My Story

I don’t admit this to just anyone, but I was born in Mississippi.

I don’t know why, but I feel like my saving grace is that I moved as a child and was raised in Alabama. I guess Alabama felt like an upgrade to a 9-year-old boy. (If you think I’m crazy, go to Mississippi.)

After living in 3 of the most southern states in America both geographically and culturally, I feel like it’s safe to say I’m a true southerner.

And like a true southerner, I grew up in a baptist church. We were in church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night. I did sword drills, sang in the choir, and did that weird synchronized bell thing church kids do around Christmas every year.

Then, when I was 12 years old, my older sister, who was 15 years old at the time, died in a car accident.

It shook my family to its foundation and ultimately tore us apart. My parents divorced, we stopped going to church, and I began questioning everything I believed.

I decided if I couldn’t control the bad things that were bound to happen, I was going to at least have a good time while I was here.

I started drinking alcohol and smoking weed around age 13.

I started partying every weekend and got arrested for the first time at age 14.

I was drifting and oblivious to the path I was headed down.

Nevertheless, by the time I was 17 years old, I had planned out the life I thought would fulfill me. I planned to join the military, travel the world, and fight honorably for my country so people would remember my name.

And I was only a couple of months away from making my dream a reality when I got arrested again and put on probation.

Just like that, I had flushed my only dream down the drain.

I felt completely lost. My faith was nonexistent. I battled hopelessness, depression, fear, anxiety, and panic attacks.

I struggled with alcoholism and withdrawal, I got arrested yet again (for driving under the influence of alcohol), I quit 4 full-time jobs in a 5-year span, and I moved back in with my parents in my mid twenties.

My life was a mess.

Then there was hope.

My wife got pregnant with our first child, and while I was overjoyed, I was also scared to death.

I was about to be a father and I felt like my life wasn’t worth emulating.

I struggled daily with anxiety and OCD and had frequent bouts of panic attacks and depression.

I was searching desperately for my purpose in life. Working a 9-5 job for the rest of my life seemed like a nightmare. I wanted more. More impact, more influence, more meaning.

In all my searching, I became miserable at home and miserable at work. I was ready to give up.

That was when I decided enough was enough, and I dug in even more. I was going to find my “calling” – my purpose in life – no matter the cost.

Chasing Purpose

I spent the next 5 years reading, listening to, and chasing anything that had anything to do with finding purpose. I read books, watched YouTube videos, listened to podcasts – you name it, I probably did it.

I was desperate.

In that 5-year span, I quit 8 more full-time jobs. EIGHT. For two of those job, I didn’t actually quit – I was fired.

It was demoralizing. I felt like a professional screw-up.

Those were decent-paying jobs, too. But I was on a mission. I wasn’t looking for another paycheck and I was never willing to settle for less than meaningful work.

I had a wife and kids to feed, but I wouldn’t give up. I HAD to find my purpose at all costs, so I did everything possible to ensure that I wouldn’t live a meaningless life.

Finding a Spark

Somewhere in all the chaos, I started gravitating toward entrepreneurship and marketing.

I started reading books by Seth Godin and listening to Dave Ramsey’s EntreLeadership podcast. I slowly developed a deep interest in business and storytelling, and that interest led me to become a marketer.

I started by volunteering at a local marketing agency. I taught myself how to code websites in WordPress and learned how to do SEO for those websites. Within a few months, that marketing agency was paying me full-time to do marketing and SEO for small businesses.

I felt like I was finally on my way to unlocking my purpose.

I was good at marketing, I enjoyed it, and I believed my work as a marketer was valuable. It was the trifecta that all the “purpose” books and gurus preached about.

But I was still unsettled.

I was able to build a decent career doing something I loved, but I still wasn’t fulfilled.

I still didn’t feel like I had found my purpose.

So I kept searching.

Landing My Dream Job

Fast-forward to age 31. My wife and I had 3 kids and another one on the way.

We were at the top of our game earning in the top 10% of household incomes in our area – and neither one of us had a college degree.

I had always dreamed of working for Dave Ramsey’s company, Ramsey Solutions. It was a dream I had from when I was 19 years old listening to the Dave Ramsey Show while I cut grass at my crappy college job.

Dave was ultimately the one who – through his podcasts and connections to other authors and speakers – led me to discover the work I had come to love: marketing.

And at age 31 – twelve years after my search for purpose had started – and after years of interviewing with Ramsey Solutions off and on for different marketing positions, I was finally hired as a marketing leader for Dave Ramsey’s company.

It might sound silly to you, but it was a dream come true for me.

Everything I thought was impossible for someone like me with no college degree and no connections had finally come true. My family was headed to Nashville, Tennessee for what I thought would be the most fulfilling time of our lives.

But after I had been there for about a year, something strange started happening.

Even after I had accomplished all that I set out to accomplish, the feelings of desire and longing for something more was still in me.

I became dissatisfied and downright let down by what I thought would be a mountaintop moment in my career.

What I thought would fulfill me ended up being empty like everything else.

So I stepped back and looked at all that had taken place.

The 14 jobs I had left in 15 years.

All the times we’d completely run out of money.

The times we had to search for spare change to put diapers on our babies.

The times we had our power turned off because we couldn’t afford to pay our utility bill.

The two vehicles that were repossessed because we were drowning in debt.

The countless nights spent longing for the day when we would FINALLY “make it”.

It all felt pointless.

Simplifying Life

The painful realization I came to after hitting rock bottom was this:

Purpose and meaning is found in things that work can’t provide.

This was a radical thought for me. To think that my value could be independent of what I did for a living simply didn’t equate – especially surrounded by today’s success-driven society.

Harvard conducted an 80-year study to determine what makes a person’s life fulfilling and happy. They found that the most important factor to a happy life is close, meaningful relationships.

They found that, “Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives.”

I realized that chasing meaning and purpose in my work was the very thing that was killing me.

Fulfillment and meaning only come from the relationships closest to us, not through achievement or large-scale impact. The more we work to achieve significance, the bigger the void of meaninglessness becomes.

Once I realized that life is much better when it’s simple – with the primary goal being to cultivate the resources and people closest to us – things started to click.

The chase was over.

God’s funny like that. He created life, so we could…live. Purely and simply.

And man is it much more fulfilling when the weight of chasing significance falls off.

The truth is, you don’t have to change the world to have an impact.

By dedicating your life to building up only a handful of people closest to you, you’ll actually end up having an exponential impact over the course of several generations.

Don’t get me wrong – it’s a journey.

For high-performers, it’s tough to stop chasing approval through your achievements.

But if you’ll explore what it means to look at purpose in a different light, I think you’ll find pretty quickly that all aspects of your life – your marriage, parenting, career, finances, etc. – start to make sense like never before.

And it’s all because you’re operating from a place of purpose instead of chasing after it like so many in the world are doing.

So if you’re up for it, I want you to make a commitment.

Enter your information below and join me.

I’ll send you regular thoughts, questions, challenges, and other things to help you challenge conventional thinking and build a life of simplicity that’s driven by impact rather than importance.

I can’t wait to see you on the other side!

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