I bombed in my first big presentation in front of a 400 person audience.

I was 30 at the time and a first year product manager. We were on an International tour across 5 countries in Asia to give a product update to our channel partners and prospects.

The first presentation was in Korea in front of an audience of 400. I thought I was ready because I knew the product cold, but I wasn’t ready.

I didn’t know how to present, to tell a story or to connect with an audience. Only much later in my career did I learn the impact of storytelling in a presentation.

I should have apologized to everyone that sat through my rambling and awkward pauses.

One image is still seared into my memory from that trip. There were 3 interpreters sitting in boxes at the back of the room scrambling to keep up with me.

They had red lights to alert you when you’re talking too fast. And those lights were flashing non-stop. They were meant for you to slow down but had the opposite effect on me.

We did that same presentation 7 more times on that trip. I recall the anxiety and regret. I don’t dwell on that experience at all except to think of how lucky I was.

Someone gave me this opportunity to learn and that is what I remember the most. It’s what drives me to give someone else an opportunity.

I was thinking ‘why me?’ at the time.

Now all I can say is thank you.

Mindset was the biggest barrier to personal success in my younger years.

It’s now the biggest advantage that I have walking into a meeting, taking the stage at a conference or rolling up my sleeves to solve problems.

There isn’t any single event I can point to that helped me during this journey. There are many outstanding individuals, a few books and lots of listening.

The reality is that everyone is on a different journey and path to learning.

I learned that asking one simple question can open the door for someone else.

How can I help?

If it wasn’t for the last recession + Craigslist, I wouldn’t be on the path that I am on today.

It was 2009. The bottom was falling out of the housing market and venture firms were tightening up. Start-ups were finding it hard to get funding (including the start-up I was with) and the recession was impacting everyone’s lives.

My previous 4 years were spent in product management but by the last year, I had started to get more involved in product marketing and lead generation. That was life in a start-up…you do what is needed and learn what you can.

I fell into the world of online marketing and it struck a cord with me. I was fascinated by Google Analytics, looking at traffic reports for the website and learning about blogs, SEM and SEO. That experience didn’t last long, but it left a strong impression.

I was now in the process of looking for my next role in product management. That’s when I came across an ad in Craigslist. Yes, Craigslist.

An unnamed consumer e-commerce company was looking for an analyst to run price elasticity testing. The requirements didn’t mention much more than Excel.

I was great at Excel. I was also interested in working for a B2C company. It was an opportunity jump into e-commerce but with some financial tradeoffs. The position was for contractor and at a quarter of the rate than what I had been making the past decade.

This was a very difficult choice mainly because, as a contractor, the pay was hourly and the hours for this role were approximately 24 per week. That is not much money and was a big sacrifice when you are the sole income for the family. I struggled with the decision to take this role and always debated whether it was the best decision for the family at that particular time.

I decided to apply for the position and got it.

We had to adjust our lifestyle and cut back on a few large expenses. My children were young so they didn’t see or feel any significant changes. My wife held everything down and supported this decisions knowing the impact to our finances. As difficult as this time was, she provided an immense amount of support and was encouraging me throughout.

What I quickly found out about myself is that I love marketing. Specifically the area of marketing that I could measure, make an immediate impact and which carried with it a revenue number. E-commerce was all of that and more.

Years later, my experience in marketing grew, I learned a ton and found new strengths.

My career could have gone in many different directions if not for this sequence of events a decade ago.

It was a risk worth taking.

That was a mindset shifting idea for me. Just think about how we used to capture moments with our grandparents: 8mm camcorders, printed pictures? Even now, we use digital pictures and videos captured on our phones that are stored on Google and Apple cloud. We’ve come a long way and the next evolutionary step is to submit all of this content into the public arena.

This is exactly what the current generation of bloggers, vloggers, Youtubers and Instagramers have realized at an earlier age than previous generations. They are leaving a raw, emotion-filled legacy for future generations to learn about them.

Time to start documenting my journey.