industrial marketing | optimal
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Joined February 2010
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Age 17: Graduated high school, toured with 2 bands
Age 18: Worked construction with my Dad for a year, enrolled in community college, won a state guitar contest
Age 19: Got married, transferred to a university
Age 20: My daughter was born, and I got an internship at DuPont doing control systems engineering
Age 23: Graduated with an electrical engineering degree, started working at DuPont
Age 25: Moved to Kuraray Americas, doing control systems engineering
Age 26: Went to Europe for the first time for work
Age 27: My Dad had a stroke, I took over his business on the side while working full time
Age 28: Sold my Dad's business, moved to SC to work for DuPont again, was promoted to a plant manager position with 35+ direct reports
Age 29: Got my MBA
Age 30: My Dad passed away, my first son was born, I quit my job at DuPont and started working as a defense contractor
Age 31: Did a brief stint with a robotics company, Symbotic, before going back to defense contracting as a director of business development
Age 32: My second son was born, we moved back to WV to be closer to family, started a business doing ghostwriting for CEOs
Age 33: Joined a band with a record contract, traveled the east coast, got a song in rotation on SiriusXM
Age 34: Took a job at Magic Software as Director of Marketing
There's no 1 path. The main thing is to keep track of the things that make time stand still, give you energy, and make you a better person for the people you love.
I'm still trying to figure it out, but getting closer every day.
You’re not ready.
And that’s fine.
No one is ever 100% ready for the opportunities that will change their life.
It’ll always be uncomfortable. Go for it anyway.
yes, grok bot is amazing.
no, i will not be using to get "5 million impression in 2 weeks" or whatever else i'm seeing all over my feed. nor do i want to read that slop.
algo, give me more people that write their own posts.
good job, science. now do dirt -> protein powder
Last month, we demonstrated high-rate alchemy: turning mercury into real, stable gold, beating CERN’s record by a factor of 10.
Last week, we enriched isotopes in the world’s most powerful plasma centrifuge, beating the Soviet record that stood for 40 years.
Now, we’re building a fusion reactor in San Francisco to achieve record power density.
This is why I'm building 0TraceLabs. If you don't want your data living inside these frontier models, check it out: apps.apple.com/us/app/0trace…
Data brokers are now buying up SaaS data sets for anywhere from $100K to $2M
SaaS are struggling now and some extra money to fill the gap by declining revenues is nice
That data is then re-sold to AI training companies and AI frontier labs for the exact purpose of integrating whatever that SaaS did into the AI frontier lab's app
Pretty obvious to see where this is going
learn to tolerate uncertainty.
you don’t know how any situation is going to play out.
and most of the time it won’t be anything like the movie that is playing in your head.
I've had people ask why I pivoted to marketing.
Here's why.
But first, a quick recap of my career to this point:
1. Associate's degree in Electrical Engineering technology, age 19
2. DuPont engineer intern, age 20
3. Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, age 23
4. DuPont controls engineer, age 23
5. Received my PE license in control systems, age 26
6. Plant manager, age 27
7. Graduated with an MBA, age 29
8. Director of business development in DoD contracting, age 30
9. Director of marketing, age 33
So, yes, a career pivot to business and marketing after engineering + operations leadership in manufacturing seems a bit jarring.
But here's what that resume list doesn't show:
• A penchant for design
• A lifelong curiosity/obsession with psychology and human behavior
• Years of marketing on the side, first for my Dad's business then for friends and family, then as a side hustle
When my son was born and my Dad passed away, all within a few months, I took a long, hard look at my trajectory. Not just career, my life in general. There was this feeling that life was happening to me, and I wasn't being intentional with the direction my life was going.
I did engineering because it was adjacent to the work my Dad did, and I was good at math. It wasn't my passion. I saw people in my field that were genuinely obsessed with what they were doing. And they were lapping me. It didn't make me feel like I needed to try harder; it made me feel like I needed to find that thing for myself.
So I switched.
The years spent in plants and DoD facilities programming PLCs and leading teams wasn't a sunk cost. It made me better at marketing. I've been in the shoes of the people the companies I work for now are trying to help. I've lived the pain points and I know the problems first-hand that I was trying to solve then, and what products/services I wish existed back when I was doing those jobs.
Advice that I pass on to mentees, follow your curiosity.
Life is too short not to. You can explore career paths in a way that builds on what you've done previously that scratches an itch. There's no need to settle.
Because at the end of the day, it's all about energy. If you are in a position that drains your energy, even if you are good at your job, everything in life is harder. Conversely, now that I've found the niche that allows me to explore my natural curiosities and builds on everything else I've done before, I have an unfair advantage over the person that is just doing it because it's what their degree was in and they feel stuck. Plus, I am able to show up in all other aspects of my life better, because I'm not fighting against my natural energy levels.
Summed up in a few words here: “Hard choices, easy life. Easy choices, hard life.” - Jerzy Gregorek
