I never really thought about going into business for myself until now. My original career goals involved having stable employment doing something I enjoyed while being well compensated and treated well. I wanted a career I could enjoy doing while I was working, but I wanted my free time away from work to be truly free. My job was the last thing I wanted to think about when I had free time. I was ok working the occasional overtime shift when necessary to earn extra money, but I didn’t want it to be my life. I wanted to save all of my personal energy for my free time pursing the many things I enjoy. I eventually found a position that was all of this; however, it was surprisingly unfulfilling. I felt something was still missing. I found I needed a new goal, and the previous goal was no longer fulfilling to me. Therefore, I made a change.
This is probably the point where you think I am going to sprout off into telling you about how I came the decision to start my business, and how I started this website and started to write articles. This is not the case. The point where I realized I was unfulfilled and needed to change came in 1999 working in a factory. The theme of this article is making changes when we aren’t where we need to be, and how we may need to change and set new goals even after reaching our initial goals.
In February of 1996, I started working at a factory in my hometown, (an Indiana suburb of Louisville, KY), where I grew up. I had just moved back to the Louisville area after going to college a year and half in Fort Wayne. In Fort Wayne, I attended a small Christian college in hopes of becoming a pastor someday. After studying the Bible extensively, I started to doubt my faith, (and years later I decided to walk away from Christianity and the church completely). I was no longer interested in the career I was pursuing at the school. I wasn’t interested in my classes either. For the most part, I just stopped going to them my final semester and hung out with my friends until it was time to go back home. In December of 1995, I returned to the Louisville area. Two months later I got the factory position.
The prospect of returning to the Louisville area didn’t excite me. While I do have some good memories from growing up, for the most part due to the environment I was in and my past experiences, I didn’t like the area. I was generally unhappy there, but I had nowhere else to go, so I just ended up there. Also, I had no career path, no money, or no vision for the future. I moved back into my family home because I needed to. I was a college dropout who was no longer interested in pursuing the career I thought I wanted. I didn’t have any direction. As for goals, other than the basic career goals I mentioned earlier, I didn’t have those either. What I did have though were friends. When I moved back to the area, (after a month working as a night gas station attendant), I had a friend help me get the position at the factory.
At first the job at the factory was great. While it didn’t pay the best, I was making more money than I had ever made in any of my previous jobs. The work wasn’t difficult to do. I got great reviews from my bosses. When I went home, I didn’t have to think about what went on at the factory. The work was seemingly stable. It was everything I was looking for. My dream had seemingly been reached. Yet, I was miserable. Something was still missing. I needed a change and new goals. Therefore, I needed to reevaluate everything, and I did.
I worked at the factory for three years before I realized my life and career was truly not stable. I was still performing my duties well. I even got promoted a couple of times. However, what I was doing didn’t stimulate my mind. Also, I had come to realize that no matter how well I did my job, truly most anyone could do the work I was doing. This, in turn, truly did not make me stable in my position. As well, the factory could easily pull up operations and move anytime they wanted to. If this happened, no matter how well I did my job I would be out of work. Without truly being a skilled laborer, I had nothing to offer another potential employer other than my work ethic and good reviews if this did happen.
Thankfully, it did not, and the factory is still there in the Louisville area today and in operation. Many of my former coworkers are still there working today. I am glad they have had stable employment over the years. However, I needed to get out of there and get some skills. This is what motivated me to return to college in 1999 and take my education seriously for the first time in my life. My new goal was to get a college degree and find work in a field I enjoyed. To assist with the transition, I applied for a desk job at the factory and got it. This freed me up to go to school even though I was still working 35 hours a week. This was the first change I made in my career path and my goals.
From taking college courses here and there, and my previous Bible college experience, when I started back to school, I was a sophomore. My GPA was just a 1.9 because I never applied myself in college. Now motivated to try in school, when I graduated in 2001, I was able to get two degrees. One was in Geography and the other in General Studies. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA. After finishing school, my goal was to move away from the Louisville area, and start working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Also, I enjoyed school so much I decided I wanted to pursue a master’s degree in Geography. After researching, I found the Cal State University system was tuition free at the time for in-state residents. Also, I discovered San Diego State University had a renowned graduate program in Geography. Hence, this led me to San Diego in 2002.
When I got San Diego, as I mentioned, I wanted to establish myself first a California resident before starting school because it was so much less costly being an in-state student. This required a year of residency. Therefore, I could’ve start school until 2003. However, I didn’t start until 2004. I struggled to find positions in my field due to a lack of experience, and I struggled financially in an expensive city as well. In Louisville, I continued working at the factory until I left the city because it paid more than an internship in my field. This was a big mistake. Hence, I had no experience to offer. I got no offers for GIS positions. Therefore, I took jobs lower paying positions in accounting jobs, (a field I didn’t enjoy). My final role in the factory was doing billing for invoices, so I qualified for some accounting positions. I actually didn’t get my first job in GIS until 2006 when I was in my final semester of classroom-based learning in grad school.
While I finally got a GIS job in San Diego, I knew I didn’t want to stay there permanently. Even though I loved the city, it was just too expensive to live there. Hence, more change was on the horizon. The new goal was to find a new city where I can do GIS work that was more affordable.
The first place I moved to was San Antonio. I got a GIS position with a small engineering firm, but the office atmosphere was less than desirable. Also, my fiancée and I did not care for the city. My commute was 35 miles one way to New Braunfels, and she did not like how the nurses were treated in the local hospitals where she worked. We never got established in the area. Therefore, after 6 months we moved to a new city: Seattle. Between moving we got married, (and have since divorced). She had roots in Seattle, and her dad was close by, but I didn’t care for the city. I felt Seattle had the same issues as San Diego being expensive, yet without the good weather or as friendly of people. I certainly experienced the “Seattle Freeze” as it is called. I also found yet another working situation similar to the one in San Antonio and was unhappy. I knew all GIS jobs weren’t this bad. I enjoyed my GIS position I had for a short time in San Diego. Therefore, I knew I needed not to find just a GIS position. I needed to find one I loved.
In 2007, I was offered a temporary 3-year position with the Census Bureau in Seattle but turned it down. Other than it being temporary and located in Seattle, I liked everything about the job offer. However, fate was on my side. I was offered the same position with the Census Bureau in Charlotte and accepted it. While the job was temporary, I felt Charlotte was a better city for the pocketbook and provided a better climate both temperature wise, and to raise a future child. (I love the city so much I still live in the Charlotte area today). I felt I could find another position once the work finished as well. Therefore, I decided to move. With this, I then had an automatic built in goal of finding a new GIS position once my contract was over.
When I got to the Census Bureau, I finally found a position I absolutely loved. I knew there were great GIS jobs out there. The only issue of course was it was temporary for the 2010 Census. It had an expiration date. This date eventually came. Thankfully, I was right about getting another offer as well due to my experience. I got a position as a GIS Analyst for the South Carolina House of Representatives in 2011, (my first stint with them). I loved this position as well; however, it was also temporary as it was for redistricting. The work location was 75 miles one way from my house too. The drive wasn’t ideal, but it was doable. At the end of 2012, the position ended. Therefore, I had the same goal as before to find permanent work doing GIS. I then made some missteps career wise.
When my position was coming to a close, I took the first GIS position I could find. It was a step back in my career responsibility and financially, but I didn’t want to be out of work. I had a young child at home, and I needed to pay the bills. I have since learned only do this if you have nowhere else to turn. This job was also 75 miles from my home as well. I wanted to work closer to home. After a few months, I found another GIS position that was a little better where I would work for the next 4.5 years. It was also only 25 miles from my home as well. It still wasn’t where I wanted to be career and responsibility wise, but I knew it could be a steppingstone. Sometimes we must step back to leap forward. Since I wasn’t getting the offers that I truly wanted, I knew I needed something more. This led to my new goal of adding data science to my repertoire.
In working in my previous positions with the Census Bureau and the South Carolina House of Representatives, I developed data science skills using big data and working with, transforming, and analyzing large datasets. I had also studied under one of the top names in the world in Demography, Dr. John Weeks, at San Diego State University where I got my first master’s degree in 2008. Hence, I had extensive experience in big data and as a demographic analyst. However, when I applied for data science and analytic type positions, I was not getting call backs. This was a call to action. In 2015, I started pursuing my second master’s degree. This one would be in data science through Indiana University taking online classes.
When you pursue a goal, sometimes things aren’t always easy. When I started back to school, I was still working full time 40 hours a week. I was also a single parent of child getting ready to start elementary school. I was, (and am), an active father, so I had my son 3-4 nights every week too. On top of this, I desired a social life, so I maintained an active one. Hence, I had to compartmentalize my schedule and time stringently as I took 2 classes each semester. I thrived in all of these areas. I made new friends, I was a great father helping my son be a good student, I performed my work duties to the point where I got great reviews, and when I graduated from the master’s program in 2017, I graduated with a 3.94 GPA. Was it tiring in the moment? Yes, but I was pursuing my goals with everything I had. I had a mission to do all of this. I was very happy during this time because I was chasing goals to better myself.
On top of wanting a better career, and I had decided after reading Tim Ferriss’s The 4 Hour Work Week, I wanted to work remotely. Hence the new goal was to find a job where I could work remotely in data science and/or GIS using my full skills set. I found this quickly. After all, I was now an attractive candidate for data science positions. I was offered a position as a Data Engineer, and I was given a nice salary and compensation package. At first, I was to work in the office, but eventually I could start doing some remote work. I was hopeful this would be the company I would retire from someday. I thought I had reached my final goal. Instead, it ended up being the worst work environment I have ever worked in.
I will not get into all of the reasons why my work environment was horrible at this company; however, I didn’t leave as early as I should have. I stuck it out three years. Yes, I was well paid. Yes, I worked remotely. Therefore, it checked a couple of boxes I wanted for myself. Yet, it was unfulfilling, my skills were underutilized, and the atmosphere was toxic. I knew I needed out of this environment, but I settled there for too long because some of my boxes were checked. In retrospect, I learned a valuable lesson about settling. If you settle in one area of your life it can spread like a virus to other areas as well. During this time, my self-esteem waned, I settled for less than I wanted in my relationships, I wasn’t as good of parent as I should have been, and I became less ambitious. Thankfully, an old employer helped pull me out of this.
I got a call from my old boss with the South Carolina House of Representatives. Redistricting was around the corner, and they wanted to consult with me about where they could someone to run the technical aspects of their map room. I was happy to answer their questions, but then they made me an offer expanding the role I performed during the last redistricting period. The offer, while temporary, actually was significantly more than I made last time with them, and it was even better than what I was making in the position I hated. I loved this job previously, so I accepted the offer.
After one month on the job my demeanor instantly changed. I stopped settling in other areas of my life. I corrected some my parenting issues. I ended a dating relationship I shouldn’t have been in due to different life goals she and I had. I even started a new workout program at the gym, and a new cleaning schedule in my house. I am now more fit than I’ve been in years, my house is cleaner, my son is happier, and my ambition and happiness has returned.
With the job change, I feel like I am me again, though I know, like ten years ago, this position will end. This has led me to a crossroads in my goals. I knew needed to set a new goal. I didn’t want to end up in a position I hated again. Therefore, I asked myself, what do I want after this is over? I know I still want to work remotely. That shouldn’t be a challenge in my field of work. I want to be compensated well, and I have a unique skill set so again this shouldn’t be an issue. I want a stable career as well. I get multiple job offers daily from my LinkedIn so I know there could be work. These all should be part of my future goal I thought. However, something else rose to the surface as well.
Another thing is I love is helping others. Even with data, demographics, and GIS work, the thing I loved about the field was telling the stories behind the information I developed so others could improve their knowledge. At my core, I love helping others. I have overcome a lot of challenges in my life to get where I am at, and I want to help others do the same. Hence, I had developed a new goal. I want to help others become the best they can be. The question is how can I best do this?
The one thing I obviously know I don’t want again is to be in a toxic work environment. Sometimes knowing what we don’t want, can help us set the goals we need for what we do want. When I was on the factory floor, I didn’t want to remain an unskilled laborer. Therefore, I got a college degree. When I wasn’t getting the job offers that I wanted, I added new skills or moved to get the positions I wanted. Now, I found myself asking how can I avoid being in a toxic environment again? The best answer was to start my own business where I work for no one but my clients. This would be business where I can perform my work anywhere while helping others around the world to become the best people they can be. If I perform well, I should be compensated quite well for my services because I am offering something tangible that improves lives. I can still do occasional data, demographic, and GIS work as well if I choose as a hobby for extra compensation.
The only thing missing from my original goal is the stable employment. Starting your own business is risky. However, there comes a point where you must believe in yourself and believe it will work. This is where I am at. I also have a year and half to get my business up and running to where I want it to be, so there is time. Plus, I have the data science work as a pillow if necessary or if I fail. At the end of the day, it really isn’t that much of a risk for me.
Hence, my goal now is to start my business, and get it up and running to the level I want it to be when my current role ends. This is how my goals have changed over the years, and how I grew to want to start my own business from just wanting to do a simple job in my past. I don’t even mind if my career becomes intertwined with personal life as well because helping others grow is personal to me.
In the end, goals and dreams change and grow. We must grow with them. Now, my career goal includes guiding others as they develop their own personal tools to reach their dreams just as I have. Whether their goal is losing weight, being a better parent, paying off debt, learning a new skill, managing their time better, or even learning a thing or two about data, demographics and GIS, (all things I have done and worked through myself), I want to be the person to help guide them. I want to be the dream guide that helps them develop their tools to reach their dreams. It is my life, it is my goal, it is my career, it is my business.
(Entry – January 20, 2021)