The short (professional) version:
I’ve been involved with business development and technical writing for over 15 years. I’ve owned several different types of small businesses including data networking, e-commerce, and marine surveying. I’ve done more than my share of copywriting, web content, brochures, newsletters, business plans, and white papers during that time for both myself and others. I’ve also written as a correspondent for my local newspaper, the Galion Inquirer. I’ve worked as a Police Officer, then Investigator in Washington, D.C.; as a Network Engineer for a major telecom; and even did a few years working on the railroad. How’s that for diverse?
“So…what do you do?”
That’s pretty much one of the first questions anybody asks when they meet me. The short answer (the one they are looking for) is that I help small businesses make money.
In my head, though, what I do doesn’t fall into a neatly defined box. I want to answer about who I am, what my passions are, what’s important to me. What I do is follow my passions. Helping others, spending time with my wife (who is a creative genius), my dog (that’s Biscuit in the pictures), sailing, kayaking, scuba diving, hiking, reading, learning, helping others, mentoring, restoring old boats…this is what I do. Even trying to learn to play blues on the harmonica. Like that’s ever going to happen. LOL.
So what do I really do to pay my bills?
I follow my passions. (I bet you didn’t see that coming, did you?) I write. I give seminars. I teach small business owners and people who haven’t yet started their own business how to improve their chances; how to do things better, and with more integrity.
Here’s the Doink Moment about how I pay my bills: I’m old-school. I do what’s right. I’m not out to “make a fast-buck at any cost”. I give my clients more than they expect, and a lot of things for free. I work as hard for them as I do for myself. Everybody wins. That’s my business philosophy. If my clients can’t go tell everyone they know how they benefitted from using my services, then I did something very wrong. My goal is to make friends, not customers. And that’s how I treat them.
Along the way, I discovered something I never thought would happen…
I discovered that karma really does happen when you stay true to your inner-self and follow your passions. The more I stay true to what I believe is right and important, the more the world has stepped up and allowed me to have a career and a life that I love.
Has it always been easy? Not a chance. Day to day life can be hard. I’ve had more than my share of failures, but I’ve learned from them. Even when I’m following my passions, I still have a lot of crappy-tasks that I hate doing. Too many things to do and not enough time to do them, medical problems, loss of loved-ones, large piles of bills…they’re all still here. But in the Big Picture, life is good. I’m doing all the things that I love. I can’t complain.
The place I call home…
I married my beautiful wife and began to call Galion, Ohio my home on July 4, 2009. Galion is a small city with a population of just over 10,000 people. It’s an area filled with fantastic parks and recreation…and even better people. Galion has been hit hard by this recession. The area has it’s problems just like any other small town, but it has some incredible people who give everything they have to make it a better place. These people are the ones that make Galion a great place to live, and they will be the people to lead Galion into a brighter future. These are the people that inspire me to make things better, too.
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