About
The long version of who I am
I was born in Modesto, California and grew up in a small town outside Pittsburgh. We didn’t have much — except a front-row seat to a lot of different lives and a dad who built a hockey rink in the backyard. Honestly, that combination explains most of me.
- Faith
- First
- Family
- Next
- The work
- After that
- The motor
- Never content
The long game
I started young and went all in early — the kind of head start most people never give themselves. I picked the work, got good at it, and kept stacking reps long after the novelty wore off. That motor never really shuts off, and I’ve stopped waiting for it to. Grateful for everything, but I never settle for the most recent feeling of “content.” That’s the feeling everything runs on, and it doesn’t give a shit how far I’ve already come. I’m building something bigger than where I’m standing today.
How I love, how I talk
My mom’s from the South, so love runs warm in my family — the kind that feeds you, prays for you and means every word. But I came up on hockey and the Northeast, so the way I say things lands rigid, direct, sometimes a little too honest. I’ll tell you I love you and the fuck off in the same breath, and mean both… moreso the loving part, usually…
Faith
I’m a follower of Christ. “In its time, God will make it happen” isn’t a soft little idea to me — it’s one of the hardest, most useful instructions I own, and the foundation everything else here is built on.
Fitness
I’m deep into fitness. I worked as a personal trainer and in sales at a commercial franchise, and it drilled two things into me that now run my whole life: people buy belief before they buy anything else — and you don’t get the body, the business or the faith without showing up on the days you don’t feel like it. Reps are reps.
Matthew 5:43–44
Mahalin ang lahat, kahit ang kaaway.
Love everyone — even your enemy.
This is that verse in Tagalog — the language my pap brought with him from the Philippines. He grew up there through World War II, taught young to see the Japanese as the enemy. Seventy years later he was quietly obsessed with Japanese culture — and a dozen others he’d been handed every reason to write off. He never made a speech about it; he just lived it, and it’s still the most convincing case for this verse I’ve ever watched up close.
Music
I play guitar, and I love music almost indiscriminately, because different sounds reach different parts of you. Folk for the long drives and the feelings. Rock for the reps. Pop when I need the serotonin, a bit of a guilty pleasure I’d say. On rotation: Mount Joy, Matt Maeson, Zach Bryan, Sabrina Carpenter, Jet, Foo Fighters. If it makes me feel something, it’s in.
How I think
I read psychology and philosophy like other people watch sports… well, and how I watch sports. Not to sound smart — because history repeats itself, and the people who already lived it left the cheat codes for each of us. Most of my best ideas are just old ideas I finally understood. The rest is paying attention to people, which is the most underrated skill there is.
Where this started
None of this is new for me. I was making tutorial videos in 2013, eight years old — origami, the Minecraft stuff I overconsumed as a child and hockey clips from that backyard rink my dad and I built. I grew up inside the vlog era of YouTube and never really left. I just got better gear and harder problems.
What I do now
These days I’m a professional photographer and marketer. I came up shooting hockey, ran an ad agency and spent time running marketing for an entrepreneur. Now I’m building my own thing in the open, the clean parts and the messy ones.
Always grateful, never content.