I didn't start at the bottom to stay there.

I grew up in Robie Creek, Idaho — a canyon in the mountains outside Boise where the nearest school was a 45-minute drive each way. My parents are entrepreneurs. They built Stronghold Remodeling with their hands and their will, and they raised four kids watching them do it. I didn't know it at the time, but that's where I learned that ownership isn't something you're given. It's something you build.

I got a business marketing degree from the University of Idaho and went to work at my parents' Sandler Training franchise. Nine years. I learned how to sell, how to listen, how to help people get out of their own way. I got good at it. But somewhere in there, the entrepreneurial bug bit me hard — and I decided it was time to build something of my own.

Starting in 2018, I tried. I really tried. A few different businesses, a lot of energy, a lot of hope. None of them worked long-term. And the cost wasn't just financial — the ups and downs of entrepreneurship wore on my marriage until it didn't survive. In 2023, my wife left. She took the kids and moved in with her parents. She left me to figure out the rental house, the bills, and what was left of me.

I won't pretend that wasn't the hardest thing I've ever been through. It was. But my parents showed up for me the way they always have, and slowly I started to find my footing again.

I made a choice that most people thought was crazy. Instead of chasing another business idea or trying to fake my way back to the top, I decided to start at the bottom of a company I actually believed in. In August of 2025, I walked into WinCo Foods as a night freight stocker. Midnight shifts. Stocking shelves. Rebuilding.

I chose WinCo because it's an ESOP — an employee-owned company. Every person who works there earns a stake in it over time. I wanted to work somewhere that gave a damn whether I stayed. Two months later I was promoted to Variety Manager in Training. I'm not done climbing.

I have three kids — Scarlett, Tristan, and Norah. Being their dad is the most important thing I do. Everything else I'm building is for them and for the generation of young men who are where I was at 27: capable, hungry, and trying to figure out how to own something in a world that wasn't designed to let them.

In 2022 I founded America's Holding Company — a company built on a simple belief: that time is the one thing that levels the playing field, and the people who show up year after year deserve to own a piece of what they've built. It starts with a Christmas ornament subscription. It ends with a new model for how Americans can own a stake in the things they invest their lives in.

Someday I want to take that idea all the way to the Idaho House of Representatives. But right now I'm focused on proving it works — one subscriber, one year, one share at a time.