It's Time to Reintroduce Myself

An action packed ending to 2023 and venturing into a new stage of my life.

The Last 10 Years In a Nutshell

Over the past decade, I’ve taken an unconventional approach to career growth.

I entered the tech industry from a non-traditional background and grew to be the Head of Engineering in F500 companies.

Here are the highlights of the major inflection points.

• Finance at P&G: worked on a 9-figure product portfolio straight out of undergrad. Learning to navigate a large global org with many layers of stakeholders proved to be critical later on.

• Engagement Manager at Accenture: joined Canada's Data Science and AI practice right when the AI market caught fire during the mid-2010s. Met some of the most badass people with a get-shit-done DNA.

• Data & ML Instructor at Brainstation: reinvoked an old passion and an itch to teach and play in the Education space again. Selling tutoring services has been my side hustle since I was in middle school. Turns out, this was the gateway drug that led me to start my ExpandedSkills.

• Head of Engineering in F500s: quickly grew to be responsible for everything within the function while scaling teams and helping many others grow their careers in parallel.

Behind the scenes, I navigated several critical transitions and reinvented myself several times in order to solve new problems and access new opportunities.

Not to mention, I’ve had a rollercoaster of ups and downs with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

Volatility is the only consistency.

Summer of 2023: The Transition

I’m closing in on the 6 months mark since I left my corporate job to venture into entrepreneurship. It all started back in the summer of 2023, I was on a vacation in Punta Cana with family and decided I wanted to take a shot at turning my passion projects and side hustles into a business.

Everything changes when you turn your passion projects and side hustles into an actual business that your livelihood depends on. Not only is the intensity turned up a notch, you are forced to pay attention to many things you had the luxury of ignoring in the past. All of this comes with the territory as part of life as an early-stage solo founder.

When the dust settled at the end of the transition phase, this endeavour evolved into ExpandedSkills.com and will continue to evolve over the next year.

From Deep Introspection To First Digital Product

I’ve taken a lot of time to do deep introspection and think deeply about the timeless principles that guided my journey over the past 10 years.

The results of the deep introspection have been distilled into my first digital product, which is a 2 week bootcamp I’m running during the back half of Jan 2024.

2 week bootcamp: Join us on Jan 16th.

The bootcamp is built on the timeless principles that have helped me navigate several challenging, yet rewarding inflection points in my career, paving the way to eventually reaching Head of Engineering.

The creation process gave me greater clarity and conviction to double down on bringing timeless principles and mental models that guided my daily life to an even wider audience beyond those with aspirations to be a leader in tech.

The underlying theme is:

Future-proof your skills to build your competitive edge.

See my updated About Page on “Who is it for?”.

More to come on this in the first half of 2024.

Beyond ExpandedSkills.com

Here’s a rundown of what I’ve been up to in the past 6 months outside of ExpandedSkills.com. Additionally, if we haven’t interacted much in the past, this list serves as a great icebreaker to start a conversation.

Unexpected second business (YorkReno.ca): My wife decided to leave her job as well, which completely altered our plans. 2 businesses, no jobs, and 2 kids will do that to you. It’s a very different model and a sharp contrast vs. Expanded Skills as its physical products (i.e. windows, doors, and porches) to a local community. It requires a separate blog post to fully unpack.

The only consistent factor in entrepreneurship is chaos and I’m learning how to better adapt, day by day. More on this another time.

Content Creation: I started posting on LinkedIn in May and within some private communities after a decade of being a fairly private person with no Internet presence. Getting past the initial hurdle was tough and staying consistent is even tougher.

I’d tell my former self to prioritize finding your voice by producing rather than thinking more and sticking to formats that maximize your creative expression.

Media: I spoke at my first conference and did a bunch of public speaking to get my ideas out there, which has been one of my most enjoyable moments. I’m planning to double down on speaking live, as I find it more energizing than creating written content in isolation.

Relationships: I built new connections with interesting people who were strangers on the Internet 6 months ago — these interactions changed my mindset and trajectory in a significant way. None of what I currently do is possible without relationships as it’s foundation.

Serendipity happens when you put yourself out there.

Learning & Unlearning: I’ve had to learn so many things after making the transition into entrepreneurship while needing to unlearn a bunch of bad habits/mindsets.

Ironic I know, given I’m running Expanded Skills, but it pushes me to a better version of myself each day, so I can show up be ready to play.

Family: My kids are approaching the end of elementary school, which is absolutely nuts considering I’m still in my early 30s. Time flies when you reflect on longer time horizons.

Upon reflecting, I have no idea how I survived my 20s.

In Closing

Wishing everyone a great start to 2024!

If any of these ideas resonate with you and you want to dive deeper, consider submitting a topic you’d like me to cover. It can also be an existing piece of content you’d like me to critique.

To keep the conversation going, feel free to drop a comment here or DM me on LinkedIn or X / Twitter.