I was born sometime around 1973, on the outskirts of Seoul, near a U.S. military base, September 25th or November 25th, depending on which document you’re reading. The records have never quite agreed on the date. Neither has anything else since.
My adoptive family was already there, my father working for the U.S. government, his parents and their parents before them long-time missionaries who had planted themselves in Korea across generations.
Life moved. As a kid it swept me up and took me where it wanted. Not chaos exactly, but never still.
Korean pre-school in Busan. First grade in Soonchun. First grade again in Yeosu because we moved mid-year and I had to start over. By the time we made it to New York City, I had already learned the most useful skill nobody teaches: walk into a room full of strangers and figure out the rules fast.
Adapt quickly. Or get left behind.
Twelve schools. Four countries. One building I came back to, which tells you something about how rare continuity felt.
Some of the moving was the life my family led. Some of it was me. I was restless in ways I didn’t have the language for. What it gave me, whether I wanted it or not, was a tolerance for chaos and a refusal to be rattled by starting over.
When you’re always the new kid, you stop relying on other people to tell you who you are.
I landed, eventually, at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Four years. A degree. The first time I stayed somewhere long enough to finish something.
Then an MBA. Then a job. Industrial robotics. International sales. Airports, presentations, decent money. It all looked right.
It felt exactly like every classroom I’d sat in wondering why none of it fit.
So I quit.
What followed wasn’t a clean transition. It was a stretch of decisions that, on paper, didn’t make much sense.
I walked away from a stable path and went into straight commission, door-to-door sales. Replacement windows. Cold knocks. Recycled leads. Living out of a motel during the week while my wife held things together at home.
Then vacuum cleaners. Then office systems. Then anything that would let me get in front of a customer and try to close something.
Most of it didn’t work.
None of it looked like progress.
But it stripped the ego out fast.
It taught me how to take rejection without slowing down—and adjust fast when nothing was working.
I didn’t walk away with commissions.
I walked away with clarity.
If you want the full version—the decisions, the misses, and what actually came out of it—it’s here: Hard Knocks.
A few days after 9/11, I walked into a recruiter’s office and signed a contract. Ended up on an officer track instead of infantry. Probably the right call.
Fort Benning. Fort Stewart. Iraq.
I spent a year there leading soldiers and making decisions where the cost of being wrong was immediate and permanent. I came home with a Bronze Star, a Combat Action Badge, and a calibration of risk that doesn’t leave you.
Every day not spent in Baghdad is a good day.
Back stateside, I checked the boxes. Finished the MBA.
At one point, I moved my family to Indiana to work on a medical device problem that hadn’t been solved.
I didn’t come from that world. So I taught myself everything I needed—modeling, prototyping, manufacturing, regulatory constraints.
Three years later, I had a working solution and a patent.
No product. No payday.
That’s part of the game.
And still felt like I was in a room that wasn’t mine.
In 2018, unemployed and out of options, I bought a pool company.
Not because I loved pools. Because the market was broken, the model made sense, and I knew how to start over.
The deal was structured with an SBA loan, a seller note, and a down payment I had to scrape together. Closed June first. Went to work.
Five a.m. inspections. Midnight books. Seven days a week.
We grew thirty percent the first year. Then I acquired another company. Then another. Built a full-service platform doing six million across commercial maintenance, repairs, and renovations.
The kind of operation people say you can’t build on your first acquisition.
That didn’t happen by accident.
It started with a simple observation: the industry wasn’t complicated. It was broken.
Contractors not showing up. Doing partial work. Racing to the bottom on price.
Most people just weren’t doing the work.
Show up. Do it right. Don’t leave it half done.
We focused on three things:
People. Hire, train, and keep.
Pools. Execute the work at a level customers could see.
Profit. Structure the business so it actually made money.
Simple. Not easy.
That’s what we ran on, from the first deal to the exit.
If you want the full breakdown — the deals, the mistakes, and how it actually scaled — it’s here: A Platform for People, Pools & Profit.
People had opinions. Wrong industry. Wrong model. Too fragmented. Too operationally heavy.
They usually do.
In 2021, I sold it. National buyer. Clean exit.
I stayed on as President for a year because I believed in what we built. I left because they didn’t.
I don’t operate from a dashboard, three-hour Zoom calls, or feel-good HR language.
I stay close to the work; customers, crews, and problems. That’s where the signal is. That’s where the opportunity shows up.
I’ve spent enough time across industries to know this: industry matters less than people think. Execution does. People do.
The patterns repeat. The problems rhyme. If you understand the fundamentals, you can step into almost anything and make it work.
Most of what matters doesn’t show up in a pitch deck. It shows up at 6 a.m. on a jobsite, or in a conversation that starts with, “You’re not going to believe what just happened…”
That’s where I operate.
Today I run Twin Palm Holdings, acquiring, operating, and growing small-to-mid-sized service businesses where execution still wins.
Same markets. Better structures. Harder-earned perspective.
I mentor founders and operators, not because I have all the answers, but because I know what it costs to figure them out without a map.
Twelve schools. Four countries. One war.
One thing never changed.
What’s next.
Turns out that’s exactly the right background for buying broken businesses and fixing them.
For a long time, I chased freedom the way people tell you to.
Degrees. Titles. Promotions. Recognition.
None of it worked.
Every version came with a leash.
Ownership is the only thing that gets you there—and it’s expensive.
Risk. Early mornings. Long days. Doing work most people avoid. Taking responsibility when things break.
There’s no shortcut to it. And no one hands it to you.
If you’re looking for passive ownership or clean theory, this won’t make sense.
If you want the full version, what it actually looked like to earn it — it’s here: Freedom.