He wrote a book of ten lessons for his own children. This is the life the lessons came out of.
A town of 3,000 people
Gregory Keough was raised in a small town in a family of lively Irish immigrants of modest means. His grandfather was a lineman for the electric company and his grandmother a nurse. His mother Patricia was a teacher. His father Bill was a Naval officer who served in the Korean War and later worked for a bank. Ever since the family left Ireland it has a history of government and community service. His uncle John Hennigan is a retired, combat-disabled US Navy SEAL officer who served in Vietnam.
In fifth grade he was sent out to work to earn money for the family, and he has worked every day since. When he was not working, which was not often, he had the run of the country: exploring, hunting, fishing, climbing trees, eating wild apples and strawberries while staring at the sky.
The Agency
Inspired by his uncle’s service as a SEAL in Vietnam, he joined the Central Intelligence Agency as a covert operations officer in the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine arm of the CIA. He served during the Cold War, from the late 1980s into the early 1990s, through the civil wars that engulfed Central America.
While on assignment abroad he received the Intelligence Star for extraordinary heroism under conditions of grave risk, for going back for a fellow officer. Director of Central Intelligence Robert M. Gates presented the medal and inscribed the photograph by hand.
He is one of a few dozen living recipients. The full record, and the letters from three officers who served with him.
He met his wife of thirty years while serving with the Agency abroad. They have five children.
Feast and famine
He built and sold three companies before he was forty. Virtual Loan Corp, an online mortgage broker, was acquired by Realtor.com. ZonaFinanciera.com was founded in a basement in December 1997 and grew to nine offices serving eighteen countries; researchers at UC Berkeley later counted it one of the three major Latin American finance sites, and in 2000 it closed a $30 million round with Citigroup, The Washington Post Company, Hartford Life and Capital Investors. AperServ Technologies was the third.
He has kept building since: RegaloCard in 2009, which let a worker send twenty-five dollars home instantly; chief executive of the Mastercard and Telefónica joint venture across twelve Latin American countries in 2013; Finova Financial in 2015, named to the KPMG Fintech100.
Some of it failed badly. He has been a rancher for years. He has been at the top, and he and his family have also been homeless and dependent on the kindness of others.
Faith, family, and what is left
He still has global business interests, but he now spends his time writing and on his family. A sinner, by his own description, he is a devout Catholic.
He belongs to the “Yes Ma’am, Yes Sir” generation, the generation of please and thank you. He is a doer, and he will go the extra mile for people, because he belongs to the generation of no man left behind.
He is a lifelong country music fan, glad that small-town stories are still told by singers like Riley Green, Justin Moore, Luke Combs, Jason Aldean and Cody Johnson. He thinks country music is one of the most effective ways left to pass those values on, because young people are looking for exactly what growing up in the country used to give every American: simplicity, faith, family, hard work and truth. His hope is that if people lose their fear and speak the truth we all know, we will see an American Renaissance.
He has made and lost fortunes several times and has nearly been killed more than once, and he credits his small-town roots for making him adaptable to any situation and any environment.
The book
He wrote The Cowboy In You as a survival manual for his children: ten lessons on faith, family, resilience and freedom. In his own words: “I wrote this for my children. I’m sharing it in case it’s useful to you.” The book is free and not commercial.
The dedication is the shortest statement of what he believes:
“To my wife, my kids, and my loved ones… Live well. I will always be walking with you. Every step of the way.”
It does not soften the harder years:
“They thought they were grinding me down. They were sharpening me.”
And it does not hedge on the point of the whole thing:
“You don’t fix the world. You fix your family.”
More Cowboys. Less Bureaucrats.
The Cowboy In You, a free survival manual, ten lessons, written for his children
