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.
Hi, I'm Josh.
I've spent two decades as the calm professional in other people's hardest moments — first as a police officer, then in executive protection for high-profile families, and for the last ten years running an investigations firm. Different titles, same work underneath: meeting people at the most vulnerable times in their life.
- 20 years+ across law enforcement, executive protection, and investigations — much of it beside people in crisis.
- 1,000+ cases worked, and hundreds of men and women guided through difficulty, stress, and transition.
- Driven by one thing: helping people find the next right step.
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, me, 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 eighteen I was a regional sales manager in the wireless industry, set to do well and stay forever. A few short years later, a 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 — billionaires, 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 critical cases and sitting in the rooms where the hard decisions got made. Divorce. Child custody. Infidelity. Missing family. Addiction. Blackmail. Embezzlement. 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 — the quiet one they could tell anything, because keeping it quiet was the job.
Then it was my turn.
Carrying everyone else's emergencies has a cost, and eventually I paid it. 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 clients, 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 care can — graciously, understanding that real love meant letting go, too.
The lesson underneath took longer to learn. I was the guide. The one who met everyone at their moment of need. And I'd built a life where no one could meet me at mine, because I didn't know I needed to. The years of missing sleep had taken its toll. Alcohol didn't help the equation, as it never does. The truth was simple and hard: I was burned out. I'd become my own worst enemy, and a very disconnected and unhelpful partner to my wife. 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 the divorce I moved to Austin, scaled my work back, and turned off the 800 number that had run my life — and most of the crazy cases that came with it. I gave myself years of much-needed breathing room — space to figure out who I was and what was next without the chaos. Coming out of Hollywood, 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, loved myself first, and allowed myself the support I needed to help others.
Which brings me here.
My brother runs his own agency now — more technology, far fewer emergencies. And I am now living my purpose: meeting people at their moment of need and helping them find what's next. Showing them how to reinvent themselves when the seasons change. How to feel steady when everything around them isn't. Twenty years taught me the way through is rarely a silver bullet — it's a clear head, the right questions, and someone in your corner who's seen it before. That's what I'm here to be.
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 through one season won't always carry you through the next, and refusing to change is where most people get stuck. Becoming someone new doesn't have to come from a lonely place.
Life moves in seasons.
There will be good times and hard ones, and both pass. Knowing which season you're in — and that you will be okay in it — changes how you move through everything.
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.
No one is built to carry it alone.
I learned that one the hard way. The most capable people 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.