Still in the arena.

I grew up in Lovell, Wyoming, the son of an entrepreneur. My father took the body shop his father had built and turned it into a successful independent auto dealership with multiple locations. Long before I understood balance sheets, capital, or business strategy, I was learning that work created opportunity.

As a young boy, I scrubbed tires on the car lot to earn money. I eventually worked as a detailer, mechanic's assistant, autobody technician, and then operated my own body shop performing insurance repairs. Entrepreneurship was never presented to me as something reserved for a special class of people. Before I was ten, I was already being encouraged to find things I could make, services I could provide, and ways I could create value. That shaped the way I see the world.

Our household was frugal. Although other people in our community viewed our family as wealthy and successful, that was not how I experienced it from the inside. Growing up in a small town also meant people knew who we were. Other families sometimes saw privilege in our lives that I could not yet recognize.

Looking back, I understand that my view of both wealth and poverty existed within a narrow range. For years, becoming a millionaire represented the pinnacle of success in my mind. As I grew older, my understanding of wealth changed.

Money is not just a score. Properly used, it creates freedom, security, opportunity, and the ability to serve more people. It also creates responsibility. The point is not simply to possess more. It is to become capable of creating more value and directing the results toward something worthwhile.

In early 2014, I joined Wyoming Auto Finance, helping expand it beyond financing customers of my father’s dealerships. I traveled between independent car lots, walking in wearing a suit and tie and asking dealers to trust us with their financing business. We were a small company competing against much larger lenders, and I focused on earning relationships through service, resourcefulness, and finding ways to put deals together responsibly.

I took over operations in mid-2015 and purchased the company in January 2016. Ownership put me on both sides of the business: building relationships and bringing in opportunities, while managing the lending decisions and daily operations behind them. From underwriting and loan structure to servicing and business strategy, I gained firsthand experience with the full life of a loan and the responsibility of running a finance company.

That experience shaped how I approach business today. I learned to look beyond the immediate transaction, understand how decisions affect the whole operation, and recognize the value of strong relationships and collaboration. Ownership taught me to balance ambition with sound judgment and take responsibility for the decisions that affect customers, partners, investors, and the business.

I sold the remaining loan portfolio in November 2025. The experience continues to inform my work in mortgage lending and beyond, especially when a situation calls for looking deeper, understanding the full picture, and finding a practical path forward.

I entered mortgage lending in late 2021, just as interest rates began rising sharply from their pandemic-era lows, and simultaneously with running the finance company. It was not an easy market in which to begin. It was, however, an effective place to learn.

My background in consumer finance had trained me to analyze risk, understand the details behind a borrower's financial position, and find structures other people might overlook. Mortgage lending gave me access to a much broader range of products without requiring enormous amounts of borrowed capital to fund growth. I also saw an industry where the client experience could be substantially better. That became the foundation for Blaze Home Loans.

Today, Blaze serves clients across the country. We work with traditional homebuyers, business owners, professionals, investors, and people with complex or nonconventional income. Our ability to structure a loan has allowed us to revive transactions that had already fallen apart. In other cases, product knowledge and careful planning have helped clients make competitive offers despite limited available resources or financial circumstances that did not fit a conventional box.

But technical ability is only part of the standard. A mortgage is one of the largest financial decisions most people will make. Clients deserve clear communication, careful preparation, and an experience that does not create unnecessary stress. Our goal is to deliver such a smooth and professional process that clients are willing to become vocal advocates for the company. We are building Blaze into a national mortgage brand without sacrificing the human connection that made it worth building.

My interest in fitness began early. My father consistently worked to remain fit, and I grew up using the equipment in his home gym. I was self-conscious about my weight and would ask him what I needed to do to change my body. I became fit during my late teens and twenties, but eventually my progress stopped. My body softened, and I spent years believing I understood what it took to change it.

Working with a fitness coach showed me how much I still did not know. Real transformation required more precision, consistency, discomfort, and time than I expected. That process taught me why fitness is one of the clearest exercises in personal growth. You cannot negotiate with the result. Your body reflects what you repeatedly do.

Fitness does not make one person more valuable than another. For me, it demonstrates alignment between stated standards and daily behavior. It creates health, mobility, energy, confidence, and the freedom to participate fully in experiences that might otherwise feel inaccessible. Building a body is also a useful metaphor for building a business or a life. The visible result arrives only after enough unseen decisions have accumulated.

My wife, McKinzea, and I are raising five children around a shared foundation of faith, responsibility, and purpose. We want our children to trust God, develop their gifts, work hard, and pursue excellence. We also want them to understand that their opportunities and abilities come with a responsibility to serve others and contribute something worthwhile.

Our marriage is not 50/50. We both bring 100%. We do not keep score or measure whose turn it is to sacrifice. We support one another's ambitions, carry responsibilities together, and remain united around the life and family we are building.

Our faith matters deeply to us, but we believe it should be demonstrated through the way we live, serve, lead, and treat other people. Whatever success I build would be hollow if it came at the expense of that foundation.

Aviation and the outdoors have changed the way I understand freedom. Flying makes the world feel smaller. The mountains remind me how small I am. Both create perspective. Freedom is the ability to move, explore, build, experience, and make meaningful choices about the direction of your life.

It is the opportunity to see the land, meet people, pursue worthwhile work, raise a family, build a business, and accept responsibility for what you do with those opportunities. Time outdoors keeps me humble. It reminds me that none of us is the center of existence and that the world is far greater than the small portion we normally occupy.

Freedom is not simply the absence of restriction. It is having the capacity, discipline, faith, and resources to act on what matters.