The year was 2015, I was earning a very good wage working for a software company at the Director level but I wasn’t happy or satisfied. It was then I decided to do some professional introspection that ultimately leads to me leaving a job where I worked too many hours and was constantly sacrificing my integrity and health for the all mighty dollar.

My introspection began with me asking one simple question, “What is it I am most passionate about in my professional life?” I broke down my life into smaller blocks for analysis:

Years 18-20 – Adulthood began and I my earnings were zero but rather I worked for room and board. I lived and worked with my high school sweetheart and her mother. I worked like a dog with the majority of the work in areas I’d never contemplated let alone performed.
Years 20-25 – I proudly served in the United States Army and married my high school sweetheart. The military work was tedious, dangerous, and downright painful at times, but as I look to this era, these were some of my best years. There was comradery, leadership, constant training, and learning. I earned $9,950 that first year (well below poverty level) in the military while my wife was a stay at home mother. Towards the later years, I invested in real estate and taught others to as well. I obtained my real estate license and helped others to buy and sell real estate. I also became a father of two wonderful children Brian and Logan.
26-36 – I worked mostly in roles where I was directly or indirectly responsible for serving customers and employees e.g. Customer Service Manager. As we all know, customer service personnel can be treated very poorly and I was! I took solace in helping my customers to the best of my ability but also having hundreds of employees reporting directly to me allowed me to become a leader, trainer, mentor, and teacher. At this stage, I dreamed of becoming a teacher but with a lack of any formal education past the Jr. High, I just kept on dreaming. I did however, do a short stint teaching English to Spanish speakers at the local community hall. During this time, my daughter Katlyn was born.
37-43 – Right about this age is when my two oldest arrived at the ages when they seem to need me less and my work needed me more. I was earning excellent salaries, great benefits and was at the executive level, I’ve arrived! I worked my fingers to the bone, alienated most of my friends and family and became a bonafide workaholic. Also, during this time, I switched from Customer Service specific roles to Customer Success. Notice it still deals with serving customers but has more responsibility to the entire customer lifecycle. With all these years of knowledge, I was on the inside of several excellent and not so excellent companies. I saw how they ran operations, the entire good, bad, and ugly! With direct responsibility of literally thousands of employees, I became adept at helping others be better versions of themselves by mentoring them in their professional as well as personal lives.
With all of this introspection, there are obvious patterns. This is what I learned:

I’ve always held positions of leadership
Helping others make money was fun
I seek to be selfless
Helping, teaching, training others makes me happy
Family means the world to me
The simple truth, helping others is my passion!!!