On March 18th, 2016 my wife Natalie gave birth to our first child. Before Addilyn was born I honestly went through life without a clear picture of what “success” looked like chasing things like money and business accolades without a true north. Now my vision is so crystal clear that my mission on this earth is to constantly improve into the best version of myself so that through my daily activities, I can be a husband my wife is proud of, a father my children look up to and a friend people can count on. I started my career working for my uncle in the back office of his financial planning practice. Shortly after I got licensed in the business, I was fired by my uncle (it’s a funny story). I took a sales job as a very early pre-ipo employee of a small start-up called GrubHub, where I flew around the country launching new markets before GrubHub even had a CRM. During the year I was there, GrubHub raised $50 million in funding, bought 3 companies (AllMenus.com, CampusFoods.com and Fango.com) and increased employee headcount from less than 50 to over 600. Driven by my desire to figure out my employee stock option package I decided to give the business of financial planning a try from a practice ownership stand point. One day after my 1 year anniversary at GrubHub (to ensure the stock options), I submitted my twos notice, I started my financial planning practice and got myself involved in a number of online marketing activities to promote my practice. It all started with a blog at SimonGranner.com, followed shortly by an audio and video podcast where I interviewed successful entrepreneurs around the world. If you google "Simon Granner Show" you will probably find a few archived episodes. After my interview series, I focused my online efforts on building an email list around financial stories and topics related to what I labeled "high-performing entrepreneurs". I think I really just wanted to find my "tribe" if you will. I wanted to be myself and let my strengths overpower my weaknesses. Towards the middle of 2018 I decided to merge my solo financial planning practice with my father, who is now my business partner. We have a growing practice called Opus Financial Group of Thrivent Financial. We have 4 full time advisers, a dedicated analyst and 2 staff members and growing. We love what we do each day. My content production efforts have shifted to video content production on Linkedin for the last 12 months and that was been successful from an audience building perspective and more importantly in terms of creating and sustaining deeper personal and business relationship. On a personal level, I lived downtown Chicago with my wife until we bought a home and moved out to Geneva, IL where we live with our two children, Addilyn (3) and Parker (1). Thanks for reading and I hope I have the opportunity to help you launch your blog, mission, movement and see what wild entrepreneurial path it springboards for you. :)