Taking Your Brand to the Next Level with Relationships & Family

Our story is a winding road, but each path has led us to this point we are at now. I am a husband and father of 4 amazing boys.

I graduated from Ohio State in 2003 and immediately went to work at Walgreens, running one of their new stores for 12 years. While working we got married and started a family. Towards the end of my career at Walgreens I went back to school and got an MBA from Capital University and a Masters in Accounting from Liberty University Online. I did this to transition to a more family friendly job where I could be around more for my kids and wife.

I worked at a local corporation as a Staff Accountant for 5 years and this is where our life changed forever. Our youngest son was born in 2018 and had some severe medical complications. He was hospitalized for over 550 day and most of that came when he was about 4 months old.

While at the local corporation I could tell that the strain of our family's continuous emergencies was taking a toll on the work relationship I had. It had become very clear that they would not be able to support the medical emergencies our family was facing. So a new venture was born….our Men's grooming company. While stating this company up I still worked in some remote accounting roles and more were available bc of Covid.

We officially rebranded into 8bit Beard Co 2/21/21. I wanted to get our kids involved and we had been through so much in a short time I wanted to be a source of joy and excitement when fellow beardsmen saw our brand. Take them back to a time of less stress and responsibility.

We pushed to have our youngest son home with us in late 2019. The medical field told us it was not possible to bring him home but we got everything setup and were able to, even though he had many setbacks in the hospital. We wanted more quality time at home with him and his brothers. And he thrived at home with us for the entire year and even got to go to school. He unexpectantly got really sick in April of 2021 and passed away at the age of 3.

He set our family on this new path and we are more grateful to him for that than he will ever know. And we continue to keep building our business and company in his honor. We host a yearly fundraiser for DSACO. The Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio and were able to raise $1400 last year in his name.

My wife also designed and put together a medical notebook to help families that have to track long term care of their loved ones while hospitalized. Strengthening By Fire is her handle and website info.