The Journey
The Beginning
In 2018, my life hit a breaking point. My marriage ended, my children transitioned into a new chapter with their mother, and I was left rebuilding from the ground up. It was a season marked by emotional exhaustion, financial uncertainty, and the loss of the structure I had built my life around.
At the same time, someone close to me was fighting through their own recovery after a life‑changing medical event. Watching that determination — the daily choice to rebuild — became an unexpected anchor. It reminded me what resilience looks like when everything feels impossible.
Out of that season came the first blueprint of what would eventually grow into the Focus Family ecosystem. What started as a simple plan to help someone else rebuild became the foundation for a much larger vision: a system designed to support families, athletes, and individuals through every stage of their wellness journey.
This chapter wasn’t the end.
It was the beginning.
Where do go from here...
Every valley has a path — even when you can’t see the end.
The Valley
From 2019 to 2020, I entered one of the darkest seasons of my life. It felt like walking through the valley of the shadow of death — isolated, overwhelmed, and unsure if anything in my world would ever steady itself again. My health was shifting faster than I could understand as I was reclassified from type 2 to type 1 diabetes and diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. My body felt foreign, my mind was trying to transform, and the strain seeped into every part of my life. I struggled to hold a job because I kept finding myself in conflicts about basic ethics and decency. It wasn’t rebellion — it was a man trying to make sense of a world that no longer made sense to him.
During that time, faith became my only anchor. I went to church twice a week, volunteered, and tried to stay spiritually grounded even when it felt like nothing was working. I wasn’t distant out of arrogance or ego — I was drowning in loneliness, hoping someone would notice the weight I was carrying. I served because I wanted to feel useful, valued, and connected in a place that was supposed to feel safe. Even when I felt misunderstood, I kept showing up. That quiet persistence — that stubborn, flickering faith — became the foundation for the man I would eventually become. The valley didn’t break me, it reshaped me.
The Awakening
In 2021, something inside me shifted. After years of struggle, I realized that taking care of myself — physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally — had to become my first priority before I could truly help anyone else. During this time, true friends came to me with their ideas and early business concepts, asking for guidance. I helped them the only way I knew how: by building simple, step‑by‑step business plans, financial models, client targets, and outreach strategies. I did the research, mapped the contacts, and laid out the path. What I didn’t realize then was that while I was helping them build their dreams, they were helping shape my own founder mentality.
This was also the year I began writing the earliest structure, architecture, and blueprints for what would eventually become Focus Family Groups — a fully self‑supporting ecosystem designed to house health, fitness, and youth development under one umbrella. I didn’t yet have the financial resources to hire a team or bring the vision to life, but I kept refining it. Throughout 2021, I revised and edited the framework as I gained more knowledge — not just about how to build a business, but about the laws, regulations, and responsibilities that define what a business can and cannot do.
As the year continued, I enrolled with ISSA to earn my Personal Training Certification. COVID had pushed people into their homes, and I found myself online helping them set up home gyms, create workouts, and use whatever equipment they had to stay healthy. It touched me deeply to see how much impact simple guidance could have. I was still going to church, still volunteering, still unnoticed in many ways — but this was the season where I began applying the transformation I had fought for in the years before.
The light is back.
Become the best version of yourself you can become.
The Climb
In 2022, I took my commitment to helping others even further. I enrolled in Sports Management Worldwide to earn my Agent Management Certification so I could support athletes on their journey. This is where my personal motto was born: “Become the best version of yourself you can become.” I live by that every day. Each day is an opportunity to learn something new, to grow, to listen, and to improve. During this time, I wasn’t reading self‑help books — I was studying business strategy, company structure, Blue Ocean Strategy, small‑business operations, and The Foundations of Physiological Psychology. I was rebuilding myself from the inside out, preparing for the mission that would eventually become Focus Family Health & Fitness.
As a resident of Colorado, I would often step onto my back porch and look out at the Rocky Mountains. Every time I saw them, I was reminded that I was only taking the first steps of climbing my own mountain — not physically, but spiritually and emotionally — as I began building Focus Family Health & Fitness one step at a time. Even in moments of frustration and overwhelm, I leaned on my spirituality. At times it was a crutch, but it was the one thing I knew deep down would never leave me nor forsake me.
Song that defined this season: Hallelujah — Bethal Music
The Moving of Stones
In 2023, I was living in Northeastern Colorado working as a heavy‑duty diesel mechanic. I kept telling myself that if I could find the right person, maybe I could settle my mind and keep pushing forward. But the relationship didn’t unfold the way I hoped.
During that time, I learned a lot from her parents — lessons about leadership, long‑term planning, and what it means to have people stand next to you, not behind you. We tried to build a custom apparel business together, an extension of something I had created during COVID, but it became clear we weren’t aligned. Eventually, we broke up, and I moved to Nebraska to continue working as a mechanic.
By the end of 2023, I found myself hoping for support but facing the opposite. It felt like another valley, but this time I was learning how to solve problems, recognize patterns, and understand that I’m the only one who can create the environment I need to fully recover. The pieces were starting to shift.
In early to mid 2024, before I moved to Nebraska, I was in a relationship in Northeastern Colorado. At first, things felt steady, but as time went on, everything around us began to shift. Her parents decided to sell the house we were living in, and being forced to move created tension that neither of us handled well. Problems started to surface — not suddenly, but slowly, like cracks spreading through something that once felt solid.
I began to feel distant, out of place, and disconnected, even though I was surrounded by people who claimed to accept me for who I was. Something inside me felt off. I could sense that the environment I was in no longer aligned with the principles that others claimed they lived by — the same principles that had carried me through some of the hardest seasons of my life.
One day in mid June of 2024, after a confrontation that made everything unmistakably clear, I chose to leave. Not out of anger, but out of conviction. I wasn’t going to stay in a place where my values were being bent, ignored, or compromised. I felt an urge — a pull — to step into something different, something unknown, something that would force me to grow.
That moment became the first step toward the next chapter of my life.
The Foundation
In late 2024, I started working in the supplement industry and quickly realized I had a natural ability for soft sales. I learned how supplements affect the body, how some can help, and how others can be dangerous depending on underlying health conditions. I made real friends — people who still support me today, even if our paths have gone in different directions.
This season wasn’t easy, but it was the year the stones began to move — slowly, painfully, and with purpose.
I was working at the supplement company until early 2025. I was arguing principles with my direct supervisor, who was holding two positions and going through a crisis of her own. I asked for help repeatedly for months — help with running and managing two store locations, help with solving the problems in our district, help with the workload and expectations. No help ever came.
I wasn’t going to compromise my ethics or be used by someone who didn’t stand next to the things they preached. I understand everyone has their own struggles, but I wasn’t going to be pulled into someone else’s chaos. So I chose humility. I walked away without fighting, without arguing, and without burning bridges. Leaving wasn’t weakness — it was clarity.” 2025, during the months between leaving the supplement company and finding new employment with the global company I now work for part‑time, I went through a period of deep isolation. It was a season of reflection, growth, and uncomfortable truth. I began to realize that even the people I was living with — my own family — weren’t supporting me in the ways I needed. My sister was going through a divorce, my three nephews moved in, and the whole house felt like a storm of change.
In that environment, I started asking myself hard questions.
Why do I struggle to connect with people I work with?
Why do people say they’ll help, but disappear when I ask them to follow through?
Why do I end up feeling like the “bad guy” for holding people to their own words?
Those questions stayed with me when I started my new job with a globally known company — a job I had actually done 15 years earlier. I love the work because I’m outside, active, and constantly moving. But as time went on, I realized this company was no different from the others I had worked for. To them, I was just an employee number.
Then, in October 2025, something shifted.
It was revealed to me — clearly, unmistakably — that if I wanted the world around me to change, I had to start by changing myself. It reminded me of a principle often attributed to Gandhi: If you don’t like the way the world is, be the change the world needs.
That idea became the spark that pushed me to begin building Focus Family Health & Fitness — not just as an app, but as a tool to help people become the best version of themselves they can become.
Life will always put us in hard places. We will face situations we don’t like, people who disappoint us, and environments that challenge us. But perspective is everything. If we choose to see those moments as opportunities for growth, we become stronger. We become better.
At the end of the day, the choice is ours.
I don’t know where this road leads, but I’m moving forward anyway.
Into the Unknown
In 2025, I was reminded of the ethics and principles I learned back in college — the same faith‑driven values I held onto before my divorce and still walk in today. During some of my darkest moments, those principles became my anchor. Around that time, Billy Aslbrooks song — The Way of a Champion — hit me deeply. What he speaks about isn’t hype; it’s about being better, showing up, doing what’s right, and stepping into the calling placed on your life. It’s about choosing integrity when no one is watching. Even though I was moving into an area I only understood through information, with zero real experience and a lot of discomfort, I felt the pull to step forward anyway. This was the moment I chose to rise — not because I felt ready, but because I knew it was time.