I never knew what I wanted to be

I never knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. Still don’t, if we’re being honest.

I didn’t have a dream job or even a direction in mind. I just worked, whatever needed doing. Mowed lawns, pulled weeds, scrubbed toilets. Picked up range balls at the local golf course. Drove tractors, cut firewood, dug ditches, washed dishes, bused tables, waited tables, cooked for winemaker dinners, poured in tasting rooms.

For a season, I was a cellar rat — one of my favorite jobs, by the way. I helped build a first-of-its-kind player development golf course, then got to manage it. I farmed and harvested vegetables across the West, learned food safety, sales, production, and the fine art of driving a forklift without breaking things (most of the time). I’ve done HR, marketing, finance, IT (not great at it), and yes, scrubbed more toilets.

At the time, it all felt random. Turns out, it wasn’t. Every one of those jobs was building the foundation for what came next — my entrepreneurial evolution, I guess you’d call it.

After a pretty monumental business failure (fun story for another day), I bootstrapped my way into building a brand from scratch. That’s where I found my real passion, not just farming, but creating.

See, building a brand isn’t just about slick marketing or clever packaging. It’s deeper and messier. While you’re busy brainstorming campaigns and designing labels, you’re also troubleshooting supply chains, testing processes (and re-testing), managing people, machines, and systems, each with their own set of needs and timing and chaos.

You’re customer-facing and vendor-facing, sometimes at the exact same time. You’re a dad, a boss, a translator, a janitor, a student of all things human. You’re managing time zones, language barriers, and assumptions (your own and everyone else’s), trying to make it all line up.

When I started, I thought growth would be a straight line, up and to the right, fast. Turns out, it’s more like a heartbeat. Some weeks, our only goal is not to overspend. Other weeks, we’re pushing the limits of what our products can do. Both come with their share of emotions, sometimes all of them in a single afternoon.

I think what keeps me going is a mix of intestinal fortitude (fancy word for stubbornness) and a probably unhealthy competitive streak.

Looking back, I’m grateful I never had a plan. Not knowing what I wanted to be meant I got to be a lot of things. And every one of those things helped shape Spinaca Farms — the people, the culture, the work, the way we show up.

I guess if I had to sum it up, I’d say a brand isn’t built by marketing. It’s built by the work, the kind that’s sometimes messy, exhausting, and totally worth it. Maybe that’s what trust looks like.