Working My Way Outdoors

My first job out of college was working inside sales at a health insurance brokerage in Tampa, FL. Even though I despised sitting in a cubicle and cold-calling agents all day, I thrived, purely because of my competitive nature. That same competitive spirit allowed me to work myself into a regional manager position within six months. It only took another six months for me to realize that I had to get out of the insurance industry and more importantly, out of that office.

So, I quit that job and moved across the country to Telluride, CO. Most people, which at the time included my family, thought I was crazy to leave such a lucrative and promising job to move to a small mountain town with no job lined up. Knowing what I now know about neuroscience, I can blame that reasoning purely on the fact that my frontal cortex was not fully developed yet.

Again, once I settled in Telluride my competitive nature took over, I started working for a moving service, then became assistant manager of The North Face of Telluride and later I became the assistant marketing director for Telluride Ski Resort. It wasn't necessarily restlessness that got the best of me in Telluride, but more so a broken heart and a bad taste left in my mouth. Telluride is still one of the most beautiful places I've ever lived, let alone seen in my entire life.

After Telluride, I moved back to Anchorage, AK, and I just happened to fall into a job at a gold assaying and refining shop. It was a great learning experience, but it was also a tipping point job for me. I realized that I had to take my future fully into my own hands. So after a year with the gold refinery, I decided to turn my full attention to chiropractic school.

Since starting graduate school in 2009, my life has been entirely dedicated to human health and performance and honing my skills as a clinician and manual therapist.

In every location and every job that I've ever worked, I have found bits of contentment, parts of unhappiness and an overall yearning to get outside. By becoming an entrepreneur, I've created a scenario where I am my own boss, and I have some semblance of freedom, but I often still feel trapped by the four walls of my office.

I find myself, on an almost daily basis, trying to formulate a way to make my living in the outdoors. The challenge is; how do I take my experience, education, and skills and apply them in an outdoor setting, where I can still earn a good income to support our family.

I've built houses, worked on golf courses, been a pool boy, and done enough lawn work to last a lifetime, but none of those jobs had a wild nature to being in the outdoors.

I genuinely believe that humans are becoming more and more disconnected from nature, and in particular, the wildness of nature. I want the opportunity to make a living in nature while showing others how the wilderness can improve their health and overall life.