When Your Name Is All You Have

Work ethic will get you noticed. Integrity will keep you trusted.

The Army made this clear from day one. There were endless ways to cut corners, to look like you were doing the right thing without actually doing it. But in that environment, your reputation followed you everywhere. If you lied, if you tried to cheat the system, if you said one thing and did another — word got around fast. You only had one name, and once it was tarnished, it was hard to recover.

That truth stayed with me long after I hung up the uniform.

In college, it showed up in the small choices — owning up when I didn’t have an answer, turning in work I knew was my own, not something borrowed or doctored to look better than it was. Later in my career, it meant telling clients and colleagues the truth, even when it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. People may not always like honesty in the moment, but they respect it in the long run.

And at home, integrity became even more personal. Raising a family meant my words carried weight. My daughters didn’t just hear what I said — they watched what I did. I couldn’t tell them to do the right thing if I wasn’t living it myself. Integrity isn’t a speech; it’s a pattern. It’s keeping promises, even the small ones. It’s admitting when you’re wrong. It’s showing up the same way in private as you do in public.

Over time, I’ve come to believe this: success without integrity isn’t success at all. A good name is worth more than titles, paychecks, or applause.

And integrity naturally points toward the next lesson I learned — servant leadership. Because when people trust your word, they’ll follow your lead. And the best way to honor that trust is by putting their needs ahead of your own.