Why Now
What was my journey and how will others repeat it?
I have always been an entrepreneur at heart, as a boy scout, I took seriously the opportunity to sell greeting cards to earn camping supplies as encouraged by the back page of the Boy’s Life Magazine. I also stayed busy raising chickens and delivering newspapers early in the morning during my pre-teen years. I had a great example of work ethic with my parents who grew up in Rural Idaho working on their family farms and so they instilled in their family from an early age the ability to wake up early and look hard work right in the eyes.
By the time I was in college I had started a tech support company to provide IT services to my friends and their families and it empowered me to pay for much of my schooling each year but also gave me a great job that enabled me to pay off all of my student loans after 1 year of working. At the end of my time at college I found a beautiful young nursing student to marry and we were quickly off into the world of corporate employment which intrigued me because most everyone I knew was self-employed so requesting vacation days and having multiple tiers of management was new to me. I was promoted nearly every other year at work because I work hard and did not go more than a few months without gaining a certification or expertise with a new platform or service that added value to my responsibilities.
I then started to get requests to leave to other companies and enjoyed the opportunity to land somewhere new and make quick, meaningful change at work. However, by this time I had 3 kids, had gained more weight than I care to acknowledge and did not find time to serve others like I desired. I was lucky enough to have a friend that had been self-employed most of his life and shared with me some of his secrets to success which led us into a partnership and a world I never knew existed. I quickly followed some of the guidance I had received and hired a coach to provide accountability for the new vision I had for my life. The success I have achieved has not come without hard word and tons of learning but the joy and satisfaction I have when I look behind me is incredible. I can see many lives that have been touched and improved and specifically my relationships with wife and children because we now live the life that used to be a dream of 10 years out but was really only a day away.
Jacob with his girls.