A Renaissance Man

I remember clearly the last time anyone asked me what I wanted to do with my life where I didn't have an answer. It was 23 years ago in Orlando, Florida and my best friend was describing his life goals. He told me, "I am a Renaissance Man. I know as much as I can about a lot of things. I learn everything anyone is willing to teach me so I can help in as many places as possible." He was a sports minister and he inspired me at that moment. I thought that sounded pretty good. It gave a name to the things that had been driving me for years. It pushed me to pursue the reasons behind my restlessness and pursuit of fulfillment.

I was a student at the University of Central Florida at that time. It was my second attempt at my Bachelor's degree after being forced to drop out after the second year of my first attempt for financial reasons. I was once more trying to figure out how to stay in school without mortgaging my future for the privilege. I found no reasonable answer and ended up starting and stopping a couple of times, but not finishing. Ironically, I had enough credits to graduate, but had changed majors too many times and needed a couple of classes to actually complete the degree. Instead, I pursued learning of a more vocational nature.

I became a bartender, and then a bartending instructor. I trained to be a chef at Walt Disney World, and then a food safety instructor. I took classes and became a registered real estate appraiser, then became a value consultant for house flippers. At that point, self-discovery set me on a slightly different path. A pattern was emerging in my journey towards that "Renaissance Man" title. I figured out that I really liked working for myself, and that became a part of the vision that was taking shape.

I started my first real company. I called it NRST. A little-known secret is that at the time, I had not settled on what the initials stood for. I had a few ideas but went with just the initials and figured that they could really stand for anything I wanted them to stand for and that the decision did not need to be made until I saw which way the company was going to go. I had to see if my idea was even viable. I had to see if I could get anyone else to believe in me before I worried about the name.

I took inventory of what I was good at, and decided the top three were writing, music, and cooking. I attempted to do something with the cooking at a couple of NASCAR races with limited success, but I quickly learned that my model was not cost-effective and my will to be in front of a stove or grill every day for the rest of my career was not as appealing as I had 0riginally thought.

After that first foray, I doubled down on the writing and joined a couple of freelance writing websites as a company. I had no writers working for me, but that did not stop me. I did have a lot of resources. My mother is one of the most talented writers I know, and a retired teacher. I listed her as a writer on staff. My sister has a Master's degree in Health Care Administration with an impressive fundraising resume, so I listed her as a writer on staff. My brother has a degree in technical writing and an encyclopedic knowledge of sports history. He went on staff as well. I pitched every job on the strength of the diverse group of writers a client could have at their disposal if they hired NRST. It worked very well.

I got steady work on diverse projects. I wrote speeches, sermons, marketing materials, Craigslist ads, and anything else I could get a contract for. I sought out projects I thought I would enjoy and started publishing articles on the side for small soccer sites. Most of them were unpaid at first, but I was building a portfolio and did not care. I brought in a couple of young writers I had met and taught them how to make money freelancing as well as how to improve their writing and editing. Before long, NRST was offered a contract writing for an online media platform, with me contracted as Managing Sports Editor. I initially was allowed to travel the country covering sports events, primarily MMA, NASCAR and Soccer. Eventually I moved to Las Vegas, where the paper was located, and went to work.

I took over duties teaching journalism classes to all the incoming writers as well as identifying and training editors. I was happy and making money, but I was not there with the fulfillment piece. I went down to the Gay and Lesbian Center in town to see about maybe tutoring some of the young people there to help them get into scho0l or some similar project. What I saw there impacted me deeply. It angered and saddened me to a degree that is hard to put into words. I did not end up volunteering. Instead, I got bold enough to start a second company, which I called METT.

I talked to a lot of young people at the center. Teenagers and young men and women not yet old enough to legally drink, but who had already reached a point where they saw no future for themselves. They believed they had no opportunities, no way to get to school or work or to improve their situations. Some had turned to selling themselves, or to using drugs and alcohol to the point of self-destruction. Many of them had not done anything more than come out as gay to find themselves in those situations. They had been disowned by family, kicked out of their homes, or fired from their jobs in many cases. They had been told they had no value and believed it. It broke my heart. It still does. I wanted to do something about it.

When I first started METT, it was a simple plan. I got some people from the newspaper to help me and offered tutoring for anyone who wanted to get their GED. I did not want to be a charity. That was not what these people needed. They needed to find a way to learn skills and discover opportunities. I required that anyone who took classes volunteer five hours a week helping use their knowledge of social media to promote articles for the freelancers in NRST. They helped those entrepreneurs build their businesses and got tutoring for their GED.

I approached the local Lions club about sponsoring the GED students by paying for the actual GED exam for them. We were working on a way to have the center or other community centers recommend candidates, and the Lions would have sponsored those recommended candidates. It was all going as I planned, but then it was derailed. I had some major health problems which sidelined me for months. Unfortunately, METT floundered because I had not had the time to train anyone to do what I was doing to keep it going.

Now, I am healthy and back in Massachusetts and I am back on the path to feeling the kind of fulfillment I did when I was working to help those young people in Vegas. It will look a little different. I have four entrepreneurs with businesses which will be the first of many to begin with METT. One is a writing collective which will produce edited books of short stories as well as consumable content across multiple platforms. One is a responsible recycling initiative with immense potential. One is an artisan project building niche furniture and innovative art projects using materials from the recycling project, and the other is a concierge camping set-up/tear-down service with some innovative ideas.

We will offer support for High School Equivalency exams or tutoring for those wanting to attend virtually. We will offer classes in many things, as well as researching online options for training and education to help get these young minds ready to build their own businesses. They will be able to volunteer with one of the METT businesses, with any time worked beyond being paid by those businesses. We will train and nurture their ideas until they are ready to try to launch their own, and we will help them with that.

I discovered that what fulfills me is helping others to fulfill themselves. I want to see a world where it is impossible for young people to get to the point where they think their lives are over before they have barely begun to live them. I have built a model that prioritizes creating community, generating content, and making cash. I want to see that vision expanded as far as it can be with business after business, interconnected and supported by the community we build. I believe that people will see this and support the vision. I hope that the need for a better model of education, a more inclusive way of mentoring and teaching life and business skills, and a better respect for the power of diverse voices will drive many to want to support my effort to bring it to pass.