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Business lessons from my childhood best friend
Growing up with a sibling eleven years older than you is a bit like time-traveling — especially when that sibling is your cultural concierge, guiding you not to what’s popular, but to what matters. My brother was my pop-culture professor, my culinary coach (yes, really), and without knowing it, my first real leadership example.
I was born in 1974, which meant that by the time the 80s were in full swing, I was expected to know the characters of Three’s Company, laugh at The Golden Girls, and maybe follow ALF’s antics like every other suburban kid. But thanks to my older brother — who had a decade-long head start on taste — my media diet looked a little different.
Instead of ABC’s primetime hits, I got The Avengers (with Patrick Macnee, not Marvel’s CGI army), Get Smart, Hogan’s Heroes, and The Saint. I learned about espionage, irony, and the delightfully dry British wit of Fawlty Towers and anything Monty Python. While others my age debated over who was cooler — Balki or Uncle Jesse — I was busy reenacting scenes from Sleuth (Would I be Michael Caine today or Laurence Olivier?) or humming the theme from The Italian Job.
This wasn’t just quirky. It was formative.
Without realizing it, my brother was teaching me a foundational leadership lesson: Don’t be seduced by the trend — understand the framework. He showed me that before you can innovate or stand out, you need to grasp what came before. Cultural literacy wasn’t about knowing what was hot, it was about understanding why it ever got hot in the first place.
That lesson applies to a lot more than TV.
Inbusiness, in branding, in leadership — understanding legacy gives you leverage. It lets you speak more languages, pull from more references, and make connections others might miss. My brother’s casual cultural crash course became a lens I’d use for decades to come.
It didn’t stop at TV and film. My brother also taught me how to dress — not just to impress, but to understand the unspoken code of style. When it was muddy: Hunter Wellingtons. When the air turned crisp: a proper tweed jacket. And the gold standard of all menswear essentials? A pair of perfectly worn-in corduroy slacks — no compromise.
He also introduced me to a gentleman’s grooming trick that, to this day, I can’t forget: The credit card test. If it catches on your stubble, it’s time to shave. Brutal. Efficient. British.
And then there was the soundtrack of my childhood — curated not by Casey Kasem, but by my brother’s impeccable taste. Through him, I discovered U2 before they were stadium giants, Talking Heads when they still felt like art-school outsiders, and The Smiths when their melancholy somehow felt like rebellion. Each record was a message. A nudge. A passport into a different way of seeing the world.
Then, every Sunday night, we had a ritual: Two pieces of white bread and a couple of hot dogs, American cheese, and — the real innovation — two paper towels still stuck together from the roll. The trick, my brother explained with the authority of a Michelin chef, was to place the hot dogs horizontally under the perforation. This allowed the cheese to melt just right while the steam could release through the top seam, keeping the bread from turning into sponges or cardboard.
We didn’t have buns. We didn’t care.
It was elegance on a paper plate. Resourcefulness in action. A lesson in doing the best with what you have — and doing it well.
Leadership isn’t always in boardrooms or books. Sometimes, it’s in how you teach your kid brother to cook a proper microwave cheese dog without drying it out or setting off the smoke detector.
Istill make those hot dogs, just now with keto bread, but the same paper towel trick. Same mental nod to my brother, who at nearly 62 is still effortlessly cooler than me. When I look back, I don’t just remember the shows or the food. I remember the feeling of someone taking time to share what they knew, to pass down culture, context, and a few culinary shortcuts.
That’s what leaders do. They make room on the couch. They share what they love. They let others fall asleep while the credits roll, knowing they’ve passed something on.
And sometimes, they teach you that the best hot dog buns aren’t buns at all.
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