I have an innate need to know how things work. When something breaks, I need to understand the components that make up the thing so I can visualize how to take it apart and put it back together. Whether its a toy, an appliance, a motorcycle, or a 1982 Jeep CJ-7, I thrive on diving deep and learning as much as I can about the thing.

It probably sounds a little crazy, but I’m not happy when everything is working well and nothing needs fixing. I’m most comfortable when I have multiple different projects going at once. I never run out of things to research and read about. New forums to discover and stories from others doing something similar and learning how to avoid mistakes that others have made. My goal isn’t to watch a video and then do it exactly like everyone else. My goal is to learn enough about what makes something tick, so that I can dive in and get my hands dirty and figure it out as I go. That’s the fun part.

I struggled with building models as a kid. They are a great idea, and I know a lot of people that love them. When I’m forced to follow a very long set of specific instructions and produce a thing that looks just like the box, I’m bored before I even start. Give me a box of random electrical and plumbing parts, any day, and I’ll whip up a desk lamp , a robot, or a doo-dad that serves no purpose.

My grandfather was an electrician. He was my guy. When I was a junior in high school, I enrolled in an electro-mechanical tech program at our community college and spent half of every school day there for the next 2 years. Did you know that there are actual competitions for electrical? Kids bending conduit, fastening it to walls with switches and lights, and a guy judging them and giving out awards. No shit. It’s a real thing. And a real thing that I did and placed 3rd at state.

I got a scholarship at the same college for electrical engineering. I ate up the advanced math and anything to do with engineering. The other stuff required for a degree …. Not so much. Since college, I’ve worked as a maintenance engineer at several factories, fixing CNC machine motor controls, and any other industrial piece of machinery. A residential electrician wiring new construction houses for a subdivision. An electrician and electrical engineer at an ambulance and rescue vehicle manufacturer. A validation engineer, contracted at Pfizer, where I reviewed PLC code and validated what was in the documentation against what was running live in production. Then as an automation engineer there, designing HMIs, writing code, and managing a fleet of specialized computers for the automation environment.

Then I went to work with a friend of mine that had started a managed IT services company. We started in his basement and grew it from the two of us to over 20 people with two different offices across the state. I went from being the onsite network engineer for a dozen clients, to the COO managing a dozen engineers, to the Chief Growth Officer, researching new technologies and vendors and creating strategic partnerships to help the company grow. Sales wasn’t my thing, and I had already trained up my replacement COO who was doing a great job, so I inadvertently worked myself out of the company I had helped build over the course of 17 years. I sold my stake in the company in 2023 to branch out on my own so I could work with a different set of clients in a different capacity.