MY STORY
Meet Ben
From the outside, I had the life I was supposed to want.
Good job at a large corporation. A wife and three daughters I loved. A modest home in the suburbs. By every measure the world uses, I was doing fine.
But "fine" was a lie I told everyone — including myself.
At 420 pounds, working 50+ hours a week with a 90-minute daily commute, I wasn't living. I was existing. Getting through each day, not building toward anything. I had the title, the family, the house — and absolutely no vision for what my life could actually become.
"I looked successful on the outside while slowly sinking on the inside."
Half the Man I Used to Be
In December 2022, I made the decision to have bariatric surgery. Over the next year, I lost 210 pounds — literally becoming half the man I used to be. But the weight was just the visible part of a much deeper transformation.
I left my corporate career, joined a startup, took on roles I had no playbook for, and had to figure out — in real time — what I was actually capable of when I stopped just surviving.
Here's what surprised me most: for a long time, I didn't think any of this was remarkable. I was just a regular guy who made some hard decisions.
It took other people reflecting it back to me — "that's not the ordinary outcome, Ben" — for me to realize that my story could be useful to someone else.
I don't coach people because I have it all figured out. I coach because I know what it's like to look successful while feeling stuck, to carry the weight — literal and metaphorical — of a life you never intentionally designed.
And I know what it takes to stop building someone else's version of "good enough" and start architecting something you'd actually choose.