One of the biggest influences on how I lead manufacturing operations comes from my background in sports and a deeply competitive drive to win. Playing competitive sports taught me early on that success is never about individual effort alone, but it’s about team alignment, discipline, and executing the fundamentals under pressure. Preparation matters, how you practice matters, and how you show up every day determine whether you win or lose. That mindset carries directly into food manufacturing. I lead operations the same way I approached coaching and playing competitive sports: set clear expectations, build strong teams, and make sure everyone understands their role and how their performance connects to the scoreboard: safety, quality, service, and cost. I’m competitive by nature, but that competitiveness is focused on raising the bar and helping teams win together, not on individual heroics. Sports also shaped how I respond to setbacks. Losses happen in all aspects of life and especially manufacturing, whether it’s a service miss, a quality issue, or an operational failure. I don’t view those as defeats. I call it my playbook mentality. Every loss gets reviewed, the lesson gets documented, and it gets added to the playbook so the team knows exactly how to respond faster and better the next time. Just like reviewing game film, it’s about learning, adjusting, and being more prepared going forward. That competitive drive and playbook approach have shaped a leadership style rooted in accountability, continuous improvement, and resilience that creates operations teams that don’t just recover from challenges, but get stronger every day.