My father, a kind and quiet man, isn't the type to sit you down for many heart-to-hearts about life, your future, or what you should be doing with either. However, we found ourselves in such a situation just after I turned 19 years old. It was then that my father, a kind and wise man, suggested that I should focus my apparent interest and fascination with computers towards the rapidly growing industry surrounding them. This was 1994.
In 2009, I decided to listen to my father.
The years in between weren't entirely lost though. In 2001, I co-founded the successful Wilco fansite, Via Chicago That eventually led to a member of that community and I launching the fundraiser, Just A Fan, which grabbed national attention and headlines. I was also working for a promotional products and incentives company in Dallas where we provided e-commerce, logo and branding solutions for some of the largest direct sales companies in the country.
It was in 2009, though, when it finally hit me. It was time to take everything that I learned from years and years of tinkering around on the internet, and working for other people, and finally utilize it for my own endeavors. So I spent the next many months, and moons, refining my skills, reading every book, and watching every tutorial I could find. Eventually, as we all know, practice makes perfect (or attempts at perfect), and I started working with clients who allowed me to develop those skills in the real world. Or, virtual world. It's the internet after all.
