What is The Higher Ground Life?
I spent forty years in the arena of leadership—some as a CEO, some as a marketing officer, some as a board member watching empires rise and crumble. I’ve seen brilliant strategies collapse overnight, billion-dollar valuations evaporate, and once-unbreakable teams fracture into silos of suspicion. And after all of it, I can tell you the single variable that determines whether an organization thrives for a quarter or endures for a generation:
Trust.
Not slick branding. Not the latest growth hack. Not even the most airtight business model.
Trust is the operating system I wish someone had handed me on day one. I call it the Higher Ground Life, because once you choose to live and lead from this place, everything else—profit, innovation, culture, legacy—flows as a byproduct.
The Higher Ground Life Is an Operating System, Not a Poster.
Many companies have “core values” gathering dust on a wall. The Higher Ground Life turns values into a living operating system—a set of non-negotiable principles that drive every decision, every hire, every pivot, and every tough conversation.
It begins with a single, relentless question you ask before any move: “Does this strengthen trust or weaken it?”
Launching a new product?
Cutting a corner to hit a number?
Delivering bad news to the team?
Choosing a vendor, a partner, or a new hire?
Run it through the trust filter. If the answer is “weaken,” you don’t do it—even if it costs you in the short term. Because short-term wins purchased with eroded trust become long-term liabilities that bankrupt cultures and balance sheets alike.
Trust Is the Bedrock of Human Achievement.
Look at history’s greatest collaborations—moon landings, civil rights movements, open-source revolutions, multi-generational family businesses. None of them were built on transactional exchanges. They were built on trusting relationships deliberately cultivated over years.
When trust is present:
Teams execute faster because they don’t waste energy covering their backs.
Innovation explodes because people feel safe to fail forward.
Customers become evangelists because they know you’ll do the right thing even when no one is watching.
Talent stays, compounds, and multiplies instead of jumping ship every 18 months.
When trust is absent, even the most talented group devolves into politics, second-guessing, and attrition. I’ve watched it happen in companies that looked invincible from the outside.
The Higher Ground Life in Practice
These five daily disciplines are the operating system in action. They’re non-negotiable, measurable, and the reason Higher Ground organizations outlast and outperform the rest.
You value relationships over transactions—every time. A sale, a hire, a partnership, a tough conversation: the first lens is never “How much?” but “How does this affect the relationship?” Short-term revenue that damages a customer, employee, or vendor relationship is always rejected. Long-term trust is the only transaction that truly compounds.
You put purpose before profit—without apology. Profit is oxygen; purpose is direction. When the two conflict, Higher Ground leaders choose the mission that gave the company life in the first place. Paradoxically, this single discipline is what creates the deepest, most sustainable profitability—because people inside and outside the organization rally around something bigger than a spreadsheet.
You over-communicate with candor—never leaving teammates to fill silence with fear. Transparency is an act of respect. Higher Ground leaders speak early, plainly, and often—even when the message is incomplete or uncomfortable—because relationships thrive on truth and wither on speculation.
You lead with conviction over compliance—you make the decision you know is right and you don’t hide behind legal mumbo jumbo. When the policy manual and the right thing diverge, Higher Ground leaders choose what is right, take full responsibility, and act decisively. Courageous conviction inspires loyalty; bureaucratic compliance breeds quiet resentment.
You become an advocate for your employees and customers instead of remaining apathetic. Higher Ground leaders fight for their people the way they would fight for family—celebrating wins publicly, defending them fiercely, and removing obstacles before they’re even ask. Apathy kills culture; active advocacy turns employees into owners and customers into lifelong evangelists.
Practice these long enough and something almost miraculous happens: loyalty compounds. Customers don’t just buy—they advocate. Employees don’t just work—they own outcomes. Partners don’t just collaborate—they co-create the future.
This Isn’t Soft. It affects Your Bottom Line.
In a world addicted to speed, scale, and shortcuts, choosing the Higher Ground Life will feel inefficient at times. You’ll turn down “easy” money. You’ll fire a high performer who poisons culture. You’ll lose a deal because you refused to compromise a principle.
But here’s what I’ve learned after four decades on the field: the companies that look unstoppable today and gone tomorrow are the ones that optimized for the next quarter instead of the next quarter-century. The institutions that endure—Patagonia, Chick-fil-A, the 100-year-old family manufacturing firm no one’s heard of outside its region—are the ones that made trust their most non-negotiable asset.
An Invitation.
If you’re a leader who’s tired of rebuilding culture every 18 months, tired of customers who love your product but don’t trust your company, tired of watching good people walk out the door because something felt “off,” then the Higher Ground Life isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the only sustainable path left.
Start small: Gather your team and ask, “On a scale of 1–10, how much trust do we have right now—with each other, with our customers, with our vendors?” Then commit—publicly—to run every future decision through the trust filter.
It won’t be easy. It will be worth it.
Because in the end, you don’t just build a company. You build a resilient institution that delivers consistent returns, attracts the best people, and leaves every stakeholder—team members, customers, community—better off than when you started.
That’s the Higher Ground Life. That’s the only ground worth building on.
Are you ready to stop surviving quarters and start building a legacy? The Higher Ground is calling.
