My path to real estate ran through a gym, a life insurance desk, a retail floor, and a grief I still carry. My mother didn't live to see me get here, but she's the reason I did.

There's a version of the American story where success arrives through a single, clarifying moment - a bolt of inspiration that changes everything. That wasn't my story. Mine was slower, more deliberate, and honestly more honest.

I started as a gymnastics instructor and elementary school teacher. I loved the work and I was genuinely good at it, but I was broke and in debt. I had to reckon with the fact that loving your work and building a life from it are not always the same thing. That reckoning pushed me toward sales.

Retail came next, sporting goods, then electronics. On the surface it looked like a lateral move, but two things happened there that altered the entire trajectory of my life. The first was meeting Ivy - my future wife - who was a customer at the store. The second was losing my mother.

My mother died of colon cancer in 2011. Grief doesn't compress easily into a paragraph. What I can say is this - she left me a small inheritance, and I used it to buy my first investment property. I had already bought my own home a year before. Suddenly, I was thinking about passive income, compounding value, and long-term wealth. Ideas that had been abstract were becoming personal. Ivy, who had been watching me come alive around real estate, encouraged me to get my license. Our daughter, Imajen, was on the way, so I wanted to build something worthy of the family we were becoming.

I got licensed in 2015. The transition was not clean. For a stretch, I was working real estate part-time while still grinding through retail weekends and holidays - the schedule that drains you of the very energy you need to build something new. When my tenant broke the lease, I sold the investment property and made five times what I'd paid for it. That windfall didn't just provide cushion. It clarified commitment, and I went full-time into real estate.

There were hard months, but I held on, and I held on for a reason that is difficult to articulate without sounding sentimental - I wanted to make my mother proud. She believed in the version of me that was a good husband, a good father, and a man who built something of his own. After she was gone, that belief didn't disappear. It transferred, and it became mine to carry... I carry it still.

Today, I'm a full-time REALTOR®. I'm genuinely grateful for the work I get to do. When I'm not with clients, I'm with Ivy and Imajen, or lost in a puzzle, or bike riding, or deep in a good tv series. These are the things worth working for.

Every detour was load-bearing. Every loss was formative. This work is not just about transactions. It's about honoring the people who believed in you before you fully believed in yourself.

What separates good work from great work is rarely talent. It's reliability, follow-through, and the willingness to do the harder right thing when the easier wrong thing is available. That's the standard I hold myself to.

My clients describe me as communicative, loyal, and honest - someone who shows up the same way every time, regardless of what’s at stake. I take that seriously. Real estate involves some of the largest decisions people ever make, and they deserve an advocate who treats it that way. I'm a semi-perfectionist by nature, and I apply that standard to every detail, every document, and every conversation.

Beyond the mechanics of buying and selling, I genuinely enjoy teaching. I've co-authored two books to help clients understand the real estate process on their own terms, because an informed client makes better decisions, and better decisions lead to better outcomes.