Hello, world.

This is the first post in my public personal journal. Thanks for reading.

Hey Substack! I’ve been debating for some time whether to create an online journal of sorts, and I finally just decided to write the first post and hit send.

If you’re familiar with my other work on here, The Amplified Introvert, welcome. I am grateful to have you here as well. For the rest of you, a quick intro.

I’m a 46 year old marketing executive from Houston Texas. I own 7 cats. I like sports cars. And, I am a bit of a nerd. That much is blatantly obvious.

I “look” like I have it all together on paper.

What is not obvious? I don’t. I’m a chronic overthinker. I launch tons of ideas and rarely finish them. I am riddled with self doubt all the time. I have the same issues as most people, and like any introvert, I have issues speaking up.

Background

I started building websites back in 1995 as a teenager, went into the Marine Corps, and then decided to go into marketing after I left the service. In my 20’s I did some music and owned a small recording studio, and got into video production.

After a few fun projects and a couple live shows as a rapper, I opened my own ad agency and supported companies in Pennsylvania with digital marketing and related services for 5 years until I sold the agency to an investor from Houston.

After I sold the agency, I got bored within a few months and decided to start another business. I got into brainwave entrainment and launched a music company that sold meditation music (Brainwave Booster) that included special sound waves to promote healing, meditation, and focus. It began to gain popularity and clinical use, and I was offered cash by one of my competitors, Shadowplay Entertainment, to sell the business. I had no idea what I was doing and I needed the money, so I sold the business and the assets (I later regretted selling it).

I sold the business for far too little, and soon again found myself out of money so I began another small ad agency and was soon approached by a friend from the industry who left a VP role at Godfrey, the #2 ad agency in the country. He wanted to build a B2B marketing agency together and work as a two man sales & marketing team. He was great at sales, I was great at marketing. Over 2 years we made our clients over 50 million dollars and created a nice book of business with customers like Gondola Skate, Case Mason Filling, St Mary’s Catholic Church, and Vortex Companies.

Transition

In 2018, one of our clients, Vortex Companies, made me an offer to move me to Houston and pay me a considerable salary. I was tired of living in my small apartment in a small town so I said yes and left the world of self employment to join corporate.

I worked at Vortex as their combined director of IT and Digital Marketing for a few years, marketing underground robotics and helping them to transform digitally. Covid hit, and I was one of the many people to be laid off. There was also a breach of contract, so I was able to sue the company in a nasty lawsuit.

This gave me a bad feeling for corporate, so I once again launched an agency, Houston Digital LLC. Things were stressful, but I worked to build the business. My fiancé started to become ill and on December of 2020 she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. I had to shut down my agency and divert all of my remaining funds, time, and energy to her treatments and care.

After many treatments, she started to appear to begin healing. I had $1,200 left to my name, and I need to look for work. She assured me she would be ok and could feed herself and get around enough to enable me to work again. So, I took a job as Marketing Director for Nauticus Robotics in the middle of September.

What I did not know was that Ramona was not as good as she said and that she was not eating while I was at work and was slowly dying as I tried to rebuild our finances and keep a roof over our heads. The covid payments were helpful but trying to keep up with rent, bills, groceries, and cancer treatments was costly.

On October 23, she got up late in the night to use the restroom while I was asleep and fell. I woke up at 3am to a muffled sound of grunting and struggling. She had gotten herself wedged between the toilet and the wall and struggled for hours. Things were not the same after this. She became frail and took a turn for the worse.

She struggled to walk at this point. The last thing she did in this world on her own two feet was to help me pick out a costume for the company Halloween party… The following day she slipped into sleep and did not wake up or speak again.

She died on November 5, 2021 at 9:27am.

I went on bereavement leave from work and when I returned, I was informed that my position had been removed and my I was no longer needed.

I had no idea what I was going to do.

I lost my entire life savings.

I lost a person I truly loved.

And, I lost my job.

At first, I contemplated suicide.

Then I decided to rebuild.

Rebuild

My entire life savings gone, life up in the air and in question, I went back into the workforce again, this time, the oil and gas industry. I was hired by NCS Multistage as the head of marketing and over the next few years would generate over 33 million dollars in revenue and position the company as a global leader.

To be continued…