I grew up in Highland, Indiana, which is 15 minutes from the Southeast Chicago border, depending on how fast you drive. Highland is a great town to be from, but at age 19, the urge to get out and explore was intoxicating, so I moved to the west coast, where my brother lives.
To understand my story, it’s essential to understand the wounds I carried and how they affected my decisions. Every action came from a place to prove myself. The best way to describe it is hoping to feel my life was a movie or comeback story that earns people's respect and awe. One example of this is having a 3.7 GPA and deciding not to attend college. Part of it was not wanting debt, but the decision mostly came from wanting people to say how bold and incredible I am by not going. Seriously. Things worked out, my career has been very blessed, but if the choice to do it all over again were presented, the decision might be the same but would have been made from a much healthier place.
Two weeks after graduating high school, I moved 2,000 miles away with $1,500 and zero plan. Like zero. I was shocked when my newly married brother told me it would be a good idea to start looking for my own apartment and apply for jobs the night I arrived at his place. It honestly never crossed my mind that I wasn't going to live with him. The next day, I found a Craigslist room and moved but couldn’t afford a bed, or any furniture so I slept on the floor and used the floor as my dresser. I stayed sleeping on the floor of a barren room for over a year. Regardless, I found a place to sleep. Check.
Next was applying for jobs. I was very excited about this because of all the success books I read. The issue with me reading success books back then was my ignorance was astounding, and my perception of reality after reading those was I am worth $3.7 billion. Some examples of my ignorance and an inflated ego:
Wearing old weight room T-shirts that had the sleeves cut off from scissors as I walked in and requested an interview (wasn't hired).
Applying for technical six-figure sales jobs that needed 10+ years experience with no work history (wasn't hired).
Demand a 50% increase in base salary on an initial interview for a job I had no experience in (wasn't hired).
Be an hour late for meetings or forget that they were scheduled (wasn't hired).
When asked why I was interested in their field, I said I don’t like that field; I just want the money (wasn't hired).
Giving resumes riddled with grammar, spelling, and formatting errors, including the wrong phone number and email (wasn't hired or contacted).
Making very low-quality business cards with a grainy picture of me on them and passing them out, thinking this is guaranteed to land a huge role (no leads).
Eventually, my grumbling stomach advised me to get any job, so I finally got employed as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home. Humbled isn’t a good enough word to describe my feelings in that season. Broken and ashamed are. Dreams of out-earning and feeling the respect from my college-educated friends were drowned by my bedless, minimum wage, negative bank account reality.
There is no way to begin to word the kind of heartbreak you witness at a nursing home. Their families often forget residents and mostly leave them to die. Some tenants make peace with it, some are not aware, but most wrestle and fight this reality through anger, tears, and depression. Many of them have bodies that no longer function correctly, so the constant smell of urine and feces is in the air. The people with these bodily issues feel ashamed and continue their depressed cycle. Then there were the workers. These people were amazing, but all humans have their limits. Due to extreme budget cuts, we each had to do the job of three people. Residents, who were already grumpy for being there, got upset when we weren’t able to do the most basic of human needs like clean them up after an accident. Unfortunately, the reason we weren't able to help is we were helping someone else with the same problem. Bosses used intimidation, threats, and fear to try to get us to work harder. The family members of the patients shouted and shamed us for not meeting their family members' needs. The pay was meager, but the things we did were often literally life and death. When people got sick or died, we had to wrestle with wandering how much we contributed to that. It was in this crucible that I found out what client success truly is.
The movie Patch Adams with Robin Williams is my favorite movie of all time. A man challenged the notion that patients' identities are data or diseases and saw them as humans instead. He had faith that there is enough capacity to scale the medical field as a humanity first model, and he did. For about a year, I rejected the situation at the nursing home, and rejection of reality causes suffering. The moment I fully accepted this was my reality, I was able to let go of comparing myself to the kids who took a different road. I finally could fully immerse where I was; the peace was incredible. I made it my mission to be a light, and am I am proud to say I was. Every single person I began to care for would be cracking up or smiling. Some patients needed to feel like a human again by exchanging dirty chokes; some needed me to prod them that their football team sucks, and others talk about faith or cry. In every scenario, I was able to bring the authentic Steven Rose, and it no longer drained life being there but gave life instead. Eventually, I was awarded "The employee of the month" in that nursing home, and I am proud of it.
My time as a CNA came to a close, and I got a job doing inside sales (which is a whole story in itself), which led to client success and retention. It's a job I never want to do again, but nothing in my life has come close to teaching me Client Success like the CNA job. It taught me to work from a humanity first model, and I am wholeheartedly grateful it's the path I took.
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