My Story
I've felt everything at full volume my entire life. That's not a liability anymore — it's the whole reason I can do this work.
I come from a family with a strong police and military background where drinking was as normal as eating dinner. Both sides of my family had addiction running through them. My first drink was at eight years old — my older brother told me it tasted like strawberries. It didn't, and I spit most of it out. But I immediately thought I should take another sip because I'd spit it out. Looking back, that moment tells you everything you need to know about how my brain was wired from the start.
Through my twenties and thirties the drinking got worse and I told myself all the stories people tell themselves. I never lost a job. Never got a DUI. Never lost my family — though it got close. On paper, nothing catastrophic happened. Underneath, I was completely out of control and couldn't see it because I was too consumed by Fear to look at it directly. Not the surface-level fear of running out of booze on a Sunday — the deeper kind. The kind that had been quietly running my life since long before the first drink.
"Working a set of steps got me in touch with the Fear, Ego, Pride, and Resentment that had been underpinning most of my decisions, actions — everything — without my knowing it."
I got sober on November 26th, 2016. That date matters to me, but the bigger thing that matters is what the process of getting sober showed me — which is that almost every destructive pattern in my life, and in the lives of people I watched in recovery and those on destructive paths that had nothing to do with booze or addiction, traced back to one of four things: Fear, Pride, Ego, or Resentment. Not sometimes. Almost always.
That same older brother who handed me that first drink spent more than thirty-five years using drugs and alcohol, unwilling to face what was at the root of it — not because he couldn't see it, but because confronting it felt like more than he could bear. This work was already my purpose long before he passed away in August 2025, but losing him was a reminder that the stakes are real. Not always dramatic, not always visible, but real. I think about that every time I sit down with someone who's ready to do something different.
How the Root Four™ (R4™) model was born
I didn't build R4 from a framework I read in a textbook. I built it from watching it work — on myself first, and then in hundreds of coaching sessions with people across every level of every kind of organization. I have a background in Psychology, Philosophy, and an MBA in I/O Psychology, HR, and Management. Before any of that I spent years working in the field — architectural sheet metal, solid surfaces, hardwood floors — which means I've never been guarded about who I will and won't work with. I coach the person, not the position.
I've worked with everyone from people in the field to presidents and CEOs, and I've coached them exactly the same. What I kept finding, regardless of title, industry, or how the problem was presented to me, was that when I asked the right questions the root was almost always the same. A leadership challenge, a communication breakdown, a career crossroads — peel it back far enough and you're almost always looking at Fear, Pride, Ego, or Resentment. Usually some combination of all four.
I'm not always going to use those exact words with you. But I'm always working toward the root. Once you can see it clearly — really see it — the path forward becomes a lot less complicated.
What to expect when we work together
I'm not going to sugarcoat what I see. I may ask you questions you have never been asked before and I will hold you accountable to the answers. I've had tough, seasoned executives sit across from me and say they'd never been able to put something together the way we just did. I've seen people make decisions they'd been paralyzed on for years. I've walked alongside people coming out of some genuinely dark places and watched them get their lives back. I've seen careers reclaimed from jobs that were burning lives to the ground.
None of that happened because I have all the answers. It happened because I know where to look and I'm not afraid of what we're going to find. I've been in those same dark places. I know the difference between the story someone tells themselves and the truth underneath it.
"I want to spare someone even five minutes of the shame, the guilt, the low self-worth that I carried for so long. That's what this is about."
I'm not going to tell you I have it all figured out. I don't. What I can tell you is that the work I've done — in sobriety, through my education, through years of sessions with people from every walk of life — has given me a life better than I ever thought possible. Even when things are burning down around me, it's manageable. And I want that for you too.
Credentials:
International Coaching Federation - Associate Certified Coach (ACC)
SHRM - Certified Professional (CP)
Personality Assessment Certifications - PDP ProScan, Myers Briggs MBTI Type II, Hogan
University of Hartford - MBA focused in I/O Psych, Management, and HR
University of Washington - BS in Psychology minor in Law Society and Justice
Sober since November 26, 2016
Contact us
Whether you know exactly what you want to work on or you just know something needs to change — this is the right place to start. Fill out the form below and I'll be in touch within 24 hours to set up a conversation. No pressure, no pitch. Just an honest talk to see if we're a good fit for each other.