We’re experiencing a modern adaptation of a storied era. Our storied culture is a series of mini-renaissances continually being shaped by visionary entrepreneurs. 

The challenge precedes the seachange, always. These are the quiet training grounds of grit and endurance that teach you to smile at the challenge, so that you’re better equipped to take something that, by all accounts should be called a curse, and turn it into a blessing. In retrospect, my story demonstrates this: 4 businesses born only because the difficult seasons. The fight for my life obliterating any comfort zones: entrepreneurship; a law firm. A war against reputation: the Creative Law Shop. Learning some of the world’s best weren’t safe: the SFSF. An endurance test that will define a generation: a return to my first love: horses and home, & a way to facilitate that for others.
 A rich life isn’t found, it’s made; in large part from harnessing the challenges you’re faced with. You won’t be able to find those answers just by reading about them here, but I hope these articles help spark that curiosity within myself, so that you can answer that question posed to me in 2017. 

So why this, why now? 

We’re in the midst of another difficult season, and yet, we can pioneer, endure and thrive. We can choose to smile at the challenge. With the right tools, that choice becomes the seed for our most honest growth, and sets the critical foundation of the ability to remain agile and recalibrate, despite the circumstances. 

This journal is for aspiring and diligent entrepreneurs who are willing to smile at the challenge of starting something new and who desire to build something enduring. This is not a love letter to entrepreneurship. Instead, a call to action to those seeking to uncover originality and manifest their own destiny; those driven to create something of enduring value. The path can’t be replicated. But instead, use the past as a tool to be present to the now, and more prepared for the future. Eschew stagnation and indifference in your life; find your own path to thriving in an environment that fosters the fruition of your own imagination and self-expression.

This is a space to examine the question of what it means to mean a life truly well-lived. To eliminate what does not matter, but instead, work hard for what’s important, and then rest deeply in the full life you’ve built. To foster the tension between ambition and contentment. This journal equips diligent entrepreneurs to embrace their seachange, build an enduring business, and experience their own version of The American Dream.

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Not every story should be told immediately, but as I sit here this evening, strategizing the tumultuous season coming, I'm also watching the golden hour light over my horses. It seems like a good place to start.

Welcome to what I’ve been sitting on for years, shared now to equip you to aspire in business, and pursue a richness in life. These are my personal studies and discussions with my own thought leaders. The guidebook to my own pioneering, entrepreneurial journey, ever-focused on aspiring to a life well-lived. 

Starting a business was never "the plan". Ever. In 2017, I was on track to accomplish everything I’d hoped for: I was a litigator in the industry & in a job I loved. I had the perfect balance of challenge & reward. But a year in, a diagnosis burned my world down. When you stare down a life-threatening illness, what you’ve quietly pushed down will fiercely surface.

A seachange can occur at any time. Mine happened to occur when I was offered disability, & then asked how I wanted to spend my days. Until that question, I couldn’t see, much less define that pervasive, quiet daily discontent, despite being “on track”. Until I was stripped of all but silence, I didn’t even recognize that I couldn’t honestly say that I was living the way I knew I was supposed to. It was knowing that for me, the pursuit of a richness of life required an element of holding a loose grip on overcoming  challenges, pioneering a new path, & aspiring to live a quiet life.  I realized that it was time to turn away from the pride of my “path”, & chart a new course.

By nothing other than grace, my entrepreneurial journey provided for my family, & opened the door to that richness of life that allowed for the balance of working hard, and resting well in it. I was going to say this space is not meant "to glamorize entrepreneurship", but frankly, I don't have the time or skills to do so. Instead, here, you’ll see a balance of studies, paired with a boots on the ground viewpoint of my experience balancing being a founder. From the outside, it looked exciting. Privately: a dozen serious surgeries, a relapse of the aforementioned condition, and years where every dollar I brought in was spent on prayer-filled trips to Mayo and Cleveland Clinic. That journey cultivated the peace of mind knowing that each challenge was the training ground for refinement. 

Only because of that refinement, 1000 days into entrepreneurship, I was able to walk out of yet another hospital room after privately fending off another fight for my life. Days later, the world changed, & I was able to put my head down and do the work for the entrepreneurs in my life. And as the world began to exhale and open back up, I was immersed in my own study of similar eras through the lends of history, strategizing how to implement that information for my clients. 

Post Script

A note

July 2023