Hey! I'm Joe.
I started Wanderful Chats after my friends kept coming to me for advice and I realized that I love to help people work through their problems. Watching a wave of clarity sweep over somebody during one of our conversations on a tough topic is extremely rewarding.
My specialty is being handed an ambiguous knot ball of problems, de-tangling them, and coming up with clear, actionable solutions for each strand. I love breaking things down to their roots and looking for the motivators behind each action.
My Background
My mother was one of the strongest people I ever knew. Since I was the age of 3, it was on her to raise me mostly on her own. We grew up moving around from trailers to houses in rural communities until we landed on a 7-acre plot of land in Central Washington. She was an extremely hard worker and I learned a lot from her. My most important lesson from her was how to read people's non verbal cues. Raising a child on her own was stressful and I'm sure contributed to her bipolar swings. So I had to learn young how to read these moods and react accordingly. I credit her with teaching me that skill.
My country upbringing was modest and I was a very visible minority in a mostly white community. I moved out to Seattle to attend the University of Washington in 2000 and I’ve been here ever since. I’ve had a wide range of jobs from Red Robin mascot to Director of Sales at HBO with my longest stint being at Expedia. I’ve interacted with major clients from Apple, to Google, to Amazon. I’ve participated in several hackathons and I have plenty of experience pitching ideas in front of senior level executives.
On a personal note, I never really seemed to figure out the “dating” thing until I was in my 30s. Feeling like my career was progressing, but my love life was going nowhere for several years left its own imprint on who I am today. I met my wife in 2013, finally worked up the nerve to ask her out in 2014 and we now live in Seattle with our young daughter. We love to travel and watch cooking shows (and The Bachelor…) as a family.
My list of past and current issues include:
Struggles with weight loss and gain
Sporadic social anxiety
Dealing with the loss of a parent
Being painfully single for 30+ years
Plenty of experience putting my foot in my mouth
Procrastination
Feeling inadequate and like I'm not making the most of my time here
Managing my career while also managing my default personality of being (almost) too kind, cheerful, and easy going
My life has also been filled with many blessings:
Saying yes to a random invite which led to me being a contestant on Wheel of Fortune
Creating an annual charity event from scratch which is now held at T-Mobile Park and has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for good causes across the globe
Traveling all over the world for work and pleasure (Greece, Hawaii, Honduras, Caribbean, Springfield, New York, Sydney, Milan, Berlin, etc.)
Having an AMAZING women agree to be my life-long partner
Baby and animal whisperer
A strong network of close friends that I leverage for unguarded conversations often
My Philosophies
Self-awareness is key. It’s not always easy to do, but we need to be able to accept personal responsibility at times. That’s usually where we should start.
Worry is a waste of imagination. Let’s focus on things we can control.
Action is the most powerful deterrent to lingering regret.
“We are all sums of versions.” Don’t hold onto not always being the “perfect” version of yourself. We are complicated beings with a complicated network of feelings/reactions to the world around us.
My Mission
My mission is to interact with people in whatever capacity works best for them, (honest feedback, sounding board, empathetic vent, bringing up alternative perspectives, etc.) so that at the end of our time they feel understood, refreshed, and armed with an array of result-oriented feedback or perspectives.
My Approach
To be clear, I am NOT a professionally trained psychiatrist, therapist, or life coach. However there are 2 things that set me and our time together apart.
The first is my diverse background. Growing up in rural Washington on a farm as a poor ethnic minority exposed me to a very different set of values and perspectives. My mother was sewing patches onto my jeans before it was trendy. We lived so far out in the sticks that I had to take 2 separate buses into school. I grew up around home schooled kids with religious fundamentalist parents and other nefarious characters that wanted to be under the radar. That background coupled with my 19 years in a much more culturally-liberal Seattle (13 of those in a successful career) has left me well-rounded. I’m able to speak with CEOs of large corporations and orchard farmers with the same credibility. I can find common ground with the bluest blues, the reddest reds, and everything in between. This background has groomed me for being able to build instant rapport.
The second thing that sets my service apart is that our time is outside. The natural refreshing and recharging properties of being outside while active cannot be understated. Fresh air can really be a tonic to a soul that sits inside looking at a screen for 40+ hours a week. We should expect to walk around 3 miles during our time together. My service is kind of a combination between personal trainer and therapist/life coach (even though I am not licensed in any of these disciplines).