I bought a guided five-minute journal a few years back. I never got around to writing in it, but I keep it on my desk and flip to a page every now and then, thinking about the question posed.

The guided question for today is: Who in your life gives you the best advice and why?

For me, the answer is easy.

Smitty.

He has been my longtime mentor and friend, but even that feels a little too simple. Smitty is one of those rare people who has walked several of the same roads I am trying to walk now. He has been a gym owner and trainer. He has been a newspaper man. He is a veteran. He is a man of service.

In a lot of ways, he has lived the kind of life I hope to keep building.

He is also probably the person I spend the most time talking to on the phone. More than my parents. More than most of my friends. Maybe even more than my wife, depending on the week. Our conversations are not usually formal advice sessions. I am not calling him with a notebook open, asking for wisdom like I am sitting at the feet of some mountain sage.

It just happens.

The advice comes through the conversation. Through stories. Through honesty. Through the kind of friendship where someone knows you well enough to tell you what you need to hear, not just what you want to hear.

I have had people in my life show me what I did not want to become. That has value too. Sometimes the clearest lessons come from watching someone take the wrong road long enough to know you do not want to follow.

But Smitty showed me something different.

He showed me what I wanted to be.

A lot of my own views on work, service, toughness, loyalty and showing up have been shaped by those conversations. Not always in big dramatic moments. More often, it is been one steady drip of wisdom at a time.

I like to say some wisdom is taught and some wisdom is learned. There are some things life makes you earn the hard way. You have to go through them, get scraped up a little and come out the other side with the lesson carved into you.

But a lot of the wisdom I have been taught came from Smitty.

And I am better for it.