Aaron Badowski
Birthday: September 5th, 1997 (25yo)
Height: 6ft 7inches Tall
Hometown: Brunswick Ohio
College: The Ohio State University
Degree: Electrical Engineering
Hobbies: Former Basketball Player, Weightlifting. Cooking, Listening to Podcasts, Reading
Family of 6: Mom, Dad, 3 Siblings: Twin Sister (Ally), Older Brother (Ryan), Younger Sister (Kirsten)
MY STORY
Childhood 1997-2016
“The way we do Anything, is the way we do Everything”
I grew up in Brunswick Ohio just south of Cleveland Ohio. I was blessed to be raised alongside three siblings by a mom and dad that gave us everything. My parents did a phenomenal job keeping real life problems distant from us kids. How? My life revolved around Basketball and sports for 18 years. It dictated every decision. My teammates were my friends and practice is where we hung out. Thanksgiving dinner was planned around practice. Puking at practice was normal. Playing in insane amounts of physical pain was normal. Training ridiculous hours never felt like a sacrifice. It was chaotic. It was challenging. It was exhausting. It was incredibly rewarding. That is what my life was for 18 years. In am forever grateful for it.
Paradigm Shift - Giving Up My First Love
My first real decisions in my life had to be made at 18. They were not if I was going to college. The decisions were: what was I going to study? and are you going to play basketball? I was recruited by some big D3 schools to play basketball. As far as studies, Engineering was the default choice. I was extremely strong at math. Everyone always told me I should be an engineer because I was smart and engineerings was a prestigious career. I simply said “Sure i’ll be an engineer”
Decision Process: My body was in pain at this time. I knew I had to improve a lot as a basketball player to scratch the hardwood at the next level. The recruiting phase did not sell well on me either. The small schools were not exciting to me. I loved the game, there were not doubts about that. There was just a lot pointing the other way. The other option was school. I had a great opportunity to go to The Ohio State University. A lot of my friends were going there. I was a smart kid, and getting into this school felt like a real accomplishment. This still felt like I was challenging myself going into engineering. It felt like a cool new chapter. I still had my friends.
College 2016-2020
I studied Electrical Engineering at The Ohio State University. During that time I also was helping manage/bartend at a local campus bar during the nights to help pay for school. Roughly working 20-30 hrs/week. During this time I started to become heavily indulged in the fitness community. As a replacement to what felt like a past life as a basketball player, my new way of burning calories was bodybuilding/powerlifting.
This was a time of all work and no play. I would not say I enjoyed school very much. It is all honestly a blurr now. Probably from lack of sleep. I would not say I had the “college experience” that many people had. I had some tough goals to accomplish. My motivation was not to succeed, but rather to not fail.
Paradigm Shift - Death Waits For No Man
During College I had my next big Paradigm shift. It really started when I was in high school when two of my best friends and teammates were diagnosed with cancer when we were 15 years old. During High School, it was definitely scary. It was a thing. My friends were bald from chemo. They were in an out of school. They were clearly sick.
But, to their credit and and incredible strength.They never made a big deal about it. We were cracking jokes and having fun when they were around per normal. Then they both went into remission.
Then one of them got cancer again. No problem. He will beat it again. And he did. He ended up playing his senior year of baseball. Absolute warrior. Again, it was just a roadblock at the time. We were kids. We were still invincible.
We all went off to college and a year in the cancer returned. No big deal. he will beat it again. He did. Then it came back again…
One of my Best Friends passed on May 5th 2019 at 21 years old after 5 years battling cancer. The other is still in remission and is one of my best friends to this day.
Job # 1 - 2 years
After graduating school I started work at a company called Burns & McDonnell designing Datacenters where I spent my first 2.5 years of my career. This job felt like a complete 180 degrees from school. Where none of the knowledge I spent 4 years learning felt directly applicable to the job. I was heavily involved creating CAD models and working with various power distribution software tools inherited by the industry. I was very quick to notice this is not where I wanted my career to be forever.
Meanwhile, I was also still working in the restaurant industry during my off-hours. I had a friend buy a restaurant on Buckeye Lake named Waterfront. He needed some help building his vision. During the summers I would high-tail out of work on a Friday to go be an extra hand and leader at a restaurant on the weekends. I loved it. Little be known this would be such an amazing addition to my life.
Paradigm Shift - “Real Job”
Then I started my “Real Job”
What I imagined: All the hard work and sacrifice is supposed to come back around. That 4 years of sacrifice was for this. Im going to have respect from my peers. They are going to push me. They are going to reward me. Im going to have the opportunity to grow a career and make a lot of money. “Engineers make a lot of money” This is it. Ready to put a stamp on the world!
Reality:
“Welcome to Corporate America”
Felt like I took a baseball bat of life straight to the head.
Career Change
At this point I had one job that I loved and one that I did not. I had a ton of savings built up from working two jobs additionally felt like I was ready for a big step in my career. I had started job searching for a while. The key things I was focused on with this new search was:
Bet on myself
Culture
Leadership
I ended up finding a new role as a Product Owner at Vertiv. Where the job was most simply to act like the CEO of one line of products for the business. This role seemed to fit well with me as I knew at this time my life goals would be to run a business or start my own one day. Additionally felt very strong about my manager and his leadership style. Unfortunately after 5 months they told my my position was being removed. The job that I was enjoying was no longer. Back to the drawing board. Back in another job search. I try my best at these points in time to stay true to my framework.
The Golden Questions
The key to this framework is the question. “What do I want out of this life?”
As one of my idols always says. What is the objective? What are we optimizing for. We are optimizing for happiness and fulfillment
Simple question, but its not an easy one to answer. With all that in mind, I share my thoughts in MY BLUEPRINT