The Founder’s Journey:

Adapting, Overcoming, and the Cost of Never Giving Up

I spent the next 20 years fighting tooth and nail to continue serving.

With no choice but to enter the civilian workforce while serving as a Reservist, I threw myself into various industries, determined to find something worthwhile. I applied my skills in maintenance, fabrication, restaurant service, even as a certified water park inspector.

But I never fit in.

• By 21, I had done more than most middle-aged adults had in their lifetime. I had traveled the world, led teams, solved high-stakes problems—but none of that mattered in jobs where experience was a footnote.

• Leadership was often a joke. Many people in positions of power were there because of family connections or office politics—not because they had earned the right to lead. They had no idea what to do with authority.

• I refused to lower my standards. Over and over, I was told to slow down, work less, stop making others look bad. My work ethic wasn’t rewarded—it was resented.

• There was no pride in craftsmanship. Whether it was conveyor fabrication for dairies or handling building maintenance, I saw firsthand how cutting corners was the norm, not the exception.

I hit my breaking point in Oklahoma while finishing an installation. Frustrated with the toxic work culture, I quit my job, took a Greyhound back to Michigan, and rededicated myself to getting back on active duty.

But the system had other plans.

When I tried to submit a package to convert to active duty, the command career counselor laughed me out of the room.

There was a very long period of time where, as a Seabee, I wouldn’t even be considered. The process wasn’t based on skill, experience, or actual manning shortfalls—it was based on an arbitrary equation involving:

• Rate (job), Rank, Time in active service

And a quota that wasn’t determined by real-time staffing needs.

It was based on future estimates involving recruiting and retention.

Worse, Reservist conversions were considered a threat to promotion competitiveness, so the system actively worked to limit opportunities, regardless of actual merit.

At the time of writing, the operational Navy still has critical manning gaps that they won’t even consider reservists for.

Bureaucratic trash.

It threw meritocracy out the window.

So I adapted.

I volunteered for every augment assignment, every school, every deployment I could. I trained relentlessly. I took every opportunity that came my way.

The system wouldn’t release me for many assignments because of Reserve manning requirements, but I found other ways.

I deployed to Afghanistan, then joined a funeral honor guard, conducting hundreds of services for fallen veterans. Later, I became the Leading Petty Officer for a mobile training team on a counter-narcotics task force, training foreign allies in small boat tactics and search-and-seizure operations across the Pacific.

In a world where my future was always uncertain, reputation became my primary currency. I had to excel wherever I went just for the hope that a door would open for me on the back end. I became the guy who could get results, no matter what.

And I extended whenever possible.

But every time I thought I had finally secured a stable place in the system, bureaucracy knocked me back down.

• I was promoted out of jobs I loved.

• I was told I was "too valuable" for one role but "not eligible" for another.

• No matter how good I was—if the policy didn’t allow it, I wasn’t staying.

“In a world where my future was always uncertain, reputation became my primary currency.”

Recruiting—The Hardest Lessons in Leadership

At one point, I was stationed in Hawaii as a Navy recruiter—the longest I had ever been in one place. Three years.

But stability came at a cost.

Recruiting is one of the most toxic environments in the entire military. Leadership wasn’t about developing people—it was about hitting numbers. The pressure to meet quotas overrode everything, and at the first sign of controversy, people were thrown under the bus to protect the system.

I saw good Sailors burn out.
I saw great recruiters broken down and discarded.
I saw numbers get prioritized over actual lives.

None of it measured real success—it was a system that rewarded compliance over competence.

Yet, there were great people in recruiting. I worked with mentors and friends who genuinely cared. But the system itself? Rigid. Unforgiving. Incapable of change.

I saw outstanding leaders ignored in favor of "yes-men"—people who reinforced the very dysfunction that was driving recruiting numbers into the ground.

And despite how much I hated it—I was extremely good at it.

The Secret to My Success? Authenticity.

I didn’t sugarcoat anything. I didn’t try to sell a fantasy.

I was honest. Straightforward.

I didn’t hide my own bad experiences—I shared them. I assured every recruit that my only goal was to treat them better than I was treated.

Which was completely true.

Because of my success, I submitted a package to convert to a career recruiter—simply because it was an avenue to stay on active duty.

The Recurring Theme: Policy Over Performance

I was denied.

Not because I wasn’t good enough. Not because I didn’t have the numbers.

But because the policy at the time didn’t have room for Chiefs.

And that was the recurring theme of my career:

No matter how good I was, I was never good enough to beat bad policy.

I spent three years offering people a life that I would never have.

“No matter how good I was, it was never good enough to beat bad policy.”