Raising Barns is the true story of a farm boy who achieved success in the city. It begins on a central Wisconsin dairy farm and ends with a career in corporate communications, mostly working with Fortune 500 companies. You could say that the author was a slightly-above-average boy who achieved his share of good fortune by sidestepping most of the cow pies in life's path. And the way he was raised helped him do it. Anyone who grew up in rural America in the 50s and 60s knows it was a lifestyle that offered many unique benefits. Farm life taught work ethic, family values, and the joy of working with the land. The hub of any dairy operation is the barn. To the early settlers, these were the shelters they built to store their crops and house their livestock. Each of us raise barns too, but our barns are vastly different. They could be a campsite by a lake, a backyard swing set, a family room, a church, a business, or a special place where we meet our friends. But regardless of the size and shape of these barns, they all serve the same purpose: they shelter and protect those people and things we care most about. We all reap an emotional harvest from the structures we build. Happy people all build barns. All our barns are built on the same foundation: the lessons their builders learn along the way. This book explains how lessons learned on the farm easily translate to the business world, and to life in general. It tells how silos taught courage, how threshing crews understood teamwork, and how milk cows didn't especially like progress. It explains how the seagulls that glided over a plowed field understood planning, and how a simple sparrow could demonstrate wisdom. It reveals why yesterday's rural party lines and today's social networks are very much alike. It tells how straw barns taught lessons in motivation and how junkyards solved problems. And it suggests there are still ways to glean lessons from our ancestors by learning a new way of listening. The book lists the thirteen traits that real leaders exhibit. And it attempts to answer the biggest single question in our lives: "What is life all about?" Raising Barns explains how a simple farm couple, Mary and Lyle Krebs, lived their lives. The processes they used to build their barns could provide valuable lessons to some of the most powerful people in the world, if only they would listen. The farm kids who grew up on dairy farms shared a common bond. Many of the things that they learned didn't seem like lessons at the time they happened. They were just day-to-day incidents that leaned against their brains, waiting to tip in. Then years later, something happened and the neurons fired. This book is mostly about those times when different eras collide in moments of truth. It may be that certain lessons can never be learned until the time is right. Or maybe they are destined to help us in a time of need. Either way, growing up on a farm was an incubator for life lessons like no other.