What Do You Do?
The question that I’ve most frequently been asked since joining The C.J. Anderson Co. family is, “What exactly do you do?” The answer has evolved over time and sometimes, on the fly.
Let me be clear about one thing: the point of this post is not to answer that question directly. It’s about finding purpose. Stick with me here.
I’m 42 years old. I spent a decade in retail operations management and nearly another decade in marketing strategy. My professional experience leading up to my current role could best be described as “non-traditional.”
Throughout the last twenty years, my passion has pushed me closer and closer to entrepreneurs who are willing to risk everything and put in endless hours to bring their visions to fruition. I’m not an entrepreneur. I’ve never founded a company. I’m not really an investor. My capital is my time and I invest a lot of it.
In the past six months, I’ve been referred to as a “kingmaker,” the “godfather of Toledo startups” (I’m not kidding), and a community builder. While these comments are certainly flattering, they’re a bit inaccurate. I look at the people around me who have actively been promoting the regional startup ecosystem for many years, so I’d have a hard time accepting any of these titles. Although “kingmaker” does have a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
Now that we’ve established what I’m not, what exactly am I? If I had to summarize it in a word, I’m a facilitator. That can make it tricky to create a comprehensive job description. But here’s the wonderful thing: I don’t have to define it.
If you love what you do and put everything you have into doing it, your “job description” should be incredibly difficult to define. It took me nearly twenty years to wrap my head around that. We all fall into patterns. No matter how much autonomy we have at work, we tend to gravitate toward achieving recurring goals. But ultimately, we’re just treading water.

My advice: swim. Swim like you’re Michael Phelps racing a great white shark (yes, I got sucked into watching that for an hour). It doesn’t matter what you do for a living, how strict your boss is, or how “stuck” you might feel at your current job. Just swim.
That’s easy advice for me to give. I have the luxury of working with a team who supports me and has faith that anything I do is in the best interest of our future.
Recently, that has meant sitting with a VC in a resort overlooking the 13th hole at TPC Sawgrass. It’s meant meeting with a startup mentor on the beach. It’s meant spending as much time in Detroit as I do at home. It’s meant believing in a founder’s vision as much as he does and putting in the hours accordingly. It’s meant helping to rebuild the relationships that Toledo had in the recent past with Pittsburgh.
While all of this sounds nice, it still doesn’t say much about what I “do.” I look at Dan Gilbert (Quicken Loans, Cleveland Cavs owner) as a source of inspiration. He understands that for a community to prosper, the entire community needs to prosper. In order to do that, you just have to keep swimming. Even when everyone around you tells you that you can’t do it. Even when they try to force you into a traditional job description because it’s all they know.
No matter how much resistance you face, no matter how badly your friends, family, and colleagues try to define you, just keep swimming. Eventually, you’ll find yourself doing something completely fulfilling. Your passion trumps your experience and education if you refuse to tread water.
And so I swim.

