About ME

My name is Scott Fitzgerald and my story is not that different from a lot of people: a former gifted kid who never lived up to their potential now walking around as a plethora of neuroses stacked in a trench coat. Despite that, I have managed to hold some sort of leadership position for about 14 years out of the 20 years of my working life. You might think that this makes me an expert in leadership, but that is not the case. I have spent 20 years with good leadership, bad leadership, as a bad leader, and as a good leader. My goal in writing this is to save you some gray hair and tell you about many of the things that I have observed that do and do not work for me.

Like many kids, my dad was my hero growing up. He worked his tail off running 5 restaurants for someone more interested in making money than working for it. For the first 20 or so years of my life, I lived it wanting to be just like him. I thought he was perfect; he was/is not. However, I did my best to emulate my dad and early in my life and career it opened quite a few doors.

In 6th grade, I was chosen to attend a weekend leadership event at a local high school. It was 28 or so years ago so I do not exactly remember why or how I was chosen. What I do remember is a weekend full of the type of activities anyone that has been through corporate leadership training has been subjected to at some point: being verbally led around while blindfolded, team obstacle courses, etc. At my first restaurant job at age 16, I was a certified trainer for every position in which it was legal for me to work (you had to be 18 to work at the prep station since it involved sharp objects).

As previously stated, I did not live up to my potential. My grades were good enough to pass, I took the bare minimum requirement classes I needed to graduate. It was such a problem that when I went to take an “extra” class, I dropped it after a week because I didn’t feel like dealing with the teacher. After high school I went into the Marine Corps. In boot camp, I spent most of my time as a “knowledge recruit” responsible for teaching the platoon the various knowledge items required to graduate boot camp: chain of command (from the Drill Instructors to the President), important events in our history, first aid, martial arts, etc. In one of the least exciting jobs in the Marine Corps, I excelled enough to procedurally run an office because the Non-Commissioned Officer (NCO) above me was incapable of doing so. This led to some friction that, in retrospect, I should not be proud of but at the time had me tickled.

In my first IT job, I was supervising the helpdesk after just 11 months and managing the entire department after 4 years. In my second IT job, I was running a team after 18 months and creating a team from scratch after that. Since that last promotion, I have only taken managerial positions and focused on honing my leadership into something that works for me and my employees despite any outside influences to the contrary.

In 2019, I played D&D for the first time. I played in an Extra Life charity game for a full 24 hours staight; I was HOOKED. Up until that point in my life I had never found passion in anything. I was good at a lot of things (more on that later) but never cared to master anything. I can kind of play a handful of instruments, I can kind of arrange music, I was good in band in high school, I am pretty good at IT, and I can lead. D&D changed that. 

When the pandemic hit, the game I was in went virtual but fizzled out. My wife had found a love of TTRPGs by playing in a CyberPunk Red game and was not ready to give it up. I took over a friend's server and have been DMing 5e for about 3 years. Since then, I have acquired 5 3d printers, spent countless thousands on books, over 1400 minis, patreons, kickstarters, a gaming table, and just about anything else I could find related to DND5e. I need more of it in my life. If I could make a living doing it, I would. This is my first step at attemping an income from it.

In 2023, at the age of 37, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Suddenly things made a LOT more sense: my inability to study but having the ability to learn new things quickly, impulsivity, pattern recognition, behavior that my parents did their best to beat out of me. I have been on Adderall for about 8 months and it has made a world of difference.