Just another human worshipping at the tower of creation. Just another human worshipping at the tower of creation. Just another human worshipping at the tower of creation.

It was the mid twenty-tens. Inspiration was flowing. Possibility was in the air. The hair got long

. My dad-jokes went pro.

Let's back up for a bit though. I had recently lost my job during company-wide layoffs from the job I'd wanted since college. It sure didn’t feel great. Honestly, it felt a bit personal. I had been sure my next work chapter would be about refining my craft. It turned out to be much more than that.

My burnt dreams settled into fertile soil and I quickly found myself growing in unexpected directions. On the same day I packed up my desk, I was introduced to the person who would become my mentor and business partner. Sometimes the wheel of life spins stupid fast.

Things climbed on (cue genre-defining montage

). What started as a few freelance collaborations turned into a basement collective. My business partner and I slowly built an agency, driven largely by word-of-mouth. It wasn’t his first time to the dance, but it sure was mine. My previous career goals wouldn't cut it any more. I had a business to run.

So I grew and learned, often the hard way. Many lessons got notched in my mind. I collected all the merit badges I wanted, and some I didn’t. New business, presentation, hiring, firing, office leases, health insurance, you name it.

Fast forward through back story that, while memorable, doesn’t impact this narrative much. Our agency had naturally become highly optimized around our largest client. Always struggling to balance their needs with our other projects, we were eventually acquired to do exclusive work.

This whole chapter hadn’t even been a thought in my early life roadmap, if I ever had such a thing. But, it certainly became fundamental to who I've become and how I see the world.

After all, when life gives you lemons, you make friends and start a business.

Defined it. Planned it. Guided it. Jumped in and built it all at full tilt. And somehow, survived it. Veni Vixi Vici.

My team had an audacious goal when I starting working exclusively for LifeVantage: decouple the then current e-commerce experience from a cumbersome and poorly aged monolith and replace it with a modern, intuitive platform.

We’re talking about heart and lungs surgery here, compounded by the complexity of localization, geographic business rules, internal politics and strange behaviors caked on year over year. Since the band aid had to come off anyway, we combined our operation with a complete content refresh and a brand new design system.

It was a lot, but we pulled it off. We won awards. From the get go people actually liked the new experience, which is harder to do than you might think. And, when we put our pencils down, people actually liked us

, which felt even more substantiave after we broke so many eggs. I stayed on for several years, steadying the ship and modernizing ancillary experiences and services.

Seeking another mountain to climb and wary of directional shifts at the company’s top, I joined another agency. News spread fast and we found a client ready for the next digital transformation as we began to call them. So, I got back to it. But this time I drove change from the outside. One thing followed another, and soon we locked down digital transformation round three after an ill-fated attempt to make a flight after a record-breaking snowstorm.

These transformations are intense, multi-year initiatives. We calibrated our understanding and vision with weeks of discovery and roadmapping. We tightened the messaging, designed delightful experiences, bolstered infrastructure and built services. We trained, tested and launched. Each project brought its own constraints, integrations, technologies and goals. But they all shared the same transformative gene, our gene.

I had even earmarked an ambitious final number to cap off the trio. Regrettably, the required voices to sing that song haven't been gathered yet.

However, I did win an armful of awards.

I cat herd. I’ve cat herded. I’m a cat herder. Shore-to-shore, left-to-right brain, end-to-end, big-to-small.

As someone who values self-sufficiency, I often find the human-scale of large projects daunting. Computers scale easily. People… not so much. We plan a nice and tidy line, A → B. But, that line squiggles faster than a mid-earthquake seismograph once our teams’ personalities, goals, and fears are added to the mix. Additional complexities like timezone and language differences can turn our beautiful line into a failed spirograph

.

I certainly try to. I’ve orchestrated at photoshoots, technology audits, press checks, client meetings and quarterly reviews. I’ve led copy writers, designers, cloud architects, make-up artists, videographers and voice actors. I’ve collaborated with legal teams, investment groups, wide-eyed students and seasoned heavy hitters. I can spot the difference between slang from Argentina

and Mexico, and I show proper respect when accepting a japanese business card.

I’d eat gummy worms for breakfast but for science, nutrition and all that.

You see, the right details are gummy worms: absolutely delicious. Something that shouldn’t be the main course, but yet is so rewarding you only halfway promise yourself not to stuff your face.

But, inversely, the wrong details aren’t an odd taste. They’re a competing flavor persistently pulling attention away from where it should be. A Game of Thrones buddy that won’t stop talking about Starkbucks

, but somehow has no words for the ending. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

It’s difficult to get the details right. Start with honest assessments, agreed goals, and vetted risks. Add team trust with business buy-in and you’re well on your merry way. Next, I add my secret sauce. I distill goals to their essence. I determine what can be, should be, and needs to be worked on. I keep sight of that forest and steer away from distractions.

Additionally, I pride myself on the work around the work. Case in point, I translate priorities across teams, present work to mixed audiences with mixed concerns, zoom out for leadership, and zoom back in with the team to get it done. I’ve earned my stripes updating the C suite, leading code reviews, and crafting creative.

In the end, it’s not just the forest, not just the trees. It’s both. It’s the small supporting the big. A successful project, done well. Let the celebratory face-stuffing begin.