From a Barn to the Badge: Why I Wrote This Book
I grew up in poverty. At one point, my family lived in a barn. I was a troubled youth — and I say that carefully, because when I talk about troubled youth today, I’m talking about a young person I know from the inside. That troubled youth was me.
I didn’t write From The Barn To The Badge just to tell my story. I wrote it to change how we lead.
My road took me from that beginning to 27 years in law enforcement, including serving as Chief of Police in Union Point, Georgia. Today I serve as Associate Director of Safety with the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice, where my work is about helping troubled youth be reformed — molding young people’s minds so they leave better people than when they arrived. I also earned an MBA and am a doctoral candidate in Strategic Leadership, and I own Global Panacea Solutions LLC, where I coach and train leaders.
But here’s the honest truth about that road: help was far away for me growing up. I lived leadership the hard way — through controversy, conflict, and obstacles nobody warned me about. Long before I had the education, I had the experiences. I had to build my leadership skills backwards, out of hard seasons, hard lessons, and grace.
That’s why the book is more than a memoir. Alongside the story, it lays out a practical playbook: the PANACEA framework, communication strategies I learned over a career in public service, and twenty-two tools a leader can pick up and use on Monday morning. Because a story can inspire you for a day, but tools change how you lead for a career — how you communicate under pressure, how you show up for your people, how you hold a standard when it would be easier to let it slide.
If you’re looking for leadership books by police chiefs, you’ll find plenty of war stories out there. I wanted to write something different: a book from a public servant who started with nothing, led at the highest level of a department, and now spends his days helping young people find a better road — and who believes a person’s starting point doesn’t decide where they finish.
My dedication is to this: that the next leader doesn’t have to learn it the way I did. If you lead a team, wear a badge, serve the public, or you’re simply trying to lead your own life with purpose, this book was written for you.
You can find From The Barn To The Badge on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/05kdpflV. And if you’d like to learn more about my coaching, speaking, and team training, visit https://globalpanaceasolutions.com.