From NASA Lieutenant to State Managing Broker: The Journey Through Darkness to Redemption

There is a version of my story that looks pretty impressive on paper.

NASA Federal Police Lieutenant by 29. Real estate agent closing 34 deals in a single year. State Managing Broker and VP of Broker Operations at one of the fastest-growing cloud-based brokerages in the country. Five-time completer of 75 Hard. Over $150 million in volume overseen as managing broker. 600-plus transactions managed.

That version is true. But it is not the whole story.

The whole story includes the version of me that had over $15,000 sitting in his bank account and still watched his car get repossessed and his lights cut off on the same day. A few days before his 40th birthday.

That version matters more. Because that version is what actually built everything else.

NASA and the Leadership Education I Did Not Know I Was Getting

At 21 years old, I got an opportunity most people my age were not thinking about. NASA was hiring security at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans. That is the site where they built the external fuel tanks for the Space Shuttle. It was not just a security job. Because Michoud was a fully self-contained facility, every officer on our team had to be a certified first responder and an industrial firefighter. I went through a three-month academy before I ever set foot on the job. Exciting, terrifying, and unlike anything I had ever done.

I moved up fast. Sergeant over the fire department by 25. Lieutenant and second shift commander by 29, responsible for roughly 70 officers on rotating shifts. Only six people held leadership positions across the entire facility. Three sets of lieutenants and sergeants. I was one of them.

After 9/11, Michoud was classified as a potential terrorist target. The operation transitioned to full law enforcement authority, and so did I. Federal police officer. Real responsibility. Real stakes.

The officers I led were retired military, retired NOPD, seasoned street cops who had seen more in a year than I had in my whole life. I was a kid in a lieutenant uniform. If I had walked in pointing at my badge and barking orders, I would have been eaten alive. What gave me an edge was simple. I never forgot where I came from. I led by earning trust, not by demanding it. I asked questions. I listened. I stayed humble. That lesson has been the foundation of everything I have built since.

The Secret, Amway, and the Day I Found Out I Could Sell

Toward the end of my time at NASA, I started feeling capped out. The next promotion above lieutenant meant a five to ten year wait. I was working in a freezing cold headquarters building, sweating through a bulletproof vest, and wondering if this was all there was.

Then I watched a Netflix documentary called The Secret.

I know how that sounds. But sitting in that miserable room, cold and hot at the same time, that film about manifestation and the law of attraction lit something up in me. I started picturing a different life. Business clothes instead of body armor. Financial freedom instead of a government salary with a ceiling on it.

A friend approached me not long after about selling products through Amway. I almost said no. But I caught myself. I had just watched an entire film about saying yes to opportunity. Here was one sitting right in front of me. I said yes.

Within a short time, I had my whole shift on monthly subscriptions. Friends. Family. I found out I could talk about something I believed in and people would buy it. I found out I was a salesman.

My buddy Tommy mentioned he had made six figures selling health and life insurance. A light bulb went off. I transitioned into insurance sales, went completely all in, and eventually took over a struggling Baton Rouge territory that was almost ready to shut its doors. I cut the team from nine agents to three, rebuilt around the right people, and grew the office back up to 20 active producers doing business every week. That is where I learned to run sales meetings, stand in front of a room, develop agents, and operate a team.

Then the Affordable Care Act came and slashed our commissions. The environment turned hostile. I asked myself one question that changed everything. Where can I take everything I have learned and work in a space where people are genuinely happy with what they purchase?

The answer was real estate.

The Real Estate Climb

I got my license in 2015. Started with a big box brand because I was still figuring things out and hiding behind a recognizable name. Joined a team, which smoothed the learning curve considerably.

By year four I was producing at a level most agents never reach. From the outside, everything looked like a success story. But on the inside, I was quietly falling apart.

Rock Bottom and the $15,000 That Did Not Save Me

My best production year nearly broke me as a person. I was over 320 pounds. I was using alcohol to numb anxiety, depression, and emotions I did not know how to handle. I was self-medicating instead of healing.

Around that time, my business partner and I opened our own brokerage. Second Line Realty. I ran the meetings, the training, the day-to-day operations. But I quickly realized the arrangement was not what I thought it was. I was doing the heavy lifting while the financial upside went somewhere else. I walked away.

Then my mother passed away.

I was on Day 17 of my first attempt at 75 Hard when my sister called. It was her birthday. Our mom had not called to sing happy birthday, which she never missed. I knew before I even confirmed it. I drove straight to the liquor store.

Then COVID hit. The world shut down. And like a lot of Americans, I sat at home and drank. A lot. When the world opened back up and it was time to get back to work, I was behind on everything. Bills. Responsibilities. My life. I had closings coming in but I kept putting everything off. Living inside a fog I could not shake.

I walked out of my house on the day my power got shut off, planning to go pay the bill in person. When I got to the driveway, I noticed two tire tracks dragged across the concrete. The kind a tow truck leaves when it pulls a car with the front wheels locked. My car had been repossessed.

I had over fifteen thousand dollars in the bank. The bill had been sitting there for weeks. I just kept putting it off. That is what rock bottom actually looked like for me. Not broke. Checked out. Not paying attention to my own life.

That was a few days before my 40th birthday on November 16th.

Standing in that driveway, I made a decision. I was not dragging any of this into my forties.

Surrender, Sobriety, and Finding the Way Back

I walked into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and asked for help.

For someone who had been a lieutenant, a sales leader, and a broker, walking in and asking for help felt like failure. But surrender turned out to be the most powerful thing I ever did. In surrendering, I reconnected with God. I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ. Something shifted in me at a level no book, no podcast, and no motivational speaker had ever reached.

Getting sober did not fix everything overnight. But it cleared the fog. It gave me my mornings back. It gave me my mind back. And once I had those two things, I was ready to do the real work.

75 Hard: The Program That Finally Broke Me Open

Long before 75 Hard existed, I was already searching for it.

I had been a fan of Andy Frisella since his MFCEO Project podcast days. I read every book I could find on mental toughness, grit, and discipline. Guerrilla Mindset. Mindset. Ten, fifteen books in that category. I devoured all of it. But I kept walking away feeling like something was missing. The information was great. The motivation was real. But nobody was telling me exactly what to do. Nobody gave me the actual program.

When Andy launched 75 Hard in 2019, I knew immediately that was what I had been looking for. A concrete, non-negotiable daily standard. No modifications. No excuses. Start over if you miss a single day. That was the program I needed.

I started in 2019 with full intention of finishing. Then on Day 17, my sister called. It was her birthday. Our mom had not called to sing happy birthday — something she never missed. I felt it in my stomach before I even confirmed it. I drove straight to the liquor store. That attempt was over.

What followed was one of the most humbling stretches of my life. Between losing my mother and finally getting sober, I attempted 75 Hard at least 34 times. Thirty-four. Every single time, something stopped me. The alcohol. The bad food. The mental fog. I could not string together the days because I had not dealt with what was underneath them.

But then something changed. When I surrendered, got sober, and rededicated my life to Jesus Christ, I went after 75 Hard one more time. And this time, on Day 1, I already knew it was over. Not because the program got easier. Because the things that had stopped me 34 times before were no longer in the driver seat.

75 Hard is not a fitness program. Andy will tell you that himself. It is a mental toughness program. And what I discovered on the other side of it is that everything I had been searching for in all those books was already inside me the whole time. The discipline. The confidence. The self-respect. It was buried. I just needed to dig for it.

Think of it like a treasure chest buried four feet down on a beach. You get on your hands and knees with a pail and a shovel and you start digging. Your arms burn. You wonder if you are in the right spot. But eventually you brush the sand away and realize the chest was there the whole time. You just had to do the work to find it.

I have completed the program five times now. I do it at least once a year as a reset. Not because I am chasing a result. Because the standard it sets is the standard I want to live by. Every year I go back to it, I come out sharper, more grounded, and more hungry.

That is what 75 Hard did for me. That is what sobriety did. That is what faith did. And together, those three things rebuilt a man who had everything going for him on paper but had completely lost himself on the inside.

Why All of This Matters and Why I Build Agents

After getting my life back, my career took a new direction. A large cloud-based brokerage with 14,000 agents found my resume and brought me in to help recruit, train, and manage at national scale. I did that for a year and learned how serious operations work at that level.

Then I was offered a State Broker position for a new brokerage entering Louisiana. We built it from the ground up. Seventy-four agents. Four hundred and twenty closed deals in my final year. Nearly $100 million in sales. Real results. But the corporate culture was not right for me.

Then ENRG Realty came along.

Erinn and Peter Nobel are two of the most respected operators in this industry. Before founding ENRG, they helped scale eXp Realty and Real Brokerage from the early stage all the way to multi-billion dollar companies. They did not build ENRG the way most brokerages get built. They started by asking one question: what does an agent actually need to feel supported, do great work, and build something lasting? Then they built everything around that answer. The splits, the technology, the culture, all of it came from that first question.

When I met them, I recognized something I had not felt in a long time. I was not just joining a company. I was finally home.

As State Managing Broker and VP of Broker Operations, I oversee operations across Louisiana. Over the course of my career as a managing broker, I have been part of over 600 transactions and more than $150 million in total volume. But the number I care about most is not a production stat. It is the number of agents I have helped build real businesses.

Here is what the full arc of my story has taught me. Every role I ever played, from NASA lieutenant to insurance sales leader to brokerage office manager to state broker, I was helping other people build their operations while I was still figuring out my own. For a long time I felt like I had been taken advantage of. I do not see it that way anymore.

If I had been selfish and stayed a solo agent, I would never have been qualified for where I am today. Every rep I did in someone else’s gym built the muscle I needed for my own.

That is why I recruit the way I recruit. That is why I mentor the way I mentor. I know what it looks like when an agent is talented but lost. I have been that person. And I know what it looks like when someone finally digs up that treasure chest.

That is what ENRG is built to do.