I’ve spent my whole life watching how people carry things.

I grew up the youngest of six kids, which meant a childhood spent watching. Watching people, watching pressure, watching what everyone carried around without ever naming it.

My mom raised six of us. My dad was the sole provider outside the house. He swung a hammer nonstop, came home covered in filth, took side jobs, did whatever it took to give us what other families with more money seemed to get more easily. As a kid you don’t understand what that costs. Later you do. Provision can look like exhaustion, dirty hands, carrying things nobody else sees so your kids don’t have to.

That shaped how I thought about work. I learned early that responsibility meant carrying the load yourself. Dropping the ball wasn’t an option. I took that pressure into business. I started companies, led teams, ran payroll, and made plenty of mistakes along the way. I learned most of it the hard way.

Then I started noticing what actually pulled me in. It wasn’t the growth or the deals. It was the messy middle. A founder carrying too much in his head. A company that had grown past the way it operated. A team working hard but not clearly. Sales depending too much on one person. Someone talented sitting in the wrong seat. A person trying to figure out what came next and not quite able to say it out loud yet.

Maybe that goes back to watching my dad swing that hammer. I saw what it costs to hold everything together alone. I saw how heavy that gets when too much depends on one person.

So the work I do now is my version of swinging a hammer. It doesn’t look the same, but I’m still trying to build things that help people carry responsibility better, and put a few things down along the way.