Always. Be. Pivoting.

When I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than to be a Firefighter.

After doing “ride alongs” with several fire stations, I was encouraged to go to college by one of my father's friends from the academy.

He urged me to take advantage of the grants and funding I'd received to swim at a school, that I'd applied to as somewhat of a joke.

Well, the joke school took me off to Michigan, after a couple of injuries taking the D1 and D2 schools out of the running.

ASU also didn't come through on my funding package...

During my orientation, the guide bluntly asked, "Why the **** did you move here from Phoenix."

That guide remains one of my dearest friends to this day. It wasn't long, before I fell in love with Olivet College.

The campus was covered with Oak Trees and presented me with an opportunity to grow in ways I never imagined.

This was a far cry different to the city I'd come from, and gifted me with a perspective adjustment I truly needed at the time.

Unfortunately, the good times do not last, and after graduating in 2007 with a B.A. in Journalism and a B.A. in Communications, the paper I was set to write for closed just a few months prior.

For the millennials that experienced their birth into adulthood in the late 2000's, we experienced the collapse of the promise "If you don't go to college, you'll flip burgers at McDonald's."

After graduating college, they were right, I didn't work at McDonald's...

I ended up making pizza and dough, during the hours I wasn't working to scale an intern position at an Advertising Agency into a full time job.

Although I did not realize it at the time, growing the position the way I did, was the first spark of entrepreneurialism in my life.

In 2015, it was time to move on, after hitting my growth potential.

A former manager and friend, from early in my print advertising agency position, reached out about an opportunity at her new company.

This opportunity was my entry into the world of Lead Gen and Performance Marketing!

However, I wouldn't be able to tell you WHAT IN THE HELL Lead Gen and Performance Marketing were for the first year into my new career.

As if that wasn't enough, the new company had cultural pillars that I needed to "Live and Breathe" as one higher up HIGHLY SUGGESTED I should take to heart, during my first week.

Not long after being onboarded, the CEO asked a group of us new hires what our biggest weakness was out of the pillars, on a conference call.

The rest of the pillars were common practice in my life, but that word, "Entrepreneurialism", was new to me.

Well, that lesson took hold pretty quickly, and after my time at Integrate, I was off to the next growth opportunity.

The opportunity took shape in Colorado, a state I'd never even visited.

The interview was another sprint in Entrepreneurialism...

Each interviewer that came in and I'd hand my resume to them, as well as a list of all the pain in the tasks people at the high level don't have time to deal with.

These issues never bothered me, because I'm a geek when it comes to problem solving.

Looking back now, there is also no better place to start than being lower than whale excrement in the company pecking order.

I was offered a job one month later, and after another month, my Better Half and I were packing everything we owned into two pods.

My time at Suited Connector was where I'd continue and ultimately finish learning every aspect of what's commonly referred to as the "Marketing Funnel".

Now, after a life time of having to pivot from one opportunity to the next, I've realized how much it instills the entrepreneurial spirit into adapting to new challenges.

Funny enough, although I never became an ACTUAL firefighter, I've been putting "fires" out ever since I entered the world of Marketing.