Having to cover the costs of college himself, Doug Asano put his nose to the grindstone and got a foot in the door to Wall Street earlier than most. When he realized the jobs that, on paper, should make him happy weren't doing the trick, he had to tap the internal compass and recalibrate. Find out how, while fending for yourself is sometimes necessary, reaching out to others can be even more vital.
Guest Doug Asano had always had a fascination with Wall Street and could envision himself there. In the middle of sophomore year, the impetus to get a job there became less theoretical and more practical when his father said that Doug would need to pay the rest of his way through college. With an upperclass mentor already working in investment banking, he was able to get internships at prestigious banks and land a job at JP Morgan at the end of the summer before senior year.
That summer, however, was also the time when Sarah Devens, a classmate of his at both Dartmouth and high school, took her life by suicide. The experience shook him and, without mental health resources to access, he had a hard time processing the happiness of starting a new life and the pain of his loss.
His time on Wall Street was successful in terms of his ability to get the work done, but he realized that it wasn’t fulfilling him. He went home to Boston for a stint in private equity but found that he kept wondering what the companies that he worked with would actually get their products to market. He realized he needed to learn more about the business of business so off to Tuck he went. When he found out what would be fulfilling—jumping into operations—he worked his network to find a role and industry he never would have considered a path to success. When even that road got rocky, he needed to tap into both his internal compass and lean on his friends to get through.
In this episode, find out from Doug how, while fending for yourself is sometimes necessary, reaching out to others can be even more vital …on ROADS TAKEN...with Leslie Jennings Rowley.
About This Episode's Guest
Doug Asano, who is currently Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, at Roseburg Forest Products, has spent the last two decades in the engineered wood industry after an early career in investment banking and private equity. After attending Dartmouth for his undergrad degree, he returned to Tuck School of Business for his MBA. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two daughters.
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Doug Asano: At a time where normally I'm the person that's rah rah, go go, go, here's your help, here's your help, I'm here for you…suddenly I was that person and that's really hard. I'm supposed to be the dad who's providing for his wife and kids, getting ready to send their kids to college in a couple of years and suddenly what am I going to do?
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Having to cover the costs of college himself, Doug Asano put his nose to the grindstone and got a foot in the door to Wall Street earlier than most. When he realized the jobs that on paper should make him happy weren't doing the trick, he had to tap into the internal compass and recalibrate. Find out how while fending for yourself is sometimes necessary, reaching out to others can be even more vital…on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
I'm here today with Doug Asano and we are going to talk about all the things we learned after college and the ways that our paths take us to places we didn't expect, through some forests and down some country roads, who knows? But it's lovely to have you with us.
DA: Thanks so much. Thank you, Leslie. I'm thrilled to be here.
LJR: All right. I start this the same way with each of my guests asking two questions and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
DA: Wow. I think who was I in college? I was a student who thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do and I. Probably too early. If I look back, committed myself to an economics major thinking that would guarantee me a job on Wall Street. And I immediately plunged myself in even after freshman year into getting internships. And by the time I graduated, I had a pretty impressive roster of internships. I've always been pretty focused, but I think I look back and I probably missed some opportunities to explore other avenues, whether it was courses or activities at Dartmouth. I mean, I loved my time in Hanover. I met my now wife. We got married up there eventually, so it's not like I didn't have fun. But I look back and I was pretty focused. And I think part of it also, Leslie, was at the end of my sophomore year, my mom got really sick and I was the oldest of four. And I had been going to private school since third grade. And my dad came to me. I'll never forget this. I had just gotten back from my LSA in France, the winter term of sophomore year. And my dad said, Hey, look, I love you, buddy. I don't have any money for you anymore. You gotta pay for college on your own. I think you should transfer to UNH. And I said, thank you. I think UNH is a great school, but I'm going to figure out a way to finish Dartmouth. And he looked at me and he thought I was crazy. And so I ended up having to take on student loans that even at that time were way beyond anything I probably should have done. I ended up taking on side jobs and, you know, I had been focused on a career in Wall Street before that, but for me, the added stress of having to literally pay for college those last two years was something I thought about a lot and it was stressful. It really focused me on, okay, well, how am I going to pay for next semester? Right? And what do I need to do to get the money in the bank? So, you know, you grow up quickly when something happens.
LJR: Did your buddies know that in college? That that was going on?
DA: They did. I was pretty open about it, but I didn't, you know, I was very, very I guess, wary of anyone considering me, you know, some sort of charitable project. Right?
LJR: Right.
DA: And so, well, I had plenty of fun. I did lots of fun things. I played on the rugby team. But vacations and any open time on my schedule, I had a gazillion jobs lined up because every dollar man, I could put that towards tuition.
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm going to interrupt you. I'm sorry, Doug. I rarely do this, but it's just so interesting to me that there's a clear focus and there became a clear need for the early kind of lucrative job, but what was the drive before you had that l ike, you know, immediate need that was like, I know I want to go on Wall Street. That, that seems to, you know, in all the conversations I had, that seems to be something people stumble upon, but not you. Where'd that come from?
DA: You know, that's that, that probably goes back to what I mean, I think look a lot of our motivations in mind for, well, before we get to college. I grew up as the oldest son of a Japanese father. And so, you know, the joke that there's the Asian F as an A minus. We were really, really pushed to excel in education, right? And, and my dad and mom were really proud. I mean, I have two degrees from Dartmouth and my brother went to Stanford. My sister has two degrees from Harvard. And my youngest brother is an eye surgeon, right? So we, we did well when it comes to diplomas on the wall. But I think for me, you know, growing up in my dad was an entrepreneur and we were always on the cusp of either doing really, really well, or my dad declaring bankruptcy and there was nothing in between. And I was the oldest. I was the responsible one. I always felt like I had to kind of buffer that that very binary and extreme kind of experience. And I was really good at math and I liked business. I remember in like fifth grade we had a stock market contest and I just was like, oh, what is this? This is really cool. And I didn't know what it was. And so I, you know, I didn't know what Wall Street. I had no idea what investment banking was until I got to Dartmouth. And one of my mentors, a ‘93, he was really influential in my early kind of what is Dartmouth and what are you supposed to do at Dartmouth? And what does the world after Dartmouth look like, a guy named Dan Angeloff. And he went to JP Morgan. And if he went to JP Morgan, it didn't matter what JP Morgan did. That for me was good. And so my, my goal was, well, if Dan Angeloff is going to go to JP Morgan, then that sounds like a good place for me. And he helped me get me an internship after my junior year. And I fell in love with kind of, I'd say the intellectual rigor and the pace of investment banking. I enjoyed the mix for me of math and business, and a very fast pace. And I've enjoyed also the people. And so I think that that was kind of that conflux and, you know, it just happened to beat Dan's paths and I crossed, and I've always had a very strong attraction to strong mentors in my life. And, and Dan was really one of the first people who defined for me What was my time at Dartmouth? And what did I think about afterwards?
LJR: Yeah. Yeah. So that answers that really well. And to JP Morgan, you went. And spent a career starter in exactly that, right? Investment banking.
DA: Yeah. You know, I, I got an internship there the summer before my senior year. And I lived in Hoboken, New Jersey with another ‘96, Matt Miller. It was a really my first like, wow, this is investment banking and I loved it. I wasn't hugely a fan of New York City. But It was kind of that, all right, what? I'm young, I can live anywhere, right? Everything I own goes in a duffel bag. So it's not like I've got a huge life outside of my professional obligations to worry about. That summer between junior and senior year was a learning experience on two fronts, Leslie.
One was I learned what it was like, what was the expectation of a job after Dartmouth, the long hours, the commute back and forth in the Lincoln tunnel? What did, what is life in New York city? Like all that. And then that was the summer that a classmate of our Sarah Devens passed away from suicide. And that is a huge…I would say that's one of the most defining moments for me and darkness. She and I went to St. Paul's, the boarding school we graduated from, together. So Sarah and I had been together for that, not as a couple, but as friends, very close friends for many years. And I'll never forget that phone call. I'll never forget that weekend. And it was kind of going into senior year, it put a whole new perspective for me on life, friendship. I was angry. I was confused. I was hurt. I was sad. And so suddenly you're in your final year at Dartmouth, right? And I accepted the job at JP Morgan that they gave me a full-time offer very quickly because it gave me a signing bonus that basically allowed me to pay for a good chunk of my senior year at Dartmouth.
And a lot of us who were close to Sarah struggled. And senior year for me was this wait a minute. I'm supposed to be celebrating. I've got this job that most people would envy. I've got. I'm going to have a diploma from Dartmouth. I've been able to take some stress off my life and know that I can pay for the senior year. And then I've got this huge hole in my heart from losing a very close friend. And I think up until that point, if you think about where we were 25 years ago as a society, Leslie, nobody talked about mental health [LJR: yeah, right] and suicide was like almost, you were ashamed of it. And so it was this huge. You know, just baseball bat to the side of the head for me. And I think if I look back senior year, for me, it was very melancholy. I mean, look, I had fun and I lived off campus with my best friends, but I still look back at that and say it at a young age to lose one of your best friends at a time of life where, you know, quote unquote, it's supposed to be fun, right? It was it was a bit of a shock to me. So, yeah.
LJR: Yeah. And I think making us question, you know, the place for our own drives for achievement and that sort of thing. But with, as you say, at the time, very few resources to help us process that and figure that out.
DA: No. I remember going to the funeral just feeling devastated and then. You know, like Monday, it was like, okay, go back to work, right? And, and, and you don't talk to anybody about it. You didn't, you didn't have a meditation app on your phone that you could go to find…nobody meditated back there. That was people who were, you know, wearing patchouli and you know, living in the mountains, right? So it was, it was tough. And I don't know that I had any perspective on the emotional and mental toll that took, and, you know, I had a great senior year.
You know, graduated and threw myself into JP Morgan and kind of found myself in this rah rah, go, go, everyone's enthusiastic could be there. You know, this is the best of the best, right? These are the people from all these amazing schools that are, you suddenly realize you look around and you go, wow, I'm just average. Right. And, and, and it was hard too, because I think I got there and I suddenly realized that there are some people here who are amazing. And I went through this, like, I'm just average. I must be just average. I don't know how I got here. And when I do that, when I get that in my head, I tend to just put my nose to the grindstone and I, again, I'm 23 years old, so you can do this, but I was working a hundred hours a week, getting home at one in the morning, going straight to sleep, waking up, going back to the office at 8:30, 9am. I don't think I realized that the physical toll or the mental toll it took. And I think I learned very early, I saw all of my colleagues really start to struggle about six months. There was definitely a scene of a lot of partying, which is natural, right? You're 23, you're in New York City. And I certainly went out and had fun. I'd never been a runner before that. And I found myself, if anyone knows me, I am not anywhere close to a prototypical runner's body. And I found myself throwing myself into running because it was my outlet for stress. Just physical activity after sitting at a desk all day long, working Saturdays, working Sundays. And I suddenly found myself, you know, running half marathons and marathons purely just to find an outlet for the extreme stress that I was going through and about a year in I realized two things. One was I really enjoyed the intellectual stimulation and the mentorship and the coaching. I did not like living in New York City. And, and I know there's plenty of my friends who've grown up there and lived there; for me it just wasn't a good match. And I think the other thing was, you know, an investment banking, your, your, your career is marked by a quick and successive series of transactions. And I found myself longing for something a little more permanent that I could see my progression and influence.
And so I, I didn't know what to do. I was like, what do you do when you're in investment banking? What else? I mean, this was supposed to be the pinnacle. I was supposed to work at JP Morgan for 30 years and become a managing director and, you know, ended up with a house on the Hamptons and all that. And, and I was like, I don't know what. What does somebody do? And I felt like it was, I was a failure because I wanted an off-ramp. And I think that speaks to this idea that, you know, I call it screen scraping, Leslie. Again, it wasn't in existence back then, but it's very easy today to go on social media and see that Jimmy's off on vacation with his wife and kids at the beach and God they're smiling and it looks amazing. And then, you know, Sarah over here just got promoted to some ridiculously amazing job. And then, you know, so-and-so over there is volunteering to save lions in Africa, right? And you pull that composite together and you create this life that doesn't exist and you compare yourself to that life. And it's, it's impossible; it does not exist. And when you're 23 years old, right. And you have hit what you think is your dream job. And then you find out that, yeah, you're good at it. But it doesn't matter how much they pay you. You're not happy. And I didn't think I could say that, right?
LJR: Right, right.
DA: I didn't know what else I could do. And so I grew up in Boston, a lot of people when they leave investment bank and go to private equity. And I said, well, it's a lot of the same skills it's transactional, but you're invested in these companies and you want to help them succeed for the five or 10 years that you own. That's going to be the job. Right. And I had this vision that, that, well, that has to be the one that I'm going to do for the next 25 years. And I got a great job in Boston at an amazing private equity firm. And again, great mentors. And I got there. And I think that combination of the intensity of working at JP Morgan and the relief of quote unquote, being home in Boston, I hit a rough patch. I really struggled. And it showed at work. And I was suddenly like for the first time, you know, I'd always been, you know, the kid in high school, who's going to go to Dartmouth. And then I get to Dartmouth and I do really well. And I go to JP Morgan and then I get to this private equity firm. And it was the first time I got a, not just bad, but pretty scathing review. And I was like, what just happened? Right. And, you know, the benefit of hindsight, I look back and it was a culmination of a lot of things. My mom was really sick at the time. I was pretty distracted with that and I realized that I was doing this because I thought this is what I was supposed to do and credit to the firm and my colleagues, you know, they gave me a second chance and I kind of put my nose to the grindstone kind of a masochistic way. I remember the day after that review. I signed up for the Boston marathon, not as a qualifier, but as a fundraiser. And I was like, look, if I screwed up this badly, then I'm going to really make it hard on myself. And I was waking up…I was living actually with eight Dartmouth guys in Brookline, and I would wake up at like five in the morning, in the middle of the winter in Boston and go run, 10, 15 miles every morning to get ready for the marathon. And I figured I'm going to make it even harder on myself, given that I screwed up, to quote, unquote, resurrect or reconcile this bad review. And the second year I was there, I did better, but I realized two things. One was, you know, I was pursuing something that I thought I was supposed to do and I realized it wasn't fulfilling. And then the second thing I realized was I really did like working with these companies. And after we finished the transaction, I would ask myself, how is that company going to grow? How are they going to make all this happen? And in private equity, you've got to move on to the next action. You got to let the management team worry about that stuff. And I thought to myself, that's what I want to do, but I had no idea. What is, what do you do to get to management, Quote unquote, right? You know, the traditional track is you do two years of investment banking, and then you do two years of private equity, and then you go to business school and I had gotten in Tuck. And I had no idea why I was going to go spend a hundred thousand dollars on an education. I would love to go back to Hanover, but I actually said pause and I deferred from Tuck. And my wife and I had just gotten married and an opportunity with one of the private equity portfolio companies came up and we moved on a whim to Portland, Maine, and I worked for a quote unquote, you know, operating company and I loved it. I just was like, wow, I enjoy trying to figure out these problems that go past the transaction, right? And I love the idea of trying to build this thing. And you know, it was 2000, it was a startup internet company. We were all going to be millionaires, right? And we loved Portland. We made some great friends. The company exploded, imploded, whatever. I then knew two things. One: I wanted to go. Two: if I didn't go to back to business school, I was always going to be the finance guy and I did not want to be the finance guy. And I knew I had to go back and get an MBA to reset that. And I figured, well, my deferral at Tuck had actually expired. So I had to reapply, but I knew this time why it was going to business school. And I knew what it was I wanted to do. And. We were thrilled to go back to Hanover. I will tell you that going back after at that point was six years, all those things that you wish you did when you were an undergrad, you can do when you're there as a graduate student, I loved it. It was so great to be back. And my oldest was born there. The community was amazing. You know, it was the reset I needed and I had a job offer to actually stay in Hanover, which is very rare. There aren't a lot of companies there. And we were really, really thinking long and hard about staying. So that's kind of the immediate progression after Dartmouth.
I would say one constant through all that, Leslie, is I've stayed extremely close to my Dartmouth friends. We've got ten of us, I don’t know, something like that, that we go on a ski trip every year and we talk, and we've got a WhatsApp group that we chat on. And you know, it's great ,because just as you think that you're not good enough, or you see all these news clips in the Dartmouth alumni magazine about all the alumni who are doing things that you're not doing, you can get with the people who've known you since you were 18 and there's no pretense and there's no expectation of anything. And we've been through a lot, right? You know, we we've got a friend, one of our Dartmouth roommates lost his wife is another Dartmouth grad to cancer a year and a half ago. We've had job losses. We've had, you know, kids and challenges with kids and, you know, the ups and downs of marriage. So I think that's been for me, a huge foundational piece of strength through all the ups and downs of life for 25 years since we left.
LJR: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, once you got that, I mean, there are so many things, Doug, I can talk about like this masochistic, if I'm going to, you know, if I've done poorly, I'm just gonna make my life a living hell for myself. I think that is an really interesting thing after we talked about kind of the drive of mental health not having been addressed in our youth. We really did not get a lot of guidance on how to be kind kinder to ourselves. But you did come to some real, real learnings and understandings about who you are and what made you tick and why those things that should have felt great didn't feel great because the should was coming from some external voice and not your own. Love that you understood, you needed to be part of the team, be part of making it work. And you did find the places and the industry that let you do that. So you've been kind of a rising star in the same field for nearly two decades now. Tell us about that, finding that.
DA: Yeah. Like many business schools talk is a very good breeding ground for investment banking, private equity, and consulting. And a lot of my classmates went to talk specifically to find those roles and they would, they see your resume and they come find you and they say, Hey, you did banking and private equity; tell me how you got those jobs. And then I would say, well, you know, here's my experience and I'm not going to go back to it. And they just would be stunned. They'd be like, how can you with the names on your resume? How can you not want to go back to it? And I'd say, Hey, you know, I learned so much and I'm so grateful for the experiences I had at those organizations and the people who took me under their wing and gave me opportunities that no 23 year old should ever have. And I am forever grateful for those opportunities and those learning experiences, but it wasn't for me. And I don't think, you know, Leslie, at the time I could articulate why as well, obviously the benefit of 25, 20 years or whatever is certainly some wisdom on that.
But I got to Tuck and I knew immediately that the recruiting, all the companies that come in and wine and dine everybody, I was not going to find my job there. And I was going to find my job through just good old fashioned networking, which is one of the hallmarks of not just the Dartmouth alumni network, but Tuck in particular. It's very well known to be supportive of each other. And I just, I knew that that job was going to be something that didn't show up on the job board. And I got an internship the summer between my first and second year in Hanover with a local manufacturing company. And I thought that was going to be the job. And then actually a Dartmouth 93, who had gone to Tuck who lived in the Upper Valley called me one day and I was close friends with them and he said, Hey, I've got a buddy, Doug, from Tuck, who I think does what you want. And you guys should talk because you're going to really like each other. And I thought, okay. And we went to Murphy's and we immediately hit it off. The company he was working for did not have a history of hiring MBAs, but he was thriving. He loved it. And frankly, he convinced me that that that was the opportunity for me. And it was tough because we had this great opportunity to stay in Hanover. And this job with a company called JM Huber was based in New Jersey and, you know, no offense to anyone listening, but New Jersey was not on our list of places to go, having lived in Hanover. And so, you know, I found it, I was like, this is the opportunity I'm looking for. My oldest at the time was six months old and very shortly thereafter, my wife was pregnant with our second. We moved to New Jersey. We knew nobody. We lived outside of Princeton. I was commuting not just to headquarters by train every day, but most of the time I was actually flying to other locations and I would leave Monday and come back Thursday. [LJR: Ugh.] It was tough. Right? You you're going through a lot as a young parent, but the company here were offered me a role in. And my wife said, well, look, it can't be any worse than New Jersey. And if it means you're around, great. And oh, by the way, we can actually afford to buy something. And oh, if we don't like it, okay, so we leave. And here we are. 17 years later.
Very quickly I got put into a sales role. And I was working in manufacturing for wood. And I thought to myself, is this why I went to business school, to sell wood? And if you're in business school, you know, most people in business school don't want to go to sales, not a job that people think about. And I thought I was a failure, right? I remember when the president came to me and said, Hey, we're going to put you in a customer service sales role. And I think maybe this is their way of just firing me, right? But really what it was they saw in me that I was good at working with people. I loved it. I found myself just loving the industry. I loved feeding people. I loved everything about it. Now I will say the travel was the downside and I've averaged a hundred flights a year for now the better part of my career since 2005, Leslie. If you're in sales, especially sales leader. You're on the road. And so I've been that dad who's missed things, right. And I found myself getting more and more responsibility at Huber and I enjoyed it. And the travel, we learned how to manage it, both my wife and my two girls, we figured it out.
You know, I was kind of cruising along and in 2020, the pandemic hit and none of us had any idea what was going to happen. We were worried that this was going to be a redo of 2008. We didn't know what was going to happen in the housing market where most of our product ends up. We didn't know, you know, if the world was literally going to shut down, if we were going to have jobs and right at the same time, and my dad got diagnosed with cancer right the week before the world shut down. And so, you know, your head is spinning. My last year at Tuck, I lost my mom to breast cancer, right? So this was round two of apparent parent with cancer. You know, suddenly you're like, wait a minute, what is going on? And then in May of 2020, I lost my job and it was suddenly like pandemic, cancer, job loss. And you suddenly are completely unmoored.
You know, I was the person, not just a tuck, but Dartmouth people would say you've been at the same company for 17 years, Doug ? That's unheard of in our generation. And I didn't think anything of it. Here I am: Dad's got cancer again. There's a pandemic. None of us have any idea what's happening. I don't have a job. I have two kids in high school, a wife at home. We're building a house, our dream house, okay? And I'm suddenly worrying about like, what am I going to do for health insurance? And are we going to be able to finish this house? And I remember one day, Leslie, I had to sit down and I hadn't written a resume in 17 years. [LJR: Right.] Forget about, I didn't even have my own computer. It made me question everything about myself. Am I any good at what I did? What was the 17 past years of what I've done just a dream? And I started picking apart all my successes. I started questioning whether or not I was just a complete, complete fabrication of this person. And I remember writing my resume. It was really hard cause I was like, do I believe any of this stuff I’m writing? It was a tough, tough time. And I'll tell you, two of my roommates in particular called me every day. And for that, I am forever grateful. And my family rallied around me at a time where normally I'm the person that's rah rah, go, go, go, here's your help, here's your help, I'm here for you…Suddenly I was that person and that's really hard, really hard. I'm supposed to be the dad who's providing for his wife and kids building this dream home, getting ready to send their kids to college in a couple of years. And suddenly I'm like, am I going to be selling refrigerators at Lowe's tomorrow? What am I going to do?
It was a topsy-turvy time. It's a small industry. I work in and I'm friends with a lot of people. And my last day it was a Friday. And that Saturday morning, the phone started to ring. Dartmouth friends were calling, Tuck friends were calling, industry friends were calling the word, got out quickly and suddenly found myself in a bunch of job searches. And it was tough because it was like, are we gonna stay in Charlotte? Are we going to leave, you know, disrupt the girls' high school educations. You know, this home that we've called home for 17 years. Is it going to be gone? Are we going to build this house? And I, a couple of weeks later, I had an opportunity you'll move to another city and start over and join a completely different industry. I came within probably minutes of accepting that job, Leslie, and through a lot of circumstances and fate and friends, the current job I've got today, it was not a formal job offer. It was still in the works. It was one of these am I really going to say no to a very, very comfortable job? Okay, so you got to move. Everyone…people move all the time, right? Why am I making such a big deal? Am I really going to say no to this? On the hopes of something coming together with this other opportunity? Oh man. The best advice I got in that job search was a friend. I had breakfast with him on a rainy, rainy day here in Davidson. He said, Doug, I've been through what you're going through. The best advice I can give you is be brave. And I thought, well, that's easy to say. When we're sitting around in coffee, you have a job, I don’t. But it was true. And I turned down that offer a couple of weeks later, the opportunity that was not solidified became a job offer. And here I am. I joined the company. They had known me. I had known them. They're based in Oregon. They said I could stay in North Carolina, took an internal consulting role. And then in July of 2021, not even a year after I started, the CEO called me and said, Hey, you're your boss—who I've always been close to—Just resigned to take another really good job. We want you to take her job as senior vice president of our entire sales, marketing logistics group. You know, again, you kind of like what just happened? And so here I am. He asked me if I would move to Oregon and I said, no. And he said, that's. And so, you know, I've committed that for the rest of 2021, I would be in Oregon every other week, which, you know, for me, I've always traveled. So that really wasn't that big a deal. I love what I'm doing thrilled to be in this organization. I'm grateful for all the years of experience in other organizations that have gotten me to this point, right? And it's very easy for some people I think, to get angry when this happens. And there were days where it was hard not to get angry. But, you know, my perspective was if I dwell on the anger, that's energy I could be using to move forward and I need to move forward. I'm not 22 where everything I own fits in a duffel bag. I got kids, I got all these other commitments. I got to really move forward and forget about the past. And it was enormously helpful to have friends to be there to say, stop beating yourself up, right? Stop, twisting yourself into a pretzel. So, you know, here I am. I've been in the industry for 20 years. I love it.
If you had told me the day I graduated, that I would be living in North Carolina, working in sales for a company that makes lumber. I would have told you, not only are you crazy, but that sounds like a complete failure of what I want to do as a 22-year-old Dartmouth ‘96 graduating.
LJR: But now that you're there, you realize people still love you and your soul is fed in a way that you couldn't have imagined when you were thinking about what was “supposed to be,” right?
DA: Supposed to be. And Leslie, if someone had said, Hey, Doug, 25 years from now, you really need to think about feeding your soul and taking care of your mental health and making sure that your physical wellbeing and your mental health wellbeing are equally cared for, I would have been like, what are you talking about? Right? Some new age, mumbo jumbo. Again, I think that society has advanced so much and we still have a long way to go, but we can talk about this, right? I mean, if you told me it's 22, that I would talk about my failures on a podcast. Yeah, I would've said, are you kidding me? I'm not going to do that. But I think, you know, it speaks to this journey we're all on that it's not linear. It's not predictable. You learn a lot from the stumbles and falls and the dark spots. I mean, we've all been through them.
LJR: Maybe our definitions of successes and failures, weren't really on point to begin with, right?
DA: They weren't. Well, I won't speak for anybody else, but myself, my definition of success and failure was not anywhere close to what I would view today. You know, there were times where I look back and I say, you know, Materiality or the superficial reality of some of my goals when I was 23, I think we all go through it, but it's certainly something that I look back and say, and you learn a lot in 25 years, so..
LJR: Yeah, we've grown up a little.
DA: We have. Yeah.
LJR: Well, Doug, thank you so much for taking us on this ride and showing that we can recalibrate kind of what success looks like and be kinder to ourselves. I hope those masochistic days are over and we wish you well for the next chapters.
DA: Thanks, Leslie. It’s been a pleasure to be here.
LJR: That was Doug Asano who, after starting in investment banking and private equity, has spent the last two decades in the engineered wood industry. He is currently Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing, at Roseburg Forest Products. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two daughters. As Doug says, it's important to reach out to people sometimes. Feel free to drop us a line at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com or fill out the contact form at RoadsTakenShow.com. Let us know what you like and who you'd like to hear next with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley, on future episodes of Roads Taken.