“There’s an echo in Crown Point. It’s the echo of a great local place called Erika’s Mexican Grill. The food was authentic, the heart was huge… and one day, it was gone.

For me, that echo became a question that wouldn’t let go: Why do we keep losing the businesses we love most?

That question didn’t just come out of nowhere. It landed on ground that had been tilled for over 30 years. My journey started on the retail sales floor. Like Tony Robbins teaches, I learned early that success is about performance and getting results. I became obsessed. I rose through the ranks and eventually landed at Foot Locker, where for 13 straight weeks, I was in the top 5 in the nation—twice hitting #1. I was excelling.

But I learned a hard lesson. A manager I respected—a Marine I worked with prior in Canton, Ohio—once pulled me off the busiest sales floor of my life to read the policy manual. I lost money that day, but I gained a priceless piece of wisdom: discipline is the foundation of excellence. But, back to footlocker, despite my performance, held me back because my numbers were too good for them to lose on the sales floor. They saw me as a tool, not a leader. Lesson one: Performance alone isn’t enough.

Later, I was unjustly terminated. Circling back to the area reflecting in that moment of pain, another company’s manager—a competitor—hired me on the spot. Why? Because my reputation for excellence had preceded me. Lesson two: Your personal brand is your greatest asset. But even there, I faced a moment of truth. The regional manager was the same man who had held me back before. And with tears in my eyes, I walked away from the job I’d earned, because as Zig Ziglar would say, you can’t build a great life on a shaky foundation of integrity. Lesson three: Integrity is non-negotiable.

My path led me to the open road, driving thousands of miles a week. But for me, that truck wasn’t just a job; it was a university on wheels. As Jim Rohn preached, formal education makes you a living, but self-education makes you a fortune. I took Massive Action. I invested my own time and tens of thousands of dollars into becoming a student of the digital world, mentored by the best—learning the strategic architecture of a perfect funnel from Russell Brunson, and the art of “drilling down” to the core message from the Pipeline Pros.

I was building my skills, but I was also witnessing the slow erosion of our country’s Main Streets. I saw the empty storefronts in small towns, the echoes of other “Erika’s.”

And it all came together. I realized the problem wasn’t the businesses; it was the broken marketing playbook they were all forced to use. A playbook built on ‘rented land’ like Facebook, that treats them like a number and strips them of their greatest advantage—their story.

As Jay Acunzo says, you don’t have to be the best; you just have to be their favorite. And you become their favorite by telling a story only you can tell.

So I decided to stop driving past the problem and start building the solution. I took every lesson—the performance of Robbins, the integrity of Ziglar, the discipline of the Marine, the strategies of Brunson, the massive action of Rohn, and the faith-driven, Kingdom-building principles of Stacie & Larry Wallace—and I started architecting a new kind of ecosystem.

It’s called the Legacy Power Local Network. It is our “Digital Front Porch.” It’s a place where we capture and honor stories on TheRegionPorch.com. It’s where we give local leaders a voice on the Leaning In Podcast. It’s an infrastructure designed not to sell temporary ads, but to build permanent, story-driven assets that our partners own, forever.

This is my life’s work, and this is the rest of the story.”