasons the Google Pixel excites me.

There's no question that modern technology has radically changed the marketing playing field. Whereas platforms for advertising were limited to things like newspapers and TV commercials, there are hundreds of new platforms like Twitter, YouTube, and more. This allowed also for a lower barrier of entry. It was only big businesses that were able to purchase commercial timeslots or magazine space. Sure, those mediums still exist and are viable to an extent, but the average guy off the street is now equipped with many of the same abilities to market that are available to big businesses. It doesn't cost at all to create an Instagram account, and companies like Wix help regular people make pretty sweet looking websites for pennies on the dollar. With all these changes in marketing, does that mean the general philosophy behind marketing has changed? I think so, and the title of this post might give that away. Let's get into it.

Earlier this week, I mentioned additional curiosity about the whole recruiting process beyond just hierarchical hiring. In that post, we looked at what Jonathan Rosenberg had to say in his book How Google Works , and wouldn't you know, he also has more to say about the recruiting process! Specifically, he talked about this idea of "specialization vs. intelligence." In other words, it is this thought that maybe recruiting a person specialized in a very specific area is not as "good" as hiring somebody who may not have expertise in a certain area but has a curiosity and a thirst to want to learn anything and everything. It's an interesting thought, and like most business matters, I don't think there's a black-and-white answer to this question. Rosenberg also didn't define a hard answer to this question. But I think where he and I align is that we would probably tend toward intelligence instead of specialization. Let's talk about why.

There's no doubt in my mind that autumn is my favorite season. I love everything about it. Of course, there are the things like cooler weather and pumpkin-flavored treats, but it goes beyond that for me. Falling at the end of the year (pun not intended), autumn signals an end of sorts in a number of ways. The year is coming to a close, so I find it as a time of reflection. Nostalgia is a very appropriate word here. Anyway, music is something very important to me, and I purposefully don't latch onto a single genre of music since I since there is a time and place for everything. The fall is no exception, so I wanted to share five albums you should give a listen to this autumn. I'll even take it a step further and recommend a specific song from each album, too. Without further ado, let's get into it.