Make No Small Plans

2022 featured 3 monumental moments in my career:

1. Achieved Top Attainment as a Microsoft Surface Sales Executive, winning a trip to the Super Bowl and the opportunity to have breakfast with one of my favorite living inventors, Panos Panay .
2. Graduated from Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law with Honors and highest level of Service recognition for over 120 hours of non-profit work during my time as a student.
3. REUSO won Chicago Innovation 's first ever Climate Champion award for our novel reusable packaging platform.

While it would be easy to just post these achievements as a recap, I decided to share my learnings and the backstory of these accomplishments in the spirit of motivating you on your respective professional journey.

Becoming a Top Salesman. When I was initially building pipeline for my Surface business, I lived out of a suitcase (pre-pandemic) more often than I was home, traveling the Midwest for 40 hours or more in a single week. When the pandemic hit, my work shifted to a dozen or more Teams calls in a single day. It took 4+ years of refining my skills and Surface pitch before winning my first sales award, and celebrating my 5th and final year on the Surface sales team at the Super Bowl was the climax of the journey.

Lesson - making deals happen is the result of establishing strong relationships first, and working each and every day to continue earning the trust of your clients and partners. Prospect, prospect, prospect - if you're carrying a bag in your current role, turn over every rock in your patch to maximize your earning potential in the long run. Never under estimate the power of selling a product you believe in to an industry you're passionate about - I actually took a salary cut to join the Microsoft Education team because I knew my intrinsic motivation would power me through the learning curve as I transitioned from an engineer to a sales role.?

2. Pursuing a Graduate Degree while Working Full-Time. When I initially applied to Northwestern Law in 2017 and was accepted, I actually requested to defer my admission. I had just been hired into my first sales role at Microsoft and wanted to fully immerse myself in onboarding to the Surface team before tackling my 3rd degree. I also put together a 4 year plan with my trusted financial advisor, Sean Lyman, CFP?, CLU? , to maximize my employer's tuition benefits and minimize my out of pocket expenses. Nearly 5 years after initial admission, I crossed the line with my final Northwestern course in Spring of 2022.

Lesson - Imagine this - I was admitted into a school I dreamed about attending for over a half decade, just to say "thanks - how about next year?" (spoken like a true Chicago Cubs fan that had 'there's always next-year' hardcoded into my mind after my favorite sports franchise anxiously awaited 108 years for a World Series). Remember that you are running your own race at your own pace. Don't let standard timelines or expectations of others alter your frequency of work. I'm proud to share that my proactive planning allowed me to graduate with tuition paid in-full as a result of spreading my courses over a timeline that made the most sense for me.

3. Building a Business from Scratch. Eva and I began our journey towards innovation in the reusable space back in 2020. There had been a myriad of challenges to bring our vision of a zero waste system to life, including hundreds of "NO's" from prospective clients and partners. Once we did get to yes from our initial customers, there were dozens of late nights washing reusables and coordinating operations to make our events a success, culminating in the highest level of recognition we could have ever imagined for our early stage venture at the 21st Chicago Innovation Awards.

Lesson - Perseverance is necessary in any role, but especially entrepreneurship. Shifting consumer behavior is hard work, but when anchored in a mission as strong as eliminating single-use waste, daily conversations with advocates and celebrating the small wins along the way kept us motivated to continue to protect our planet.

Thank you to everyone that has supported me along these multi-year journeys - it is your sharing of time, resources, and experiences that have made me into who I am today. For those that have tried to bring negativity, selfishness, and greed into my life, I also thank you, because I will continue to prove day in and day out that optimism, collaboration, and valuing people over dollars will always win in the long run. I promise to keep giving back to uplift others as I continue climbing to new heights as a result of those shoulders that I've stood on to reach this new plateau.?

Different flowers bloom at different times of the seasons, and the same is true for accomplishments in careers. Whether you're in full bloom this season or planting some seeds to build a better future, I hope this message will encourage you to keep growing. I wish you all the best in 2023 ahead.

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us.?Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty." - Daniel Burnham - Chicago Architect