One thing led
to another.

It started with sneakers.

Freshman year of high school, I stumbled into sneaker reselling. Nike would sell a shoe for $150, and the next day someone would pay $400 for it. That blew my mind. So I started buying and selling shoes.

I noticed how many listings had terrible phone pictures. Sometimes you could barely see the shoes, let alone their condition. I saw an opportunity to learn product photography: show people exactly what they were buying, and make the shoes look good enough that someone might want a pair they hadn’t even been looking for.

Eventually, I was loading a hundred pairs into my truck and driving to sneaker conventions across the Midwest. There was just one problem: a lot of people were window shopping. Hauling all those shoes around wasn’t making me much money.

So I started learning graphic design and making sneaker posters. If someone couldn’t buy their favorite shoe, maybe they’d buy a poster of it. They did. The posters sold, people took my business cards, and requests for custom designs started coming in.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes…

At the same time, I was deeply involved in production at my church. I learned camera work, lighting, and how to run a soundboard for services with 4,000 people. Some weeks I was helping the band set up; other weeks I was switching cameras or running slides.

It gave me a lot of practice making different pieces work together, with a whole team depending on things being ready when they needed to be.

Then I hit upload.

Those skills came together when I started an educational YouTube channel. My first video, a tutorial on audio software, reached 500,000 views. The videos that followed were getting hundreds of thousands, too.

That became something I could show software companies: I could understand a product, explain it clearly, and make a video people actually wanted to watch. Creating onboarding content was my way in.

Once I joined a team, my role tended to grow. A video project would lead to design work, email campaigns, or helping get a conference ready. People discovered I could help with more than the thing they’d originally hired me for—and that they could count on me to follow through.

I still like working that way: getting curious, learning what’s needed, and making something useful with people I enjoy working with.