I Was Selling Traffic Signals. Then Everything Changed.

Most of you know me because of On The Pen. You know the guy reading clinical trials, digging through FDA documents, talking about GLP-1s and occasionally yelling into a microphone about something the pharmaceutical or compounding industry did that morning. But you probably don’t know how any of this actually started, and honestly, it’s a pretty cool story.

WATCH THE FULL STORY HERE

Just a few short years ago, I wasn’t working in healthcare, media or anything remotely adjacent to either of them. I was selling traffic signals. I had a job I was good at, a career I genuinely enjoyed, a wife and four kids depending on me, and absolutely no grand plan to become a podcaster. Then I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.

That diagnosis eventually led me to Mounjaro. Mounjaro led me down a rabbit hole of trying to understand what these medications were actually doing inside the body beyond these massive weight loss stories that were starting to emerge in the social media world. When I couldn’t find people explaining the science in a way that made sense to me as a patient, I started talking about it myself. That little decision eventually became On The Pen.

But that is only the surface-level version of the story. Recently, Amy Wienands invited me onto You Are More, a podcast I have listened to and loved for years, and she asked me questions that forced me to go much deeper than I normally do when people ask how On The Pen started.

We talked about my dad, including the last conversation I had with him just three days before he unexpectedly died. We talked about spending nearly a decade in a career I somehow knew was a stepping stone, while having absolutely no idea where the next stone was. And we talked about the moment when staying comfortable finally became harder than stepping into the unknown.

We also talked about what has happened since. There have been some incredible moments over the last couple of years, but there have also been moments when this entire thing felt much more fragile than it probably looked from the outside. In fact, I told Amy a story from just the past few months about the new On The Pen studio, losing our largest sponsor at almost exactly the wrong time, needing to suddenly come up with a significant amount of money, and my wife showing up at my office with our four kids because they knew Dad was stressed.

They didn’t come with a check. They came to pray. What happened next is one of those stories I hope my kids remember long after they or the world has forgotten what On The Pen is.

This conversation is probably the most personal explanation I’ve ever given of how I ended up here. It’s about On The Pen, but it’s also about my dad, my wife, my kids, fear, comfort, calling, and learning that sometimes stepping out in faith still feels an awful lot like stepping out in fear.

Most importantly, it’s about looking backward and realizing that some of the seasons of your life that made the least sense while you were living them were preparing you for something you couldn’t see yet.

I don’t know what the next chapter of On The Pen looks like. But after this conversation with Amy, I’m more convinced than ever that I don’t necessarily need to. I hope you’ll watch this one.