I Didn't Know
What I Wanted
To Be.
And that's entirely okay. How I went from scooping dog poop to writing about music to building financial technology.
↓ Start the story
At 14 — right around your age — I started working at a veterinary office. I cleaned kennels, I scooped poop, I helped out wherever I could. I did it all the way into my early 20s.
Everyone assumed I was going to become a vet. Honestly? I kind of assumed that too.
But when I got honest with myself, I realized something important...
"I didn't love veterinary medicine. I just loved working hard and being useful. Those are two very different things."
me, circa 8th grade 😬
When it came time to pick a major, I pivoted hard. I enrolled in Journalism at Cabrini University because I had one very specific dream: write about music for Rolling Stone magazine.
I spent four years learning how to write. How to grab someone's attention. How to tell a story that makes people feel something.
Here's what I didn't know at the time: those skills would turn out to be the most valuable thing I ever learned — just not in the way I expected.
I didn't end up at a music magazine. I ended up in a marketing job... in finance. A field I knew absolutely nothing about.
But here's where it got interesting. I looked around and realized: everyone in finance was terrible at explaining finance. The math was hard. The jargon was impenetrable. Regular people were completely lost.
I had something they didn't: I knew how to tell a story. I could take the boring, confusing math and turn it into something a real person could understand.
"My real skill wasn't writing. It was being a translator — turning hard things into human stories."
For over two decades, I built this superpower at some of the biggest names in financial services. I wasn't building apps yet. I was mastering the art of simplifying complex problems so financial advisors could protect families' futures.
Building apps and software actually came later in my career — when I joined FIDx, a fintech company building the software that powers retirement planning.
People assume you have to start in tech to work in tech. That's not true. Every problem we solve in software is really just a communication problem. Who is the user? What are they trying to do? How do we make it simple?
"I can only build great technology today because of those 20 years spent learning how to simplify hard things. The tech is just the newest tool."
I owned a mobile video game party truck. I drove it to birthday parties, block parties, and events, bringing a whole arcade experience to people's driveways.
Was it finance? Was it journalism? No. But it took every skill I had: marketing, customer service, logistics, hustle. It proved that entrepreneurship is just problem-solving in real life.
I love guitar. So I used the tech skills I learned at my day job to build FretSense — a web app that helps people learn guitar.
This is the most important thing I'll tell you today: once you learn how to build things, you can bring your passions to life. Skills compound. They don't cancel out.
You're standing in the same place I stood — 14 years old, no idea what comes next. That uncertainty isn't a problem to solve. It's the beginning of the story.
Learn skills. Try things. Work hard at whatever's in front of you. Your path will probably surprise you.
"As long as you bring yourself to the job and find a way to share your voice — that's what counts."