There are a few people in my life that have drastically changed my course of living and the decisions I have made.

One person who has positively affected my life is Monte Baumgartner from Promopeddler.com. Promopeddler is a promotional items company based in Sherwood, Oregon. Monte taught me how to talk to Google.

As their new CTO, my primary responsibilities were to keep developers developing and to keep the servers up and optimized.

It was my first day on the job. My first minute as an employee at PromoPeddler. I walked into his office.

"You beat a lot of people out for this position," said Monte as he sat at his desk.

Indeed. I brought passion. I brought a vision to be the world's premier website to order promotional items and custom branded promotional products. However, I was struggling to find my calling...didn't take conflict so well.

There was lots of room for improvement with the Promopeddler gig. I'd give my performance a 4/10. I think deep down I just couldn't take being put in a box again and that's what a job is. It's a defined set of duties and responsibilities. Two words that caused me to shudder: "duties" and "responsibilities." I wanted to be in business for myself, no bosses. However one DOES need a business to run to be their own boss but what business could I run? I had no idea. I tried out a few other business ideas but they were all grounded in 'sales' and 'calling' and 'networking'. Three more words that make me shudder. I figured that perhaps that was what you had to go through. I knew I wanted out but I didn't know where to go.