Become the Main Character of Your Own Life.
You have more influence over the direction of your life than you may realize. Together, we work on your identity, decisions, opportunities, confidence, relationships, work, and the experiences you want your life to contain.
“Your life is your story, and you are the main character of it.”
Juan MichaelMy path has never been one straight line.
Business owner. Student leader. Mentor. Competitor. Advisor. Volunteer. Speaker. Coach. Each chapter has taught me something different about identity, opportunity, leadership, confidence, and what happens when we actively participate in creating our lives.
What Else Is Possible?
I grew up as a first-generation Salvadoran American, watching my family build a life from what they had and create opportunities where there were not always obvious ones.
That stayed with me.
As I got older, I became someone who kept looking for the next door I could walk through. Education, entrepreneurship, leadership, volunteering, competitions, mentorship, public speaking, travel, and eventually moving across the world.
I did not always know where those experiences would lead.
Some of the biggest changes in my life began with an application, a conversation, an introduction, or the decision to try something I had never done before.
I learned that opportunity is not only about what becomes available to you.
It is also about whether you recognize it, whether you are willing to pursue it, and sometimes whether you are willing to create the opportunity yourself.
Building & Becoming
My experience with entrepreneurship started years before The Desert Consulting.
From 2017 to 2019, I ran a pressure-washing business.
I later prepared taxes for a season and spent three years selling insurance.
Those experiences put me in direct contact with customers, rejection, questions, objections, responsibility, deadlines, and the reality that trust has to be earned.
- Pressure-washing business, 2017–2019
- Tax preparation
- Three years in insurance sales
- Garner Holt Fast Pitch Competition
- Sunstone Management Startup Competition
- Co-Founder of The Desert Consulting
Your path can look scattered while you are living it. Years later, you may realize you were collecting skills for something you had not imagined yet.
Business strategy later became another arena where I could test what I was learning.
In 2024, my team competed in the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition and earned Runner-Up for Best Overall Performance.
I later returned in an advisory role. One of the teams I supported went on to earn First Place for Overall Performance.
That transition, from competing myself to helping someone else succeed, became an important part of how I think about growth.
Leadership Became Service.
During college, leadership and community service became a major part of my life.
I served on the Board of Directors of Associated Students, Inc., participating in nonprofit governance and decisions involving resources used to serve the student community.
For the 2024–2025 academic year, I was named Board Member of the Year.
I also served as a University Orientation Leader, helping new students and their families navigate one of the biggest transitions of their lives.
Opportunity became more meaningful when I learned how to use what I had experienced to make someone else's path a little easier.
Mentoring reinforced something that continues to influence how I work with people today.
Sometimes people do not need someone to make a decision for them. They need help seeing their options, recognizing what is available to them, and becoming more confident taking the next step themselves.
Confidence Was Something I Practiced.
I used to consider myself a shy introvert.
I eventually decided that I wanted to become more outgoing, not because there was anything wrong with being introverted, but because I did not want fear to decide which experiences, relationships, or opportunities I could pursue.
Public speaking was one of the clearest examples.
There was a time when speaking in front of five people could make my face turn red.
Today, I can give presentations in front of hundreds of people.
Becoming comfortable with public speaking took me roughly nine years of deliberate practice.
During those years, I learned through repetition, mistakes, preparation, uncomfortable moments, small wins, and continuing to show up.
I also had to work through a fear of being visible online. Posting my ideas publicly once felt intimidating. Over time, visibility became another skill I could practice instead of something I had to wait to feel ready for.
Around age 23, another part of my life forced me to slow down and reconsider how I was living.
Those experiences made me think about more than achievement. They made me think about the relationship between my health, habits, identity, priorities, and the kind of life I actually wanted to sustain.
Some of what I know today took years of trial and error.
One of the reasons I enjoy coaching is that I can take lessons that took me years to understand and help someone else learn from them without automatically having to spend the same nine years figuring everything out from scratch.
I cannot take the action for someone else.
They still have to speak. They still have to walk into the room. They still have to take the risk.
But they do not necessarily have to start from zero.
Why Main Character?
To me, becoming the main character of your own life means participating in it.
Your life should not look like mine.
I bring my experiences as an entrepreneur, mentor, student leader, salesperson, speaker, advisor, volunteer, traveler, competitor, and someone who has repeatedly had to rethink what I want my own life to become.
But coaching with me is not about copying my path.
My role is to help you examine yours.
We can look at who you are becoming, the decisions in front of you, opportunities you may not be seeing, the confidence you are trying to build, the relationships and work that matter to you, and the experiences you want your life to contain.
Sometimes that means reflection.
Sometimes it means challenging an assumption.
And sometimes it means identifying a real next move and actually taking it.
“You hold the pen to whatever reality it is that you want for yourself. You can create it.”
COMING
SOON!