During my time at Cyan, my wife and I had our third child and we needed a birthday invitation for her and that led to us starting  Mango Ink. That was over 19 years ago.

While at Cyan, and starting Mango Ink, I also fell in love with writing and ended up writing 11 books.

In 2008, a church, New Community, offered me a job which made no sense, given my salary. But, I was a pastor’s kid. My dad also loved to move. So while I did eat alone in a cafeteria here and there, I also saw a lot of diverse worlds, met a lot of diverse people, and had a lot of diverse experiences… and became a bit addicted to change and challenge. 

I was familiar enough with the church world to know it could use a lot of innovation, and the chance to be creative in another venue - speaking - seemed like a cool opportunity.

In 2010, I, along with some other people, began a different kind of community, Branches, where we did some pretty innovative things. I spoke every week and I also met and talked to amazing human beings from each and every walk of life.

Around this time, I had something as close to a conversion event that I believe exists: I was at a conference and something happened. To this day, I can’t really say what happened but others who were there have confirmed (over the years) that something happened.

I came home and sat on my deck and told my wife something along the lines of “I think I’m seeing colors for the first time in my life.”