One of the things I like to do when I meet someone new is ask them, “What’s your story?”
It’s a fun way to get to know new people.
Sometimes they go right into their answer. Sometimes they struggle to find their answer. Either way, it almost always creates for interesting conversation.
And I like that. I like people.
But I’ve never been asked that same question back. “What’s YOUR story?”
So I thought I’d take a few minutes and try to answer what “I’d say” if asked that same question.
So, here you go.
The quick answer might be…
I’m a guy who has spent his life learning how to get back up. I grew up in inner-city Dallas with a chip on my shoulder, learned early that life doesn’t always play fair, and discovered that resilience is something you can build.
I became a husband, a father of six, a student of people, and… through others and especially my wife Shelly… the beneficiary of some of the most powerful lessons I’ve ever learned about parenting, love, and leading a family.
When Shelly died in 2021, it nearly broke me. But in the middle of that loss, I realized that the things she had figured out about raising our strong-willed kids and creating a healthier family could help millions of other parents.
So now my story is really about turning pain into purpose, lessons into tools, and a life that could have ended in tragedy into something that might make someone else’s life better.
The longer version… (if you’re still interested) might read like this…
My story is about getting knocked down… and learning how to get back up.
I grew up in inner-city Dallas. I learned early that the world could be tough, people could be tough, and sometimes you had to develop a little toughness of your own. I remember being a kid on a basketball court where I wasn’t exactly welcomed. I got picked on, pushed around, and made to feel like I didn’t belong.
Eventually, I ran home crying to my dad.
His answer wasn’t to tell me the world was going to become easier.
He told me, “Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.”
That sentence stuck.
It became a kind of operating system for my life.
Instead of waiting for circumstances to change, I learned to work on myself.
Basketball became one of the places where I learned that lesson. I practiced when nobody was watching. I became a shooter. And somewhere along the way, I learned something bigger than how to shoot a basketball:
You can change your circumstances by changing what you do repeatedly.
That lesson followed me into adulthood.
I became a husband. A father of six. A (wanna-be) leader. A guy who has made plenty of mistakes and learned plenty of lessons the hard way.
And then there was Shelly.
Shelly wasn’t just my wife. She was the love of my life and the mother of our six children.
For decades, I watched her raise our kids.
And I noticed something.
She had figured out things about parenting that I didn’t fully understand at the time.
She had a way of dealing with our strong-willed children without crushing their spirit. She understood that parenting wasn’t simply about stopping bad behavior. It was about teaching children how to think, how to respond, how to disagree, how to make better choices… and how to become good human beings.
She developed practical ways of doing it.
Simple things.
Things that could actually be used in the middle of any chaotic afternoon when your kid is losing their mind and you’re about to lose yours.
I watched those methods work for years.
But I didn’t fully appreciate how valuable they were until Shelly was gone.
In October of 2021, I lost her.
And honestly, it nearly took me with her.
There were days when getting through the day felt like an accomplishment. I was physically and emotionally wrecked. Even things that once seemed automatic became difficult.
But something happened in that darkness.
I started looking differently at the life we’d built together.
I realized Shelly had left me something far more valuable than memories.
She had left behind a way of thinking.
A way of parenting.
A way of approaching difficult moments with love instead of simply reacting to them.
And I started thinking:
What if this could help other families?
What if the things Shelly figured out through raising six kids could help a mother who is sitting at her kitchen table tonight wondering, “Why won’t my child listen to me?”
What if it could help the mom who feels like she’s constantly yelling?
What if it could help parents who love their kids desperately but don’t know what to do with a strong-willed child?
That’s where The Shelly Method came from.
It isn’t just a parenting book to me.
It’s part of Shelly’s legacy.
It’s my attempt to take something beautiful that came out of our family and put it into the hands of other families.
But that’s only part of my story.
I’ve also learned that resilience isn’t something you talk about when life is going well.
You discover what you’re made of when life punches you in the mouth.
I’ve learned that through grief.
I’ve learned it through fatherhood.
I’ve learned it through work.
I’ve learned it on basketball courts.
And I’ve learned it through people who have influenced me along the way
People who taught me that leadership isn’t about fear, shame, or control. It’s about setting the tone, staying optimistic when things are falling apart, treating people with kindness, and keeping communication alive when everything in you wants to shut down.
Today, I’m still figuring things out.
I’m still rebuilding.
I’m still shooting basketball.
I’m still raising kids.
I’m still making mistakes.
I’m still learning.
But I think I finally understand what my life has been teaching me.
You don’t get to choose everything that happens to you.
You don’t get to choose who stays.
You don’t get to choose when life takes something precious away.
But you do get to decide what you do with what remains.
So that’s my story.
I was a kid who learned not to wish life were easier, but to become better.
I became a husband and a father and built a life with the woman I loved.
I lost her.
I nearly lost myself.
And then I realized that maybe surviving wasn’t the finish line.
Maybe the point was to take everything I’d learned… the failures, the victories, the heartbreak, the lessons, the love…
and use it to help somebody else.
That’s what I’m trying to do now.
Turn pain into purpose.
Turn experience into something useful.
And leave something behind that makes the people who come after me a little stronger.