My Journey - The Professional Journey

This is the third blog in my personal and professional journey. The first blog gave some insight on my early years and events that shaped me as a person. The second blog focused on my “party” years of late teen through law school. This blog shares my professional journey. Like my personal journey there has been successes and failures along the way.

My legal career spanned my first 15 years after law school. It started in Glenwood Springs, CO where I worked for a sole practitioner with a small town general practice. The experience allowed me to take lead on cases and get my feet wet as a trial attorney. I tried my first jury trial in my first month as a licensed attorney. I was supposed to sit second chair and help my boss with the trial, but a death in her family just before the trial date and a client willing to take a chance with a green attorney thrust me right into the fire. It was both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. I won the case. I enjoyed my time in Glenwood, but there was not enough work for two new attorneys so my wife and I looked to move to a larger town after a year.

My second legal role was in a small firm in Colorado Springs that specialized in commercial litigation. It was an old established firm and I was assigned to the litigation partner. I spent most of my time researching and drafting motions for my assigned partner. On occasion I would get the chance to sit second chair in a trial, or argue one of the motions I had drafted and filed with the court. I learned in this role that I had a knack for writing and drafting creative legal arguments. I also learned that commercial litigation was not my cup of tea. I did get some exposure to representing home builders and found I enjoyed exploring the laws and rules around home building. After a year in Colorado Springs my wife and I decided to go back to Louisiana and be closer to family.

We moved back to my wife’s home town of Alexandria, Louisiana. I was lucky that the Attorney General for Louisiana was expanding and opening satellite offices around the state to have local attorneys to represent the state on legal matters (a smart and cost saving move by the AG). I landed a position as an Assistant Attorney General for Louisiana. I spent the next couple of years handling a case load of almost 100 open cases in a variety of areas of litigation involving the state of Louisiana. I was in court almost every week. I tried my first federal jury trial and filed my first appellate briefs during this stint. I remained undefeated in jury trials and won all of my appeals. The years I spent as an assistant AG provided me with valuable training as a litigator.

I was offered a chance to make more money with a local insurance defense firm and left the AG’s office. I spent the next couple of years litigating automobile and workers’ compensation cases for the firm. The firm was an old Alexandria defense firm who had been very active in the local and state bar associations. I found myself becoming more active in both and during my few years with this firm I served as the President of the local young lawyers association. I learned a lot from these experienced lawyers, but in my heart I wanted to be my own boss.

I reached out to a former colleague with the AG’s office who had gone out on his own to pick his brain about opening my own practice. He and I both had a love for LSU sports and had become good friends while working together. By the end of our meeting he and I had decided my best path was for the two of us to form a partnership and open a general litigation firm in Pineville, Louisiana. I spent the next 9 years as a partner in the firm of Tannehill & Sylvester. I had no business experience and was not prepared for the demands of both litigating and running a small business. We had a lot of success over those 9 years, but we made a ton of business mistakes. During my time with our firm I ran and was elected as Chair of the Louisiana Bar Association Young Lawyers Section. I served on the state bar House of Delegates, and was very involved in setting up moot court and professionalism courses for our state law schools.

About 5 years into running my own firm I started becoming disenchanted with the practice of law. I found the daily confrontation with other attorneys, claims representatives, judges and even my clients took a toll on me. I no longer enjoyed going to battle every day. I did enjoy running the business and helping others. Little did I know at the time but my wife was having similar feelings. We loved our time in Alexandria and made great friends, but Alexandria was a town stuck in time. It wasn’t shrinking but there was also no growth. The school system had issues and crime was rising all over the town. As a parent of three boys with the oldest approaching his teens, I wanted more opportunities for our family.

In 2010 my wife and I had a picnic lunch and I finally brought up my feelings about the practice of law and the town. I was surprised when she shared she had similar feelings. We decided during that lunch that we would make a drastic change. We left the practice of law. She gave her firm notice and I started working to shut down my practice (my law partner had recently also left the practice and returned to his previous career as a pharmacist). Early in my wife’s career she had represented Walmart as outside counsel and her sister lived in Bentonville, Arkansas and worked for a vendor of Walmart. We had visited the area and knew it had a booming economy, highly ranked schools and little to no crime. In mid-2010 we moved to Bentonville, Arkansas without jobs, but confident the small step backwards would lead to a better future opportunities for our entire family. It was a risk, but one that proved to be a great decision. My wife and I both ended up taking non-legal roles with Walmart.

I spent the next 7 years with Walmart. My first role wasn’t a far reach from my days as an attorney. I was a Global Investigator who handled executive harassment and discrimination complaints. I could write a book on some of my investigations during the couple of years I spent as an investigator for Walmart. The role was perfect for me as it gave me insight into many of the myriad of moving parts that comprised the behemoth company. Two years into my role I was offered a two level promotion (very rare at Walmart) to lead the Health & Wellness Privacy team. I still recall my first week (I had no project management and no health & wellness experience) going into meetings and thinking these people are speaking a foreign language. I was selected for the role because there was a huge board objective to convert a manual process into an automated system to bring the company into compliance. This may not sound like a big lift, but when you are building it for over 5000 facilities in 50 states (each with different laws on the subject) it is a massive lift. In fact, the project was slated for completion in 3 years and when I took over it was 2 years into the project and the only progress was the 50 state legal review of laws. I may not have had project management or healthcare experience, but I had plenty of experience handling large complex cases and bringing people together to get things done. I pulled all the relevant teams into a meeting my first week and explained we weren’t leaving the room until we had a workable project plan. I explained that perfect was going to be an impediment to moving us forward. I told the team everyone would have to be flexible and willing to accept some risk. Two hours later we had a white board with a project plan. Six months later we delivered a completed project. We came in early and under budget. I quickly gained a brand as someone who could get things done. A couple of years later Walmart was in the midst of a huge Dept. of Justice investigation surrounding its international compliance program. I was promoted to Director of Change Management and asked to be part of the team to build out a robust international compliance program and implement it in Walmart’s 18 international markets. I spent the next two years working with some great subject matter experts as we built and implemented a world class program. It was so good that when Walmart settled the case with the DOJ it did so for far less than experts and the company itself predicted. I also found myself in a position that all compliance professionals hope to accomplish (not really but they will tell you they do) - I worked myself out of a job. I saw the writing on the wall and knew my time at Walmart was coming to an end. I learned so a lot about leading people and big projects during my time at Walmart. I was fortunate to work for and with some great people during my time there.

A couple of years before leaving Walmart I had been approached by an old college friend who tried to lure me away to Asurion in Nashville. He said I could be a big fish in a small pond instead of being a small fish in a big pond. He was compelling but the timing wasn’t right for me to leave. I reached back out to him to let him know I was now exploring new opportunities. He let me know that their legal division was growing and they needed someone to come in and build out the business and processes so the legal department could mirror the rest of the organization. Little did I know at the time but I was about to be in on the ground floor of the new legal field of Legal Operations. In 2018, I accepted a role as Legal Operations Lead for Asurion and moved my family to Nashville, Tennessee.

Asurion doesn’t have the name recognition of Walmart. It is a private company of about 14,000 employees whose primary business was as the largest insurer for mobile devices. During my first two years at Asurion I purchased and implemented new automated billing, matter management and contract management systems for the legal team. I wrote the book for the department’s operational processes. I spoke at national conferences about how to design and execute an operations plan from the ground floor up. In 2020, I was asked to move to the business side of Asurion and help manage projects for the company’s first foray into retail. Asurion had recently purchased a national electronic repair company - UBreakiFix (UBIF). UBIF had 12 corporate owned and run stores to go with about 500 franchised locations throughout the US and Canada. Asurion wanted to rebrand UBIF and convert many of the stores from franchise owned and operated to corporate owned and operated. I was part of a small team tasked with building out the span and executing negotiations and transition of the stores. The goal for our first year (really 6 months when I was hired and we got started) was to convert at least 50 stores. I mentioned my brand is to get things done. We blew away the goal and converted over 125 stores in the first 6 months and almost 400 stores over the first 18 months. During my 18 months in the role we helped grow the UBIF footprint to 400 corporate stores and more than 700 total stores nationwide and in Canada. The problem is we were too good. We grew too fast. After 18 months the company made the decision to stop growing and even reversed course and decided to sell back corporate stores to franchisees. Since we were no longer growing there wasn’t a need for my team. I was asked to move to the Workforce Management team with a focus on improving our contractual language with our business partners around our call centers. We made some great progress in changing terms of contracts to be more favorable and profitable for Asurion, but I missed working and building teams and helping people. I decided in June of 2019 it was time for a change.

My 13 years working for Walmart and Asurion were incredible experiences for me. I developed new skill sets and worked under some remarkable leaders. I learned a lot about running big businesses and found I had a knack for bringing people together and getting things done. My wife and I were also about to enter a new stage in life - empty nesters. My wife is fortunate and her role is fully remote so she could work anywhere. The Nashville real estate market was one of the hottest in the country so we decided it was the right time to sell our home. We have planned throughout our marriage for what we would like our life to look like in retirement. We wanted an investment property on the beach that we could use and which could double as an income producing property. We bought a condo in Destin, Florida a couple of years ago with our oldest son. We also wanted our main residence to be near a mountain lake in a community that had lake access, racquet sports, hiking trails and golf. Lucky for us that my brother and sister-in-law had similar interest and retired several years ago. They decided on the Cliffs on Lake Keowee. We started visiting them in 2017 when they bought their home and fell in love with the area and lifestyle. We decided last June to make the move to the Cliffs and moved into our new home in September. We owe many thanks to my brother and sister in-law for letting us stay with them for a couple of months while our home was being completed.

We made the move but neither of us are ready to retire. Laura loves her job. I needed to find my next position. I was open to listening to companies, but deep down I knew this last role had to be something that I was passionate about and excited to do. I thought about my career and interest. I remembered how much I loved helping people and enjoyed my personal and business experiences around real estate. I also thought about what was missing from my personal real estate transactions that could have made it a better experience for us. I decided my experiences both professional and personal were guiding me to become a residential realtor. The final decision point was about opportunity. I moved to a rural area. I wanted to focus on the luxury market. As we met people I started asking about their personal experiences with buying and selling in the area. I found the market was dominated by two firms. The first is owned by the developer and while they have some great people and good agents I had a hard time not seeing conflicts of interest as they boasted about having a more than 85% market share of real estate transactions. My questions were about whose fiduciary interest got priority when you represented the buyer, seller and developer. The other company has some experienced realtors, but their business approach did not fit mine. They also boasted about how many of their transactions involve both parties. I wondered how these few realtors were really giving the individual client their best. Several other owners shared similar sentiments and I was sold that I could make a difference.

I decided to become a realtor, but who should I join for my brokerage? The decision for me was simple. I only interviewed (and was interviewed) by one brokerage - Joan Herlong and Associates (JHA). Joan is a legend in the upstate area. She is affiliated with Sotheby’s International Realty and as of this week is the sole Sotheby’s brokerage in upstate South Carolina. My goal is to provide the best experience for my clients. My market is luxury homes and my clients deserve a luxury experience. Sotheby’s is synonymous with luxury real estate. JHA’s brand is built around honor, advocacy and expertise. We were a match made for real estate.

I have loved every minute of the start to my real estate career. I love meeting people and discussing their needs and wants. I love helping them by making sure they are well informed so they can make good decisions. I am not a transactional realtor. My focus is not on numbers. It is on individuals. I am fortunate to be able to say no if the fit isn’t right for either the client or myself. I have the benefit of working for a legend who only hires top quality agents. I have more than 50 partners with a wealth of knowledge and experience at JHA.

You now know my journey. I have been blessed to have a long and varied professional career. I have been blessed to be part of a strong marriage and family. It has been a long and winding road. It hasn’t always been easy. I have made my share of mistakes along the way. I still love competition. I still love helping people. My failures made me stronger and a better person. My successes taught me the value of goals and hard work. Life is a short journey. I have enjoyed the ride so far.