Nearly a decade ago, I got fired from a dream job — days after realizing that wasn't the work I wanted to do.

I'd been in sales a long time, selling to people directly. In that job, prospecting behind a computer, not even getting to talk to the people I was there to serve, zapped any purpose out of it.

I took the severance package to start that journey of self-inquiry. After a lifetime of being told what to do and what kind of life to lead, I purposefully took time off to find out what I was and what I was here for. I read The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck*, got rid of everything I owned, fit everything I needed into a carry-on suitcase, and bought a one-way ticket to Thailand.

At the same time, I was having health issues, and I'd already tried the Western approach without success. That led me to alternative modalities, climaxing in a 36 day water fast driven by full hearted determination to heal my body to heal the whole.

This was the first time I lived with purpose though I didn’t understand it at the time.

I never made it to Thailand. I ended up in wilderness therapy instead. Living primitively in the backcountry of Durango, Colorado for three months.
I didn’t have the skillset I needed to integrate what happened during the fast.

I asked for help in June of 2017, and began the journey of integration and self-mastery the fast required.

It’s been more than 9 years since then (I’m writing this July 2026) and my initial desire to sustain myself doing work that was authentic to who I am and what I am here to do has actualized through much perseverance, trials, errors, humility, and determination.

I am writing this to share my story in how that calling to live and be paid for my purpose has culminated in founding the Cultural Catalyst Network. How my experience with the fast and the near decade of integration has informed my principles on leadership and how we are designing the network to create systemic cultural change that is life-giving, whole-serving, and in alignment with nature. Please stay tuned because this is not a normal, linear, or short story. The trials were intense and all pervasive. In all facets of life and all facets of reality, all of which are subjective in nature. I ask that if you are part of this story that you practice open-mindedness as we take a calling I received to answer the calling of mastery in this lifetime and make it real through practical and sustainable financial structures.

Welcome to the story of how the Cultural Catalyst Network was born.

Not through theory but real life experience.

Please subscribe if you feel called.

​Welcome to the network, Cultural Catalyst.