I was in survival mode from day one. Growing up lower middle class means always reaching, always wanting — and being beaten back at every turn. I learned early that nothing comes easy and nothing is guaranteed.
I worked as a sternman on the Atlantic Ocean. Backbreaking work in Maine heat and cold that tests your resolve until it becomes the norm. Lobstering was the plan, it was my family's tradition. Then a series of licensing laws put me on a waiting list for twelve years. Twelve years. The challenge began before I even got started.
So I pivoted. I joined the Merchant Marine as an Ordinary Seaman sailing with Military Sealift Command. I worked my way to Able Bodied Seaman, earned my place at SUNY Maritime Academy, graduated, and sailed as an Officer. I sailed the world and experienced some of the best and worst parts of human existence. It was a hard, lonely life and an honest one.
Then I met my fiancée. And I walked away.
I came ashore and built again. I finally got the lobster license and bought a boat but the waters around Maine heated up and lobsters were not as plentiful. Another major challenge. I applied for the Transportation Security Agency and was hired as a Transportation Security Officer. I started at the bottom as a TSO, then Lead TSO, then earned the rank of Supervisory TSO.
I became aware that no one will do things for us. We alone control our actions. Every reinvention taught me something. But the real shift wasn't outward. It was inward. I stopped asking how to survive and started asking what happiness actually is — and why it feels so out of reach for so many of us.
That question became everything. It led me to create two original coaching frameworks — IIMM and LEFIS — built on one core belief.
You already hold the answers. You just haven't been heard long enough to find them.
What the reinventions taught me
Twelve years on a waiting list teaches you something that no seminar can: a plan is not a direction. I had a plan, a good one, handed down and reasonable. When it was taken off the table I had nothing underneath it, because I had never asked what I actually wanted — only what was available.
At sea I met people at every point of that same problem. Officers who had built an entire identity on a career they quietly resented. Crew who knew exactly who they were and were steady in a way rank could not explain. Sailing shows you plainly that outward success and inward fulfillment are not the same variable.
Coming ashore, losing the lobster season to warming water, starting again at TSA — each one narrowed it down to the same conclusion. Nobody is coming to do this for us, and no external circumstance will hand you a direction. That is the belief the frameworks are built on, and I tested it on myself before I ever offered it to anyone else.
If that lands, read how IIMM and LEFIS work or start a conversation.