My teacher called my parents in and recommended that I should be held back. Apparently, during recess, I wouldn't play with the other children right away, I would just observe. And so I flunked recess and had to repeat kindergarden, for a reason I couldn't be more proud of today.
After high-school, a server from New Orleans taught me work ethics by being bus boy. At 18, I made as much as the waiters in Seattle's top restaurant and when I left, I had to be replaced by 3 people. He prepaid me, was overly generous and expected that I earn every penny.
Norwegian roots were the impetus for my journey to Alaska aboard the commercial fishing boat, "Silver Dolphin" where I really understood the definition of hard work. I did many 24-hour shifts, cooked for the 6 person crew and was the "greenhorn" deckhand for 72 days at sea.
Being on a boat for that long was enough to motivate me to find a purpose in life that didn't involve salmon. Upon my return, I earned an associates degree from Seattle Central, was accepted into the University of Washington, studied marketing at the Foster School of Business, and left my senior year to join a tech startup.
Turned out to be a good move as I got to build a mobile donation platform that launched at a Dave Matthews & Dalai Lama benefit concert and a mentorship by Microsoft's first CMO, Rowland Hanson, who named Windows, Windows and taught me that it was as much work working on small deals as big deals, so just go big.
After several years of learning how to do product strategy by working with tech companies and startups, I met Amazon's founding VP of Business Development, George Aposporos, and I decided to take my first entrepreneurial leap. We pursued and landed a multi-year exclusive deal with the NFL Players Association for over 2,000 NFL Players from all 32 teams to join Playmark.com - a digital marketplace we built to turn popularity into profit.
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