About Me
For over twenty years, my work has put me beside people on their most difficult days. This is how I got here — and why this work matters to me.
I'm Josh.
For two decades, I was the calm professional in other people's difficult moments — first as a police officer, then in executive protection for high-profile families, and for ten years as an entrepreneur running an investigations firm. Different titles, same work underneath: being the steady, trusted voice in the room — through individual, family and company crises, bearing witness to the decisions that change a life.
- 20+ years across law enforcement, executive protection, and investigations — much of it beside people at their most exposed moments.
- 1,000+ cases worked and a successful business built from scratch — a front-row education in how people, relationships, communication and human dynamics actually work.
- Driven by one thing: telling the truth with empathy, and helping people and teams find the next right step(s).
It started with a death.
My first solo call as a young police officer was an accidental death — a man who'd fallen from a ladder. I remember, like it was yesterday, how time slowed down. While everyone around me moved through shock and grief, I felt calm and clear — aware of the whole room, and how everyone was feeling and processing it, all at once.
That was when I understood something about myself: I was at home here. Not in the tragedy — it was, after all, my job to show up — but in the grief. The quiet look of unbelief and shock filling the faces of the man's co-workers. The uniform had little to do with it. It was the man inside that had a knowing that I was supposed to be there, and that those people, at least in that moment, were going to rely on me to be the steady hand. The slow, capable voice with simple next steps. The calm in the storm.
I've reinvented myself more than once.
I didn't take a straight line here. At twenty I was a sales manager in the wireless industry, set to do well and stay forever. Then, a deep feeling I've learned to trust told me it wasn't the life I was meant for. A friend mentioned law enforcement — and coming from a family of firefighters, the idea of doing something hard clicked.
Police work came next, as a Department of Defense officer alongside the Navy and Marine Corps. Then a decade in executive protection in Southern California — wealthy families, celebrities, foreign dignitaries — where the job was simply to be the most capable person in the room, trained for whatever the day brought. I ran security for The Grove in Los Angeles. Then I co-founded an investigations firm with my brother (little brother, Big Brothers Big Sisters) — a man I'd mentored since he was eleven, now a decorated Navy veteran — and spent ten more years handling the cases most people never hear the details about. Divorce. Infidelity. Custody. Addiction. Blackmail. Suicide.
The titles changed. The work didn't. In every season, I ended up as the closest person to someone on their hardest, most private day, or a business in crisis — hearing what they'd never say to anyone else, and keeping every word to myself. That was the job.
Then it was my turn.
Carrying everyone else's emergencies has a cost, and eventually I paid it. Even though my wife was a therapist and I had done an enormous amount of my own personal development, my marriage couldn't survive the chaos machine I'd built and lived in 24/7. She saw it before I did: the business, the lack of sleep, the emergency travel, the managed crisis of it all had pulled the oxygen out of the room, and our connection with it. We ended things the way two people who still love each other, can — graciously, understanding that we had to go our own ways to find ourselves again.
The lesson underneath took longer to learn. I was the guide. The one who met everyone at their moment of need. But I'd built a life where no one could meet me at mine, or where I took care of myself first so that I could help others. The truth was simple and hard: I was burned out. It turns out that a man running on empty isn't much use to anyone, least of all the people he loves.
Austin. Slowing down. Coming home.
After my divorce I moved to Austin, scaled my work back, and gave myself years of much-needed breathing room — space to figure out who I was now, and what was next for myself without the chaos. Coming out of LA, Texas slowed me down. I slept (a lot). I rebuilt my health. I made new friends. I gave myself grace. Eventually, I found my way back to that feeling from the first call as a young officer all those years ago — and wondered what the next season could look like if I took care of myself first. That's where the answer was: supporting people and teams just like myself in the situations and seasons we all face, with the right mindset, frameworks, and skillsets I learned that actually have real impact, now and forever.
What I believe
A few things I've come to believe, after twenty years of watching how life actually goes:
You're allowed to reinvent yourself.
It's not a luxury or a midlife cliché — it's a fundamental right. The skills and the self that carried you, your relationship or your company through one season won't always carry you through the next, and resisting change is where most of us get stuck. Becoming someone or something new doesn't have to come from a place of anxiety.
Life moves in seasons.
There will be good times and difficult times, and both pass. Knowing which season you're in — and that you will be okay, no matter what comes — changes how you communicate, make decisions, and move through this season and the next with clarity.
Suffering is part of the contract.
Not a malfunction, not a punishment. Pretending otherwise only makes it heavier. Meeting it clearly is the beginning of getting through it, and realizing that it is in the fire and heat of the kiln that makes us more resilient, reliable, empathetic and at peace with whatever comes next.
No one is built to carry it alone.
I learned that one the hard way, as most of us do. The most capable people and teams that I know are often the ones with the least support — because they're the ones everyone else leans on. You don't have to be that person, that relationship, or that organization that goes it alone. We're better together.
If you're standing in a season of change, that's exactly the conversation I'm here for.
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Straight thinking on relationships, transitions, and the situations men don't talk about enough. No noise — just what's worth your time.