Now Available

The Safe
Choice

A Fable About Culture, Trust, and the
Question Every Customer Is Afraid to Ask

By Darryl Bosshardt

Available on Amazon

📖 Paperback Kindle 🎧 Audiobook

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In my years at Marriott and the U.S. Travel Association, I saw firsthand that the winning organizations built cultures of genuine trust — from the inside out. The Safe Choice gives leaders a practical, memorable framework to do exactly that.

Roger Dow

(Former) CEO, U.S. Travel Association • Senior Leader, Marriott International

What readers are saying

Read the book people are calling "long overdue."

He didn't write a business book. He wrote a mirror.

Morgan Lemaitre

CEO, Park City Wealth Advisors

Practical, accessible, and long overdue.

Chuck Spence

Program Director, Governor's Office

An unforgettable business parable with a clear roadmap to building authentic, lasting relationships.

Shauna Theobald

Director, UVU Entrepreneurship Institute

A must-read for any leader committed to creating meaningful experiences.

Terry Keyes

Retired SBDC Director

The Question No One Says Out Loud

"What if I get this wrong?"

Every customer, every client, every buyer is quietly asking the same question — not "What's the best option?" but "Which choice won't hurt me?"

Customers don't buy the best option. They buy the safest option. The businesses that understand this don't just win the sale — they become beloved.

Functional Fear

"Will this product actually work?"

Financial Fear

"Is this worth the price I'm paying?"

Emotional Fear

"Will I look smart — or foolish — for choosing this?"

The Story

A Leadership Fable

When Claire Weston trades her corporate corner office for a struggling Alaska fishing lodge, she discovers that the same principles that save a business can save a life — and that being promoted away from your purpose is its own kind of crisis.

In the tradition of Patrick Lencioni and The Goal, The Safe Choice is a business fable that embeds real frameworks inside a story you won't want to put down. By the last page, you'll have a complete playbook for building a culture where people feel seen, trusted, and genuinely valued.

Leadership Fable Culture Trust Customer Experience

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📖 Paperback Kindle 🎧 Audiobook

"Spend a morning on a remote Alaska dock watching a family step off a floatplane — thousands of dollars spent, years of anticipation riding on the next five days — and you'll hear something that reframes everything.

Quiet, trying-not-to-show-it fear.

That's when you understand what safe actually means. It isn't the consolation prize. It's everything."

— Darryl Bosshardt

What Readers Are Saying

Endorsements

In my years at Marriott and the U.S. Travel Association, I saw firsthand that the winning organizations were the ones that built cultures of genuine trust — from the inside out. The Safe Choice gives leaders a practical, memorable framework to do exactly that.

Roger Dow

(Former) U.S. Travel Association CEO & Marriott Senior Leader

Stories have the power to shift perspectives — and The Safe Choice does exactly that. This book delivers a message every business needs to hear. It's insightful, relatable, and will change the way you connect with your customers. It also brings clarity, heart, and truth to what it really means to build trust and serve others at the highest level.

Liana Werner-Gray

Bestselling Author of The Earth Diet

When I picked up this book, three words from a mentor early in my career came back to me: Fair, Firm, Friendly. How good deals should get done. How honest relationships hold. By the last page, it was clear: Darryl hadn’t written a business book. He’d written a mirror.

Woven into this story is a relentless challenge to fully show up — for your team, your clients, the people sitting across from you at dinner. Not just to perform presence, but to actually be there. The principles here don’t stop at the office door. They follow you home.

And that’s exactly where they belong. Welcome Home.

Morgan Lemaitre

CEO, Park City Wealth Advisors

The Safe Choice captures an idea I haven't had language for. Darryl calls it the “honey” — the moments that come from people working together, noticing, caring, and connecting in ways that create something magical. That’s the kind of company culture I want to build, and Darryl shows how to get there.

Jason Haddock

CEO of MIRO

Darryl Bosshardt is an original: a straight-shooter, trailblazer, and brilliant businessman. His book, The Safe Choice, reflects those same qualities. It’s an unforgettable business parable with a clear roadmap to building authentic, rewarding, and lasting relationships. Additionally, the application worksheets are a goldmine for team building and effective leadership.

Shauna Theobald

(Retired) Director, UVU Entrepreneurship Institute

The Safe Choice is a great read — written by a linguistic storyteller who has mastered the art of creating the exquisite service cultures that are the very essence of a “safe choice.”

Daniel Lemaitre

Global Business Executive

Darryl Bosshardt identifies the four traits that make team members exceptional — Helpful, Kind, Aware, and Buoyant — and the two conditions leaders must create for those traits to flourish. The Safe Choice is practical, accessible, and long overdue.

Chuck Spence

Program Director, Governor's Office

The Safe Choice is a thoughtful, practical guide to building a culture where people genuinely feel seen and valued. It’s honest, actionable, and something leaders can actually use. It is a must-read for any leader committed to creating meaningful experiences.

Terry Keyes

Retired SBDC Director

I work with people for a living — and what Darryl has built here is the real thing. The Safe Choice is both a story worth reading and a framework worth using. It understands human beings.

Colby Christensen

Tech & HR Talent Strategist

A true professional needs more than knowledge and experience — they also need fluency in the folklore of their craft. The stories and battle scars passed down by others give us access to experiences we could never accumulate on our own. In this book, Darryl Bosshardt proves himself a master storyteller, delivering powerful leadership lessons that no classroom could ever teach.

Andrzej Gorecki

Author of Requisite Leadership, Australian Entrepreneur of the Year nominee, and global leadership consultant

What You'll Discover

Inside the Book

Every framework is woven into the story — lived by the characters you'll follow from page one, not appended as an afterthought.

The Culture Honeycomb™

Six interlocking behaviors — Helpful, Kind, Aware, Buoyant, Secure, and Empowered — that create unshakable organizational culture.

The Culture Wheel

A diagnostic for understanding where culture breaks down — and the two hub conditions every leader must maintain.

Ridiculously Thoughtful Service

The five-rung ladder from reactive to signature — and why "nice" is not the same as "kind."

The Safe Choice Scorecard

A 50-point self-assessment across 10 categories. Know exactly where your organization stands — and what to do next.

"You cannot market your way to trust.
You have to earn it from the inside out."

About the Author

Darryl Bosshardt

The frameworks in this book weren't built in a boardroom.

Darryl Bosshardt's career has taken an unusual path — from directing programs at Boy Scout summer camps, where he first learned that a seasonal staff of young people could deliver extraordinary experiences if the right conditions were in place, to selling Baldwin pianos, to managing Pybus Point Lodge, a remote wilderness lodge in Southeast Alaska where every element of the Culture Honeycomb was pressure-tested with real guests who had traveled thousands of miles to be there.

Along the way, he advised small businesses and government contractors through the U.S. Small Business Development Center and PTAC programs, and spent years in leadership at Redmond Inc., a Utah-based manufacturer widely recognized for its distinctive organizational culture.

He holds an MBA from Western Governors University and a B.S. from Southern Utah University. He's a former volunteer EMT and a hobby beekeeper — the honeycomb was personal before it was a framework.

He believes the best leadership lessons happen in wild places — and that the small things are always the big things.

Author Trade Show Keynote University Speaker Podcast Guest Vistage & EO Workshop Facilitator Culture Honeycomb™ Creator