From birth to 2026
1977 I was born to a working class couple in Minnesota
1985 my family moved to South Dakota because the factory my dad helped run needed to escape the oppressive Minnesota state taxes.
1989 my love affair with skateboarding got serious. It would dominate my recreational time for around 20 years.
1992 our family moved to Mankato, MN where I was first exposed to entrepreneurship at the pet shop by dad bought with his severance package from that factory he worked at for 20-some years.
1995 I packed everything I owned in my little Ford Escort and drove to LA. I was literally going hungry trying to find a “normal” job and discovered straight-commission sales. I frankly hated it at first, but I got good at it via the Amway tapes and books about success principals that my mail lady turned me onto (her and her husband, Stan were big into Amway).
1998 I lucked into a doorman job at the Golden Nugget hotel in Las Vegas. For a dopey kid from Minnesota, it felt like winning the lottery. I was able to buy my first house around 6 months after starting.
2000 I married Shelly Hanneman (sweet girl from Texas).
2003 we were blessed with our son Ethan
2005 we were blessed with our daughter Gretchen
2006 I needed to do something my kids could be proud of, so I gambled about 1/2 of my life savings on a business in Marble Falls, TX.
2016 I had grown that business to 15X what it was when I bought it.
2023 I went into a second business with a partner from California manufacturing some of the materials that the primary business would consume.
2025 I sold my primary business.
2026 I’m working harder than ever to just be as useful as I can to this world for now.
Early Days in South Dakota
Thrasher Magazine was my lifeline: this place was so incredibly backwards and lame in the late 1980s/early 1990s I don’t know how to describe it. The friends I made there and then though are still some of the greatest men I know. It’s like we went through a war together…a war against the super lame.
New Father in Las Vegas
For a dopey kid from Minnesota, Las Vegas was incredible. There were free skateparks all over, it was never cold, snowy, or even rainy, and the Lord blessed me with a sweet woman and a couple of great kids there.
“Philosophy” and “Las Vegas” are two concepts that seldom go together. For me though, this period of life was very rich in thought. I took the hardest math classes available at UNLV during the day and had long, empty hours at work in the evenings to just think. (Being a doorman was not a stressful, high-demand role for me).
Empty Nest in Texas
It seems like just yesterday I had my little guy between my legs at the skatepark - now he’s a college graduate and stands taller than me. My baby girl is now an incredible woman: majoring in chemical biology at Cal while being a great Chi-O and holding down a job. My wife and I find ourselves just sending each other a lot of pictures of our big, idiot dog nowadays.