Chapter 6: Cold Sore Cream, Buffalo Chicken Dip, a Rug Pull — and the Most Unlikely Path to NYC

If you’re just joining, these “chapters” are part of what I’ve called The Anti-Course — half living memoir for myself (and someday my kids, and their kids, and so on), half an exploration of how a life and career can pivot multiple times depending on your underlying mindsets. Before I get into what I’m building today — the business I’m growing, the life we’re living, the places we’re going — I need to get this mini-memoir out of my head and onto “paper,” before the details blur with time.

In my twenties, I found an old notebook of my father’s while helping clean out our attic. It was filled with appointments and to-do lists from his early years starting a construction business in the 1980s. I remember wishing I knew what he was really thinking at the time — what motivated him, what his goals were, what kept him up at night. “Main character energy” wasn’t in the zeitgeist then. Very few Boomers kept journals for posterity, especially in the rugged, blue-collar sphere. And yet, while there are negative expressions of MCE to avoid, one positive is the impulse to write your story down for those coming after you — so the lessons get passed on instead of lost. It’s much easier now with the digital tools we have. Everyone is a character in some story. Why not write yours down?

Most of these chapters live behind a paywall, including this one — not because I want to hide the story, but because certain parts touch on personal or confidential details I’d rather not broadcast to the entire internet and get picked up by search engines.

As always, thanks for reading.

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Dream Job at 25

Chapter 5 left off with me “hacking” my way into global consumer goods via Nielsen after starting out in the niche world of brokered certificate-of-deposit trading in suburban New Jersey. This was the beginning of my experience with modern corporate culture…