Building Klau in the Open, Week 22: My Son Turns 13

Something a little different this week. My son is 13 today.

Life moves fast. It feels like yesterday we were coming home from the hospital with him, new parents with almost no clue what we were doing. How could they just let us leave the hospital with a miniature human? It has been a rewarding and challenging journey every day since. I get to share the best parts of life with him and do my best to prepare him to face his own future with independence, curiosity, and courage. Today he's no longer a kid. He's a teenager. And while this has been coming for a while, I'm officially no longer all that cool.

I was lucky to grow up around entrepreneurship. My dad worked at my uncle's auto shop when I was young, then started his own landscape contracting firm a few years later. My mom remarried when I was six, and that brought Dale and his family's hauling operation into my life. Dale was a different kind of entrepreneur. He ran his parents' company with deep compassion for the people on the ground hauling waste. I learned most of my principles from him. My other parents lived by the same things in their own ways. Dale's were just on display every day because of the size of his staff. He cared about the wellbeing of his employees and his community. He worked with people he liked and did work that customers appreciated. Profit followed. Extraction never entered the picture.

I hope to give my son the same exposure to entrepreneurship and the same guiding principles as he grows up. I want to make positive change in the industry I'm in, in a way that improves the day-to-day work of the CSRs, dispatchers, drivers, and everyone else who uses the systems I make. Same strategy as Dale's. Work with people I like. Do work the customers appreciate. Care about the community I'm in. Extraction has no place in it. Simple. I hope my son (and others) copy it.

Week 22. Still building.

Originally posted on LinkedIn on June 5, 2026.