From foster care in Western Massachusetts to a DM that changed everything in Beverly Hills. From an Apple II GS to $172M in pipeline. This is the story of someone who learned early that the right room — the right tool, the right school, the right opportunity — can change the entire direction of a life.
I was adopted. I spent time in foster care before finding my family — a family that gave me stability, love, and a front-row seat to the work of people who show up for others. My mother became the Executive Director at Head Start, and I spent a lot of my childhood volunteering alongside her. I watched her build programs, fight for resources, and bet everything on the idea that early access changes everything.
She was right. And I was paying attention.
What I absorbed from those years wasn't a lesson about hardship. It was a lesson about access. About how the right teacher, the right program, the right environment — even the right computer — can quietly rewrite someone's entire future.
"I understood early that where you are shapes who you become. So I started choosing my rooms very deliberately."
When it came time for middle school and high school, I enrolled as a school-of-choice student at Amherst Regional. The town I grew up in — Bernardston, Massachusetts — was small, proud, and tight on resources. Amherst was different. Better-funded, more ambitious, more diverse in what it thought was possible. I knew I needed that environment, so I went and got it.
That decision — choosing to go to a better room before anyone told me I could — is the one I trace almost everything else back to.
The Technology Chapter
Every computer was a new door. Not just to software or the internet — but to the idea that you could make things, build things, communicate things, and reach people in ways that had nothing to do with geography or circumstance.
I was seven years old when I got my first computer. An Apple II GS. To most people in 1993, it was a machine that did things. To me, it was a portal. It had color. It had sound. It felt like the future had arrived in our living room and decided to stay. I didn't fully understand it yet, but I couldn't stop touching it. Couldn't stop exploring. The curiosity it planted never really left.
Christmas, 1996. A Gateway computer arrived in a box covered in black-and-white cow spots. If you grew up in that era, you know exactly what I'm talking about. But here's the thing — that box wasn't just packaging. It was brand identity. Gateway made technology feel accessible, exciting, and a little irreverent. In a world where computers were beige and corporate, they shipped yours in a cow box. It was different. It was memorable. It worked. I didn't have the vocabulary for it yet, but I was studying that without realizing it.
After years on a Dell Inspiron that increasingly felt like a liability, I went back to Apple. The MacBook era. iPhoto. GarageBand. Pages. A machine that understood that design wasn't a feature — it was the point. This was the year my relationship with creative tools deepened into something that would become a career. Every application felt like it wanted you to make something. So I did.
The Brand-Building Chapter
His name was Mike Kittredge Jr. His father was Mike Kittredge — founder of Yankee Candle, one of the most successful consumer brands in New England history. We met in a marketing class at UMass Amherst, and somewhere between lectures on positioning and consumer behavior, we started talking about what we could build.
What we built was Kringle Candle — launched in my hometown of Bernardston, Massachusetts — alongside The Farm Table restaurant. Two brands, one small town, and the kind of ambition that only makes sense when you're young enough to not fully understand the odds.
I was VP. I was also all-in. Building a brand from the ground up, in a place people drove past on the way somewhere else, with a legacy entrepreneur watching over the whole thing — it was exhilarating and exhausting in equal measure. We were designing logos, building customer experiences, writing copy, figuring out packaging, thinking about what made people feel something when they walked through the door.
"I learned that building something real — something people actually love — is one of the most demanding and rewarding things a person can do. I also learned that building it doesn't always mean keeping it."
I left college for it. At the time, it felt like the obvious move — the business was real, the momentum was real, and the classroom felt small compared to what we were doing. Looking back, I know that decision came with costs I didn't fully account for. I gave a lot to that chapter. I gave some of the best years of my early career to it.
Eventually, I was pushed out. I won't dress that up more than it needs to be. It happened. It hurt. And it changed the way I think about ownership, loyalty, and what it means to build something versus what it means to own something. Those aren't always the same thing, and if you've ever found that out the hard way, you know exactly what I mean.
Bernardston, Massachusetts
Kringle Candle
& The Farm Table
The Reinvention Chapter
Some people reinvent themselves once. I've done it as a habit. Not because I was lost — but because I've always been drawn to what was next.
I packed my things and moved west. San Francisco in the middle of the tech boom was a different planet — ambitious, caffeinated, and absolutely convinced it was inventing the future. I was there for it. I worked in tech during one of the most electric eras the industry has seen, surrounded by people building things that didn't have names yet. It was exactly the kind of room I'd been training myself to find.
While in San Francisco, I appeared on a Bravo reality show — and separately, on a show called Mystery Millionaire with Mike Kittredge Jr. Because apparently my life hadn't been interesting enough. Television has a way of shrinking things and amplifying them simultaneously. What I took away from that experience: story is everything. How you frame something is as important as the something itself.
Then the Airbnb boom happened. My condo in San Francisco was sold — converted into short-term rental inventory like so many units in the city at the time. I was suddenly without a home in the most expensive rental market in America. So I did what any reasonable person would do: I moved to Los Angeles. Lemons. Lemonade. You know how it goes.
Every one of these chapters — the candle company, San Francisco, the shows, the displacement — forced a choice: collapse or adapt. I've never been particularly good at collapsing. What I've gotten very good at is looking at a room I'm not in yet, deciding I belong there, and figuring out how to get through the door.
Hi Aaron — I know you don't know me. I've followed your work and I believe I can help you grow. I'd love to come work for you.
Thanks — but we're not hiring right now.
I'll work for free. I'm telling you — you won't find anyone better. Give me a shot to prove it.
I'd moved to Los Angeles and I needed a job in the industry I'd been studying my entire life. Luxury real estate marketing. I DM'd Aaron Kirman — one of the top real estate agents in Beverly Hills — cold. He said no. I pushed back. I told him I'd work for free because I knew I was worth it and that he wouldn't find anyone better. I meant every word of it.
He gave me a trial run. I showed him what I could do. He hired me.
That moment — the bet on myself, the willingness to show up and prove it before anyone asked — is maybe the most "me" thing I've ever done. It's how I've operated ever since. You identify the room, you decide you belong in it, and then you go make yourself impossible to ignore.
The Career
22 years of building at the intersection of marketing, technology, branding, and real estate. Every role a new room. Every room a new lesson.
Today
"I've been adopted, displaced, pushed out, and underestimated.
Every time, I found a better room."
The thread through all of it — the Apple II GS, the candle empire, the Bravo show, the cold DM, the $172M pipeline — is this: I have always been more interested in what's possible than what's comfortable. I've always been willing to bet on myself before anyone else did. And I've always understood, at a bone-deep level, that the right environment — the right tools, the right people, the right moment — can rewrite everything.
That's why I built Wysocki Creative. Because I've spent 22 years doing this work for other people's brands. It's about time I did it for my own. And now I get to do it for yours.