Future Here Now: Why I Do This
Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a lot of new readers, listeners, and watchers joining me across platforms. Welcome. 👋
So this week, I want to slow down for a moment and share something foundational:
Why I do this work.
Where it comes from.
And why it matters now more than ever.
This reflection is drawn from the 2021 edition of The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived, which remains the clearest expression of what has shaped my thinking and continues to drive my work today.
🏭 Where I Come From
I’m a product of the U.S. Rust Belt.
I grew up in a small town outside Cleveland, Ohio, where my father and grandfather ran a small paint factory. It was a jack-of-all-trades operation—primers, spray paints, coatings for wholesalers and retailers. In a region filled with steel and manufacturing, protecting metal meant steady work.
Until it didn’t.
Around 1981, the first convulsions of the traditional manufacturing collapse hit. Customers disappeared. Markets vanished. The company was eventually sold for its assets—the only value left.
My father was out of work for most of three years.
Unemployment isn’t an abstract statistic.
It’s not a chart.
It’s not a line in a policy report.
It’s a life profoundly dislocated.
That lesson never left me.
🎓 How I Got Here
I was fortunate. Encouraged by teachers. Accepted to a great college. I earned an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University and, years later, a Master’s in Community Planning from the University of Cincinnati.
But my career didn’t follow a straight line.
It looks more like cooked spaghetti. 🍝
Small-town journalist → English teacher → historic preservation consultant → downtown revitalization → community planning → economic development → public engagement → entrepreneurship → higher-ed experiential learning → and a little journalism along the way.
Each turn taught me something essential:
👉 How people make meaning
👉 How communities organize (and don’t)
👉 How power actually works
👉 How change really happens
Most importantly, I’ve had the gift of working alongside people whose life experiences are radically different from my own. They’ve been my greatest teachers. They still are.
🔁 What’s Changed Since 2013
When I published the first version of The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived in 2013, I believed national-scale solutions were likely.
Today?
I’m more skeptical.
At the same time, I’m cautiously optimistic about something else:
Local solutions are getting better.
Smarter.
More grounded.
More human.
I’ve also learned:
• Change is harder than we want it to be
• Paradigms are sticky
• Expertise can become a trap
• Humility is not optional
For four years, I worked inside a business that forced me to throw out most of my assumptions about how work, clients, and value creation function. It was brutal.
It was also transformative.
That experience deepened my respect for anyone willing to rethink their own mental models.
Because that’s where real transformation begins.
🧭 The Biggest Shift
In 2013, I understood that racism and inequity existed.
I did not understand the depth of the structures beneath them.
I’m still learning.
Still unlearning.
Still messing up.
But I now see much more clearly:
The voices historically pushed to the margins are not peripheral to solutions.
They are central to them.
Inclusion isn’t charity.
It isn’t branding.
It isn’t optics.
It is a strategic necessity.
Which leads to one of the core ideas behind all my work:
💡 Crowdsourcing Wisdom Is Our Strongest Tool
Not from a narrow slice of people who already hold power.
Not from the same rooms, conferences, and echo chambers.
But from the full, messy, brilliant complexity of humanity.
Especially from voices that were excluded before.
Not because it feels nice.
But because we need them.
Badly.
📬 Why Future Here Now Exists
I write because the future is arriving faster than our institutions can adapt.
I publish Future Here Now because people who care about their communities deserve:
✔ Clear-eyed analysis
✔ Practical tools
✔ Honest frameworks
✔ Early signals
✔ Real-world examples
Subscribers receive 2–4 downloads every week with insights that help position you to succeed in a future that will look nothing like the past.
🔥 Ways to Go Deeper
📘 Buy the book: The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived
📩 Subscribe: Future Here Now (7-day free trial)
🎤 Bring us in: Speaking, workshops, and strategy sessions
🤝 Start a conversation: If you’re serious about local economic transformation
👉 Get your copy
👉 Start your trial
👉 Message me to explore working together
Because the future doesn’t wait.
And communities that learn faster than change hits are the ones that thrive.
Let’s get on with it. 💥
