My Story
I’m not that person who always knew what I wanted to do when I grew up. In fact, it’s taken me over 20 years of work experience to start to understand my own dreams and desires.
I've spent the majority of my career in leadership roles in the service industry, including 11 years with Chick-fil-A and three years in an aviation start-up. My path had been driven by conventional career advice, opinions from mentors and trusted friends, and a nagging sense of what I should do. Strikingly absent from the conversation was my own voice.
My final years in the restaurant industry were as an Interim Manager, moving around the country while interviewing to become an Owner/Operator. As I got closer and closer to the finish line, I had a growing sense of frustration, inadequacy, and fear that I was getting into something I wasn’t cut out for. Nevertheless, I pressed on. After completing the final interview for a location in Oklahoma, they told me “No, not this one, but your time will come.” Instead of feeling crushed, frustrated or anxious — all things most people in my position would feel — I felt relieved.
That was the final straw — no matter how much the opportunity looked too good to pass up on paper, I couldn’t move forward, and I decided to stop denying what my soul had been trying to tell me for the past 2+ years.
After spending the next three years at a start-up airline and still feeling a sense of emptiness and dissatisfaction, I left that job as well, feeling like my career was going nowhere. I dreaded the thought of continuing in similar roles where I’d end up repeating the burnout cycle.
In networking meetings I’d get the all-too-familiar, simple questions:
“What do you want to do?” and “How can I help you?”
But I simply could not answer them. I was frustrated, directionless, passionless and stuck. I was so focused on trying to make the right career moves that I had no clue what I actually wanted.
As I considered my future career options (and how stuck I was), I hired a coach who helped me identify two practices that significantly impacted my life trajectory:
I took time to look at the past. I reflected on my journey up to that point. I read Let Your Life Speak by Parker Palmer, which helped me to listen to the clues my life had been giving me over the years about my true self, my native way of being in the world, and my passions.
I took time to get quiet. I had so many voices in my life: friends, family, ‘conventional wisdom,’ podcasts, blogs, and books to name a few. While they meant well, I was allowing them to create so much noise in my life that I couldn’t hear my own voice. So I did a few things to reduce the noice:
turned off my phone regularly
went on a silent retreat
cleared my calendar of networking meetings
stopped listening to podcasts and reading self-help blogs
Through these practices I finally started to hear my own voice — the voice that had been so absent in my life for so many years. I found my passion for coaching and supporting other leaders.
Now, I have the honor and privilege of pursuing that passion through coaching. I have been providing executive coaching and life coaching full-time for over 4 years, and am passionate about helping others experience and achieve the growth they long for.
If my story resonates with you, or you are interested in coaching for yourself or your team, Contact Me or Schedule an Intro Call.
I hold a Master’s in Organizational Leadership and Certificate in Executive Coaching from Concordia University - Irvine. I have over 11 years of experience working in Chick-fil-A restaurants, and more than 4 years and 1,700 hours coaching Operators and their leaders. I reside in Fayetteville, AR with my wife and two daughters.