How I Got Here

When I graduated from Purdue University in 2003, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. My degree was in Forensic Anthropology, so I applied at some law enforcement agencies only to discover that the pay and hours were atrocious. I liked cars a lot and I wanted to learn “business” so I ended up getting a job at Enterprise Rent-a-Car right out of college because it involved driving lots of different vehicles and management training. This turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

I learned how to be empathetic, how to manage complex and stressful situations, and ultimately, how to underpromise and overdeliver. Seeing this mantra in action was all it took for me to make it the core of who I am.

Client success people often try to make people happy by promising things that may not be possible. They imagine that by telling the customer what they want to hear they’re making them happy. However, telling someone what they want to hear and then not delivering within that timeline has the opposite effect. Missing those commitments is not only unfair to the customer, but also to the team supporting customer success. That’s why I learned almost immediately how important clear communication and proper expectation-setting are.

After Enterprise, I had a number of different jobs in industries ranging from banking, to manufacturing, to SaaS (software as a service), to marketing agencies. No matter what industry I was in, the same universal truth of underpromising and overdelivering rang true.

Over the years, I’ve been able to step back a bit and not just focus on Client Success, but also the importance of how a marketing agency’s processes can negatively impact its clients. Unfortunately, processes are often created in a vacuum to solve a narrow problem without thinking about how they impact a customer or even other processes. Looking at the whole picture and ensuring that the main focus is on a good end-user experience is what I really enjoy doing.

Having a Little Fun

Strangely, I do a lot of random things that tie back to marketing. While I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a “marketer” due to the fact that I’ve primarily been involved in the operations, agile process development, and client success side of marketing agencies, I’ve still had a pretty decent amount of exposure to lots of different channels of marketing. I’ve been lucky enough to work with some really talented people and some of it has rubbed off on me I guess. 

In September of 2019, I decided that I wanted to create a story around one of my passions. I would need to apply everything I knew while also teaching myself all the things I didn’t. So, after watching a million YouTube videos, I decided that I wanted to create a brand around “Overlanding” where I could create content about my love of traveling long distances to explore remote locations.

Thus, All Things Overlanding was born. 

I taught myself how to build my own website. I learned how to shoot video, record audio, and edit it all together into cohesive videos that people might actually want to watch. I wrote blogs about overlanding and did gear reviews and trip reports to tell people more about this amazing thing called Overlanding. 

As of the date of this blog, I’m almost to 2,100 YouTube subscribers, almost 50K podcast downloads, and a number of Instagram and Facebook followers as well. I’ve been published in multiple Overlanding magazines and interviewed people across the Overlanding industry, which has opened a lot of doors and allowed me to build new relationships with some awesome people and companies. 

Outside of Enterprise, All Things Overlanding is probably the second most powerful influence in me getting to where I am today. 

Ultimately, I’m thrilled for the opportunity to work with the amazingly talented team here at 1909. I’ve already seen some amazing stuff from them and I’m thrilled to be able to help develop processes that will focus on ensuring the customers always come first and have a clear understanding of the great work we’re doing for them every day!