LEADERS, GO SEE YOUR FRIENDS!

Lesson: As CEOs and business leaders we find ourselves overworked, over-worried, and feeling guilty about not spending enough quality time with our family. Our friends especially do not get any of our time and effort. Reconnect! Make your friends a priority also, and you and they, and your family and your business, will thrive because of it!

Author

Jeff Martinovich
August 04, 2025

Lesson: As CEOs and business leaders we find ourselves overworked, over-worried, and feeling guilty about not spending enough quality time with our family. Our friends especially do not get any of our time and effort. Reconnect! Make your friends a priority also, and you and they, and your family and your business, will thrive because of it!

The excerpt below is from my upcoming book, Icarus: From Zero to a Billion to Zero, Ash Press, 2026.

Lesson: As CEOs and business leaders we find ourselves overworked, over-worried, and feeling guilty about not spending enough quality time with our family. Our friends especially do not get any of our time and effort. Reconnect! Make your friends a priority also, and you and they, and your family and your business, will thrive because of it!

The excerpt below is from my upcoming book, Icarus: From Zero to a Billion to Zero, Ash Press, 2026.

Coach Reggie Minton called the first meeting of our sophomore basketball season at the United States Air Force Academy. “The following nine players can clear out your lockers.” The new coach had brought in his own recruits, and we were unceremoniously finished. As I held back tears in the locker room, 6’5” power forward Paul slammed the lockers and demanded one last rematch with the starting D1 varsity. He ran back to the court, negotiated one game to eleven and unleashed us five remaining losers to trounce the starting Varsity and replace our dignity. I’ll never forget that day.

I didn’t get a chance to see him but a few times the next twenty years, but one day he showed up in the Morgantown, West Virginia Prison Visitors Room. He said he spent all this time researching my case and knew it was BS, but I understood he just wanted to show up and let me know he was still there for me.

A few years later, I had managed to reverse my court decisions five times, remove two judges, and make it back to home confinement. One night I missed a phone call, and the Bureau of Prisons came to haul me back to prison for seven more years. Paul once again rallied the troops with Brian, Kevin, and Ashleigh, and hired a team of attorneys who knew us and our story and also felt motivated to do what was right.

For two months Paul would tell Ashleigh that he was going to get me home. After telling Ashleigh I loved her, I would save my second phone call to scream at Paul that he had to get me out of this! After being shuttled for two more months to five different jails across the country, a BOP guard handed me an airlines ticket and dropped me off at Jackson Mississippi International Airport to return back to Ashleigh, now 8-months pregnant with miracle little baby Carleigh.

So, this week I am honored today to be flying to Houston to represent our company, www.invetmentcapital.com, an incredible organization attempting to end veteran homelessness and 18 suicides a day. And, as importantly, I negotiated 18 holes of golf to spend quality time with Paul, and let him know, again, how much I appreciate him. It is a privilege.

Business leaders, we find ourselves in a cocoon of emptiness. This week, call your friends. Better yet, this week buy the plane ticket to go see your friends. Have a great week!