Three careers taught me to look for the same thing first: evidence.

I grew up in a family that relied on food stamps. At 38, I made a career move that cut my income roughly in half. For a while, I needed help from my mother and two close friends to cover groceries and bills. Going through that changed how I think about career decisions. Salary and title matter. So does the life a job makes possible.

At 47, I moved into B2B tech sales, where my background didn’t look like an obvious fit on paper. I’ve since closed seven figures in B2B tech deals.

One reason I made that move was the chance to work remotely. Working remotely meant I could spend the final six weeks of my dog Atia’s life with her. That time with her made the value of remote work very real to me.

Across law enforcement, higher education admissions, and B2B tech sales, I kept coming back to the same discipline: find out what is actually true before acting. Getting it wrong has real consequences.

In policing, the stakes were immediate. In higher education, they included someone’s tuition and years of their life. In sales, they include a buyer’s budget and internal credibility.

That same way of thinking shapes how I approach career decisions, sales conversations, and LinkedIn. I’ve had to figure out which parts of my experience were worth sharing, how to explain why they mattered, and how to help people who didn’t already know me understand what I could contribute.