As a kid, I colored outside the lines so aggressively that instead of reading books for book reports, I wrote entirely new stories using the original characters. Which, in hindsight, was probably less “creative student” and more “early warning sign.”

I became a screenwriter with three produced film credits. (You haven’t lived until Bruce Campbell stars in one of your movies.)

Then I built a successful niche PR firm and learned the art of media relations, client management, and championing artists and innovators. I also learned something less comfortable:

You can be successful at something and still feel completely disconnected from yourself inside it.

So naturally, I responded in the healthiest possible way:
I spent a decade performing standup comedy at places like The Comedy Store, Comedy Cellar, and Funny Bone while simultaneously trying to maintain some version of a stable adult life.

I learned two important things:

1. Chicken tenders taste the same everywhere.
2. Audiences tell the truth faster than people do.

Comedy sharpened my understanding of perception, timing, emotional tension, and the strange gap between what someone intends and what other people actually receive.

Eventually, that understanding carried into the next chapter:
a sneaker marketing agency I co-founded with a brilliant friend and business partner. We built campaigns, worked with major brands, and saw our creative end up on billboards, in magazines, and across digital platforms.

Then COVID hit.

Our business depended heavily on travel and in-person access, and almost overnight the machine stopped moving.

That period cracked something open in me.

The stress evolved into sleeplessness, anxiety, and a growing realization that I had spent years splitting myself into compartments:
creative person
business person
comic
strategist
provider
performer

I finally reached a point where continuing the same way felt harder than confronting what was actually true.

So I started doing the deeper internal work:
personal development
meditation
introspection
re-evaluating identity, ambition, success, and purpose

Somewhere in that process, I realized the thing I’d been circling my entire career:

My real fascination was never just branding.

It was why people misunderstand things in the first place.

Why some people, ideas, and businesses immediately create movement while others require endless explanation despite being equally valuable.

Why audiences often decide what something is before they fully understand it.

And why that first interpretation quietly shapes everything that follows.

Over time, all the disconnected pieces of my life started making sense together:
screenwriting
comedy
branding
live audiences
storytelling
identity
human behavior
business strategy

Not as separate careers.
As different angles on the same obsession.

That eventually became the foundation for YES, BRAND Builders, the Truth Tastes Funny podcast and live experience, and the advisory work I do today with founders, executives, creators, speakers, and public thinkers.