Meet Dr. Millard MacAdam - Up Close and Personal! 

I enjoy doing good things with and for people... my clients, my friends and my family. I am a native Californian and love of the outdoors and nature has been in my blood since childhood.  I look forward to my frequent visits to our family condo overlooking June Lake in northern California. During a long weekend each month of the summer and fall you will find me enjoying family and friends as we cast for trout while wading along my favorite streams. On a long weekend each winter month, you will find me and my wife Barbara skiing down snow-laden slopes on June or Mammoth mountain with friends and family.

Sailing with friends from the Oasis Sailing Club brings me delight several times a month as I enjoy fun and relaxation cruising up and down the Newport Coast.   

Gaining and maintaining discretionary time to thoroughly enjoy life, family and friends has always been a top priority for me. After I married Barbara, I served in the Air Force and then started my dual careers as a young educator and entrepreneur.  Maintaining quality discretionary time on my busy calendar has remained a top priority. I have found that gaining and maintaining a balanced life with abundant physical, emotional, time and financial reserves requires me to focus on "working to live, not living to work" and I encourage and help my clients do this too!.

Since I know the joy of personally catching fish, my coaching and consulting philosophy is to educate, empower, and encourage my clients to symbolically "fish" for themselves in life and work. I hold myself accountable for not creating client dependence on myself as I help clients sharpen and master the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for preventing costly mistakes and making of more profitable decisions. It is the same teaching philosophy I had when I patiently taught my son Scott and my grandsons Brittan and Cameron to become excellent fishermen and watched them experience the joy of their achievement.

My wife Barbara and I have been married since 1950 and serve as Marriage Coaches in the Marriage and Family Ministry at Mariners Church in Newport Beach.  Both of us are engaged in community volunteer activities. I am a Past President of the Rotary Club of Newport-Balboa and a past Vocational Director for Rotary District 5320. Barbara and I enjoy living in Orange County, California close to our three married children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren.

After serving in the United States Air Force as Director of the Career Information and Education Center for the headquarters unit of the 33rd Division of the Strategic Air Command during the Korean Conflict and later completing graduation from college, I pursued dual careers in education and business. I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in Education and later my Master of Arts degree in Administration from California State University, Los Angeles. In 1969 I received my Doctorate degree in education from the University of Southern California, with a major in Curriculum Design and Adult Learning and a minor in Administration. Later in my career I completed the renowned post graduate intern program in Organization Development and Human Resource Consulting with University Associates.

As a 27 year old entrepreneur, I started my first business in the Malibu Mountains of California.  I joined with two partners to create and developed Sycamore Ranch, Inc. I served for sixteen years as founding President and CEO of the resident retreat and education facility. During difficult and discouraging times when destructive floods hit our business, I oversaw the repairing of the buildings and property and the quick restoration of services to our customers.

Having been a business owner, I have a deep desire and empathy for helping each of my clients achieve their natural best. I desire that they gain and maintain the critical physical, emotional, time and financial reserves that allow them to run their businesses instead of having their businesses enslave and run them. I want to help them enjoy more discretionary time to relax and enjoy their families and friends. The most frequent reserve-sapping mistakes I find myself helping my clients avoid are: decisions and actions that deplete their personal reserves and cause burned out; hiring the wrong people; delegating inappropriately; having policies and actions that loose good customers and staff members; and failing to make research-based and best practices spending decisions on staff training and other things that waste time and financial resources.

Since 1970 I have helped leaders master the critical basic skills needed to effectively lead people and frugally manage resources.  Because these critical basic skills are generic, I have been privileged to serve business owners, managers, and their staff members in manufacturing and high tech companies; accounting, banking and insurance enterprises; medical and health care organizations; service and retail oriented businesses; and educational, nonprofit, and ministry organizations.

The probing, thought provoking comment I often make to prospective clients after they have shared their concerns and desires with me is, " Life has consistently taught me that if I keep doing what I'm doing I'll get what I've got. If I like what I've got in my marriage, with my family, with my friends and in my business, I try to figure out what I'm doing and keep on doing it. If I don't like what I'm getting, I take responsibility for looking hard at what I need to add, delete or modify to get what I truly desire and then go about doing it. What are the key things happening that you don't like and deeply desire to change? Would you like to have me be your personal coach, mutual accountability partner, confident, advisor, encourager and friend?"

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