EARLY
My dad worked for Hewlett-Packard, so I grew up around computers in the ’80s. Big floppy disks. A second phone line just for dial-up. He built machines with me and taught me to tinker, and he was 10 for 10 on advice. Anytime I got stuck, one phone call and I knew what to do. I always wanted to be that for someone else.
I started building early. Flash animations at 12, one of which my dad’s company bought for an ad. A signed website deal with an electric company at 16, terrified in the boardroom. An e-commerce shoe store at 17 that printed money until Zappos flooded Google with affiliate sites. First real lesson in defensibility.
VERIZON
I went looking for cash flow and landed at Verizon. That turned into two decades, twelve roles, nine relocations, and a career I never planned. A mall kiosk in Spokane to Associate Vice President reporting to the CRO of Verizon Business.
The pattern in every role was the same. Find the broken system everyone had stopped questioning. Redesign it. Get it through finance, HR, operations, and the executives. Ship it. A quota model nobody trusted, eventually adopted nationally. A customer success function that didn’t exist, that cut new-account churn in half.
What I miss most isn’t the title. It’s the mentoring. I had open one-on-ones three levels down. Anyone who asked for time got it. Watching people grow into careers that genuinely surprised them felt like cheating, in the best way.
Two of those systems, written up: Quota model ↗Customer success ↗
