Told I'd never go to college. Built anyway.

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1-They said: You're never going to college.
1+What happened: Kent State, right out of high school.
22 
3-They said: He'll never finish.
3+What happened: Left when my dad passed. Toured as DJG. Back at 28, Ohio State, cum laude.
4+What happened: JD, Capital. Licensed attorney.
45 
5-They said: I'm too much of the business.
6+What happened: Now I build systems that run without the founder.

I grew up with ADD and dyslexia. In high school, a counselor sat me down and told me college wasn't going to happen. Vocational school was the plan they had for me. I never accepted it.

I was already building. My first business was computer repair, flyers up and down the street, before I could drive. At sixteen I started a car detailing company with my best friend. I come from a family of entrepreneurs: my dad, both grandfathers, my grandmother, my mother. I grew up watching people build their own thing. School had no category for that.

I went to Kent State right out of high school. Two years in, my dad passed. He was my best friend, and I stopped going. I spent the next years as a DJ, DJG, and ran an event production company. Full time, every week. I always knew I'd go back.

At 28 I applied to one school, Ohio State. I went year-round and finished in two years, cum laude, in 2017. A few weeks later I started law school at Capital. JD, 2022. Somewhere in there, doing well in a classroom for the first time, that counselor's line came back to me. I'd forgotten it. It had been doing its work the whole time.

A mentor warned me off law school. His words, more or less: you're going to hate yourself. I went anyway. I'm a licensed attorney, and I chose to build businesses instead of practicing.

While I was in law school, my mom told me my dad had always wanted to be a lawyer. He didn't have the grades either, and he never finished college. I did the thing he wanted to do without knowing it. Twenty years later, I build AI systems for a living. The kid with the computer repair flyers would have liked that.

The part I'm still working on

Third-generation automotive family. My grandfather started a wrecking yard. My dad worked there, then ran a classic and exotic car dealership. I grew up in that yard, pulling radios out of cars on weekends, and in the garage at night watching him work. Building things is in the blood. For a long time I was the leading force in every one of my companies. If I wasn't there, nothing moved.

I work too much. I'm ADD as hell. I've done too much myself. I'm saying that here because most founders I talk to are carrying the same thing and not saying it.

So now I build the other way. At Pinnacle Ethos we take everything in the founder's head, how the business actually runs, and build it into systems: CRM, AI, inventory, custom software, and the dashboards that tie them together. The point is that the founder can step away. The business runs, and they get to do the work only they can do: hire, lead, and work on the vision. At YEC, as Head of Strategy & Technology, I get to do the same for a whole community of founders.

What I believe

You start a business to support the life you want to live. You're not supposed to be living in the business. I want freedom more than I want control, and I'd rather work with people I'd go on vacation with.

Offline

Outside of work, it's my adventure partner, our three dogs, and getting somewhere new. National parks, hiking, climbing, travel. I'm a car guy, always have been, and there are still two turntables and a mixer set up in my office. Business isn't supposed to consume your life. It's supposed to support it.