About Me

My journey to the University of Montana started in Pullman, WA where I was born and raised. I’m the oldest son of two clinical psychologists, so the fact that I’m one, not going to Washington State University, and two a business major often surprises people.

My first semester of college was pretty standard with your usual intro classes and freshman shenanigans. However, I happened to stumble into a wilderness EMT course, which turned out to be the first in a lucky series of choices. Besides the usual EMT curriculum the course also included more outdoors oriented training such as, using avalanche transceivers, a mass casualty scenario, and swift water rescue training. My experience with whitewater rescue led to me pursuing a job as a whitewater guide for the summer. I landed a job in Thermopolis, WY, I place I had never heard of, after a couple of emails and a phone call. Needless to say I was quite apprehensive about moving to a new place, further away from home, without ever having met the people I was about to be working for. Thankfully I continued my lucky streak of stumbling into great opportunities, as it turned out to be the best summer I’ve ever had.

Due to my EMT and lifeguard training, and experience with rowing and whitewater canoeing, thanks to the Boy Scouts, I was far ahead of the other new guides and was soon leading river trips. So there I was, getting paid to sit on the river all day, fly fishing in the evenings, living with two other guides in a rundown two-bedroom apartment, with enough time left over to make it to the bars every once in a while, it gave new meaning to “Living the Dream”.
During the time I was in Wyoming my mom decided to purchase a rental property back in Missoula. Our idea was for me to live there, manage, and improve it, which, somehow, sounded simple to me. However, in practice it was far from it. So started my biggest challenge to date, being a landlord, managing college age renters, remodeling a basement, all the while going to school. There have been varying degrees of success with the house, and while I enjoy living in my own house, there are times the dorms look pretty inviting.

The one advantage of living in a house was the fact that it had a garage. I’ve always thought of garages as the birthplace of business, with stories of Apple, Hewlett Packard, and closer to home Schweitzer Engineering, all starting in that manner. So I decided to do the same and start my own business Grizzly Paintball LLC. Not only was this an opportunity to possibly make some money, but also gave me a good way to apply what I was learning in school. As it turned out I really had no need for the garage part of the business until I had customers and equipment, so instead it turned into completely web based business. This is where the power of the web really became clear to me.

Within 24 hours of registering my first domain, I had built a basic website, registered with Google, and received my first business call. I think I was the most surprised one on the phone since I never thought things would start so quick. This experience happened to coincide with my first IS class, which put into words what I had just experienced. That, thanks to today’s technology, anyone can build a successful company with little more than the web. This empowerment of the individual is one of the main reasons for my interest in the IS field.

Looking to the near future, I hope to be able to share with small businesses and individuals what I have learned about technology in my own experiences. Longer term I hope to continue on with my education and get an MBA, and work for a larger company. And, if it is at all possible, move someplace warm and tropical for a while, I've had enough cold winters for a while.