You learn a lot about how to serve people in a professional capacity when you’ve spent so many years serving those same people in a toilet-scrubbing capacity. I’ve been following my passion of serving communities and facilitating growth since I first began working with the open source Joomla development community in 2006. Since then, I’ve fulfilled my desire in becoming a person of encouragement for people all across the country, and it’s only getting better from here.
I’ve spent days washing dishes and nights writing code, pain-filled hours as Manager of a deteriorating restaurant and joyous ones behind a coffee bar slingin’ espresso. I’ve won awards and competitions at three different companies for being the top salesmen, and have brought communities together that achieved amazing goals. I’ve scraped basement walls that were completely covered in feces, gained certifications faster than my colleagues, served hot-dogs at a prize-pig competition, and performed on stage for some of the most powerful people in the US.
My life, like many of the lives of people I serve, has been full of ups and downs and a million opportunities. It would be easy to say I’m a “multipotentialite”, but I loathe that word and its lack of focus.
I do have a focus. That is; my passion, desire, and greatest intent has all been found in connecting people with other people, ideas, tools, communities, and moments of peace that will help them achieve their goals.
In fact, I gave a TEDx Talk once about those things:
I live to help you “guddina”.
Photo Credit: Son Van