Who is Wes?

The journey to figure out who you are is volatile. Lots of starts and stops. Epiphanies, highs, lows and tough lessons. They say you learn more from your failures and though I agree, most often you are getting hit with life lessons every day. I love all of the lessons I’ve learned, even the hard and painful ones.

I really enjoy the work that I do. It’s hard. Takes a lot of thought. I lose myself in it sometimes, but when I get to solve complex problems, it's a pretty substantial payoff. My motivation is to use myself as a test. If I can do it, then other people can. I want to take the fear out of business. I think everyone should start their own business at least once in their life. I want entrepreneurs to build great things and if they just want to create a job for themselves, that’s fine too. I want to break things down into pieces. Where am I spending too much time? How can it be more efficient and faster? How do I achieve better results? What am I not doing? What should I be doing more of? In what order should I be doing them? Am I communicating well? Do my clients and myself get value from what I’m doing? What do I want? If not me then who?

One of the advantages of living an eventful life is that you start to develop a pretty good barometer for what you like and what you don’t like. In my 45 Things + 5 post, #10 I wrote, “Get rid of clothes, jobs and people in your life that don't fit anymore.” What I mean by that is that sometimes we hold onto things longer than we should. Maybe we are afraid to let them go. What if they don’t fit with the new me? We all change and I’m not saying you can’t keep some of these things forever, just keep the right things that fit.

The fit part is what gets you. How are you supposed to know what fits? I’m not sure, but I’ve written and talked about how every year I don’t write a New Years resolution. Instead I make a simple list of what I like to do. That’s it. Whatever doesn’t make the list, I don’t do anymore. One thing that I do like doing is being outdoors. I like camping, mountain biking, surfing, hiking, snowboarding, paddle boarding and sometimes just sitting and watching nature do its thing. How I get to do all of these things is I built out a Sprinter Van years ago. It’s not posh inside. It’s an adventure van. Minimal, sparse and rugged. I’m still not done and I’ve built some areas a few different times, but it’s me. It’s my space.

I enjoy spending time with my wife and daughter. My brother. Some friends and some family. I like having a cold beer once in a while. It’s changed over time. I’m not who I used to be. I like to laugh and make others laugh, but not at their expense. I find the world odd, funny, manic, satirical, ironic, sad, good, complex and absolutely frightening. I don’t like to see people suffering. My heart hurts when people get in their own way and can’t break through to the life they want. I want people to know they aren’t stuck and have options.

I feel the way I can help people is to show them how to make money. Start their own business or make their existing business great. I don’t have a lot, but I really like what I have. I don’t need more. I thought I did, but that made me unhappy. 

There’s still a lot left to do and I have so much planned! This next chapter. This next version of me is even impressing myself. I’m excited to share it as it comes. I hope you can benefit from it.