When I look back at early 2021, it feels like a lifetime ago.

On January 2, 2021, I started a new job. It was right in the heart of COVID. Every interview had been done over Zoom. I hadn’t met a single person from the company in person, even though the company was based in Florida and I was working from California. At the time, that didn’t seem unusual—everyone was doing the same thing.

But twenty-five days later, on January 27, 2021, my life changed forever.

That was the day I was diagnosed with ALS.

In that moment, I had to make a decision. I had just started a brand-new job. I didn’t know how the company would react, what they might do, or whether it would affect my role. After thinking about it, I decided not to tell them.

Looking back now, I still believe it was the right decision. But that doesn’t mean it was easy.

As the months went on, the disease slowly progressed. And while I was learning how to process an ALS diagnosis personally, I was also trying to show up professionally every day as if nothing had changed.

That’s harder than it sounds.

My job was in software sales. I sold inventory management software that integrated into a company’s ERP system. For those who aren’t familiar with ERP, it’s essentially the core software that runs a company’s operations—finance, human resources, marketing, operations, and more. It’s the backbone of how many corporations function.

Most ERP systems don’t include a strong inventory management solution built in, which is where the product I sold came in. Our software would “bolt on” to their ERP system and manage inventory more efficiently.

And my annual quota was close to $1 million in sales.

Under normal circumstances, enterprise software sales are relationship-driven. You build trust through meetings, lunches, office visits, and whiteboard sessions. But during COVID, none of that existed.

I never met a single prospect or customer in person.

Every call was virtual. Every presentation was on Zoom. Every deal was built through a screen or over the phone.

Anyone in sales knows how difficult it can be to build trust that way. Now add in trying to quietly navigate the early stages of ALS without anyone knowing.

It was a strange time.

For nearly a year and a half, I worked with people I had never met face-to-face. Eventually, as COVID restrictions eased, the company scheduled a sales meeting in Colorado. That was the first time I would finally meet my colleagues and my boss in person.

By then, things were getting harder to hide.

ALS doesn’t exactly cooperate with your plans to keep things private.

I did the best I could during the meeting, but it was becoming clear that pretending everything was normal wasn’t sustainable anymore.

Three days after returning home, I had a Zoom call scheduled with the company’s Chief Operating Officer and the Human Resources Director.

The conversation didn’t last long.

They let me go.

The timing made it even more surreal. The very next day, a plaque arrived in the mail congratulating me on closing the MGM deal, one of the major accounts I had worked on.

So within about 24 hours, I went from being congratulated for a major sales win to being unemployed.

To be honest, it made me angry.

It felt like a pretty crappy thing for a company to do to someone who had worked hard, produced results, and carried a massive quota during one of the strangest business environments any of us had ever seen.

But time gives you perspective.

And looking back now, that moment also forced me into the next chapter of my life. Sometimes doors close in ways we never expect—and sometimes they close for reasons we don’t understand at the time.

I’ll dive into that next chapter soon, which includes getting approved for disability… a story in itself.

Hoping to see a lot of you at the parade on Saturday!

Stay Frosty.
Join the movement to beat ALS.