The path that led me to Driftmore has been a scenic one.
In the fall of 2014, fresh off a dirtbag summer as a whitewater guide outside of Yellowstone, I sat down for the first time at a sewing machine and started making some of the most legendary backpacks in the world at Mystery Ranch. I didn't know how to sew. I just knew I wanted to learn.
I got hooked. Watching an idea turn into something real, that was the thing. Within a year I was promoted to sewing floor trainer.
That turned into a pattern I didn't see at the time. Step into something new, figure it out, then build the structure so other people can do it too. Customer service, then dealer service, then marketing. After seven years I was running brand experience.
At my next company, a fast-growing product design firm, I came in as their first Marketing Project Manager. Built the framework from scratch. Ran 15 launches in my first year, four of them simultaneous in a six-week window. Then hired my own replacement so I could move into go-to-market, and eventually into business operations.
Every role was newly created. Every role meant building the system before it could be run.
The work wasn't breaking because people weren't good at their jobs. It was breaking in the gaps. Between tools, between teams, in the handoffs.
Not in dashboards. Not in clean systems. In people's heads. In Slack threads. In quiet workarounds no one was really tracking.
That's the work I kept getting pulled into. Photoshoots turned into backlogs. Marketing launches turned into the structure underneath them. The output mattered less. What made the output possible mattered more.
That's where I do my best work. Building the structure underneath, so teams don't have to hold everything together manually.
Because it works, right until it doesn't.