Feb 12 marks the last day in a 10-year journey.

I walked into Faithlife for my first day of work at… 14 years old.

In my time there, I worked from at least 20 different desks, moved from data entry in Spanish, to manager of email and mobile marketing in English, learned a slew of valuable skills, got a degree in marketing, and quite literally grew up. I spent nearly half of my life working there!

In the meantime, I started businesses, helped friends with marketing, and maintained a steady stream of freelance clients with my spare time.

What I’ve learned through this journey: nothing is wasted.

Not the hours I spent poring over programming and “Windows XP hacks” books as an early teen.

Not the time where I figured out how to automate a large task and took a long walk while the computer worked.

Not the times I messed up an important marketing email and had to write a correction and apology to our audience.

Not the videos I learned to record and edit, the websites I built, the excel sheets I wrangled, the code I obsessed over, the ads that made money and the ones that didn’t, the work I loved, the work I hated.

Each of these experiences taught me something valuable. And the more varied experiences I had, the more I could connect the dots in my head.

Now, armed with those experiences, I’m so excited to put a name and my full attention behind what I’ve been doing on the side for so long.

With Datos Marketing, I want to help small business owners who are experiencing the common growth pains of successful businesses. I’ll be helping them get a clear picture of their data, standardizing and automating their processes, and helping them make the most of technology.

And no, all that time I spent trying all kinds of marketing isn’t wasted either! It’s precisely because of that experience that I can provide more value to business owners. It’s because I don’t have a myopic focus on one field that I can come up with better, faster solutions to problems.

The more experiences you have, the more you have to offer.

I’ll leave you with these questions:

• Are you working to get through the day, or are you investing in yourself?
• How has each experience you’ve had uniquely prepared for you the challenges you face today?
• If you could erase any portion of your life and unlearn the lessons from it, would you? Which portion?
• Could you be doing something more fulfilling with what you know? Why aren’t you?