Thank You for the Tomato Sandwiches

What if the people who taught you the most about leadership never knew they were teaching you at all?

Long before Geoff Given became an executive, he was simply a kid growing up around four ordinary grandparents.

They never gave him leadership advice. They didn't have impressive titles or stand on stages. They simply lived.

They made tomato sandwiches from garden tomatoes. Chased rainstorms across the yard. Saved bacon grease in a jar. Made room for one more person at the table. Played pool in the basement. Read worn Bibles. And convinced a little boy that if he pressed the map light at just the right moment, a blue car could fly over railroad tracks.

At the time, they were just memories.

Years later, after a career leading people and organizations, Geoff began to recognize something deeper: those ordinary moments had quietly shaped the leader he became.

Thank You for the Tomato Sandwiches is a collection of personal stories about family, leadership, faith, character, and the kind of legacy that is built when no one is watching.

Through stories of his four grandparents Jeanette, Jug, Shirley, and Lowell Geoff reflects on lessons in servant leadership, presence, courage, patience, hospitality, redemption, faithfulness, potential, and legacy.

But this isn't really a book about leadership techniques.

It's about the people who shape us before we realize we're being shaped.

It's about discovering that influence doesn't require a title, that some of life's most important lessons arrive disguised as ordinary moments, and that the people who leave the greatest mark on our lives may never know how much they mattered.

Most of all, it's an invitation to look backward for a moment and ask:

Who helped make you who you are?

And perhaps an even more important question:

Whose life are you quietly shaping right now?