181: What Is All This Space For?

So my de- de-leveraging probably began in earnest in late 2019, early 2020.

It wasn't a dramatic decision, like one dramatic decision.

It was a progressive unwinding of the decades of careers and investing and creative projects and identities and titles.

It was a progressive unwinding over six to seven years.

So when I say de-leveraging, I don't just mean financially.

I mean deliberately reducing the amount of my life that was tied up in roles, obligation, ventures, relationships, achievement, and honestly, constant, constant activity.

So here's what that looked like in real life.

In 2019, I retired from the military.

In early 2020, I started coaching f- uh, and created the Try Life On platform, uh, to include the podcast a few years later.

It was another way to help people apply a lot of the principles I had learned during my own design life journey.

I wanted to give it to other people.

In 2021, I left my global consulting firm, my corporate job after 25 years of being there.

Also in 2021, a month later, actually a month earlier, I stepped away from policing, civilian policing, midnight patrol officer after 15 years.

Dramatically slowed down real estate investing over the last four or five years as well, and progressively pulled back from other business ventures and obligations.

In March of 2023, the way I mentioned it, I started the Try Life On pro- podcast, and that creative work continues today, but that's the main thing that continues because in 2025, I exited the private real estate equity firm that I started with partners.

And in late 2025, I finished with my last Try Life On coaching student.

So I de-leverage from coaching as a professional obligation for now.

So by 2026, after graduating from college in 1997 and getting my first job in corporate and also being commissioned into US military as a second lieutenant in 1997, it's now 2026.

I have no employer.

There's no military.

There's no police.

There's no private equity firm that I started.

There's no coaching practice.

There is no need to manufacture another job for myself.

I am not working in the traditional sense as most people know it.