Chapter 7
Creating Your Own Career
The Jared Meeks Story
"Do your homework. It's a simple message, but it is what has gotten me where I am today. I don't just go to a job and leave it there. If you want to be really good at what you do, you have to give up some hobbies and/or free time and you've got to really study, because there is only so much you can learn when you are "on the clock." Whether it is pursuing continuing education, taking online courses, subscribing to a blog of someone really smart in your industry, or reading books, the way to become an expert at something is to put in the time to learn. Find some extra time every day to just learn something. You are going to get ahead if you do a little extra homework or read a book."
—Jared Meeks
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| Jared and Katie Meeks and their Family. Circa 2015 |
This chapter highlights the story of a young father who used SAL-oriented personal initiative to advance his career and become very successful—not rich or famous; but happy, content, financially comfortable and secure, and surrounded by loving family, which is actually the kind of success that a lot of folks—if not most of us—are actually aiming for in life, and especially so in the long-run.
With a keen eye for opportunity and the attitude and work ethic to back it up, Meeks was able to gradually and steadily write his own ticket to success in his workplace and industry.
When this story was first published in the mid-2010s, Jared lived with his wife and four children in the Houston, Texas area. They have since moved to northern Utah, near the small community where Meeks was born and raised in a middle class home.
Jared graduated from high school in 1996 and earned a vocational scholarship to a local state college, which he attended for two semesters before serving a 2-year full-time mission for his church in Maracaibo, Venezuela, where he further developed self-discipline, focus, and a work ethic that would come to mark his future career successes. He also gained valuable experiences as a communicator and leader during his missionary service, which would also come in handy on a regular basis in the future.
After completing his mission, Jared returned to northern Utah where he continued his studies at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. His personal mantra as a college student was: "work hard in my classes and just get smarter."
To pay for his university studies, Jared got a job and worked part-time throughout his college years. After proactively seeking out employment opportunities, he landed a job at Cooper Health. He had no experience in healthcare, but Cooper liked the fact that he could speak Spanish (another benefit of his missionary service) and they were willing to train him on the health-specific aspects of the job.
In time, Jared completed a bachelor's degree in political science with a minor in Spanish.
Over time, Cooper began to significantly expand their clientele. Throughout his college years, Jared worked hard, demonstrated dependability and integrity, and eventually expressed interest in working for them full-time after graduation.
Knowing how valuable Jared had become, Cooper jumped at the opportunity to hire him full time. In fact, they gave him an opportunity to represent their interests at a regional hospital where things were not going well. Jared mission's was to identify and troubleshoot existing issues, and he recalls being "really excited" about the chance he had to "right the ship."
During his time there, he helped people get heart and liver transplants, and walk again after serious accidents. There were even times when he felt instrumental in saving people's lives.
He ended up supervising Cooper's work at the hospital for about three (3) years. In the process, he succeeded in his mission to turn things around, much to the gratitude and satisfaction of his employer.
"I like getting stuff done."
—Jared Meeks
His new position involved the supervision of 10-20 other Cooper employees. His new job also afforded him the opportunity to travel. In addition, he was responsible for hiring and firing employees. He continued to excel by applying the same proactive initiative he had demonstrated in his previous position and thereby continued to attract positive attention from his supervisors.
They also gave him a pay raise.
A few years later, he was promoted again, providing him with another leadership opportunity and another salary increase. He was now running an entire office and managing 30-40 people in the process. He was also responsible for the training and tasking of an entire team of supervisors.
For many years, Meek's ultimate educational goal was to attend Law School. However, as his diligence, focus, and hard work continued to reap rich dividends at Cooper, this once luminous ambition began to lose its luster—and this is where the story takes an especially interesting and inspiring turn.
He ended up doing so much IT work outside of normal business hours that he started receiving quite a bit of extra pay. The more word spread of Jared's knowledge and capabilities, the more members of his team started coming to him with their computer issues.
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In the course of his studies, he figured out a lot of viable shortcuts that made his job easier. Eventually, it dawned on him that he could write an entirely new program that could complete Cooper's entire pay review for him.
The pay review was important, but tedious and time-consuming work that was below his pay grade. It also required that he work many hours on the weekends outside of regularly scheduled hours.
Thinking innovatively, he set out to write a program that could complete the pay review electronically. If he succeeded, he would get his weekends back.
After many long hours of coding, Jared succeeded in shrinking 8-12 hours of work down to a mere 30 minutes—25 of which could be spent doing other things while the computer completed the pay review automatically.
When people around the office learned what he had accomplished, the demand for his skills and time went through the roof. After all, others had similar problems they were dealing with, and were excited to learn that Jared had created a solution. As a result, he ended up spending all his extra time writing code for other people.
In the process, his office became far more efficient and productive.
It was challenging to get his voice heard at first because he wasn't officially part of the IT Department.
However, Jared was pleasantly persistent and eventually succeeded in getting the IT Director to discover what Jared had already accomplished on the company's front lines. From there, word of his skills, talents, and qualifications made it all the way up to Cooper's top brass. Soon thereafter, the CEO personally informed the IT Director that he wanted Jared to be included in the discussions surrounding the office computer upgrade.
From there, IT Headquarters in Texas created a new position and told Jared that if he was willing to relocate to the Lone Star State, Cooper would make him the project manager of the entire system conversion, where he would work with computer programmers and developers to make sure the system was correctly built and properly tested.
Jared accepted this new position, which translated into another promotion and pay raise.
About this same time, he was offered another management promotion in Utah, which likely would have paid him even more money than he was being offered in Texas, but he chose to purse the IT route in the Lone Star State because his heart was in computer technology, not management.
In 2007, Jared and his family moved to Texas where Jared began to prepare his new team for the system-wide conversion, set to take place in August of that year. After relocating to the Lone Star State, he realized there were still gaps in his overall IT knowledge; so, he went to work, studying to fill those gaps. He got a bunch of books and began reading in his spare time.
In addition to increasing his knowledge, he also set out to improve his skills. He even set up a test server in his house so he could practice coding.
"At night, after the kids were in bed,
my wife would read novels, and I
would read books on how to program."
—Jared Meeks
The system conversion was successful and firmly established Jared as a competent IT project manager. After the conversion was complete, he and his colleagues began tackling a long list of enhancements scheduled for the new system—with Jared in charge of the system patches and upgrades. As he continued his work, his bonuses kept getting bigger each year.
"This is like my dream job."
—Jared Meeks
A year or so after the conversion, a falling out occurred between the two founders of the company. The Director of IT ended up going with one founder, while Jared went with the other. The company split created the need for a new IT Director.
You can probably guess who was promoted to be the new Director of IT for the entire new company.
That right: Jared Meeks!
This promotion came with another pay raise—and he's had several more in intervening years.
Later, he was promoted again—this time to Chief Information Officer (CIO)!
He was now a C-level executive leader himself.
The goal of Cooper's owners was to continue growing until it could be purchased by a larger organization at a profit. In 2016, that goal was met when Medmax acquired Cooper for $400 million dollars. Meeks worked for Medmax for about a year following the acquisition to help lead the transition period, at which point he decided to move on and seek out a new opportunity with a different company.
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| Jared Meeks and his wife, Katie. |
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Axolotl discovered it was perfectly positioned to service not only work injuries, but COVID diagnoses as well. As a result, the company grew dramatically, increasing its employee count by over 300% by 2021. After the pandemic had passed, it returned to the approximate size it had been before the Pandemic. Meeks played an integral role in helping Axolotl navigate the challenges inherent in both sides of this expansion and contraction period.
By the time Meeks became CIO at Axolotl in 2017, he was well set-up for long-term career success. In fact, at the time of this updated publication in 2025, Meeks is still serving in this capacity.
For the time being—and the foreseeable future—he is happy right where he is. But should anything change, he and his family enjoy peace of mind knowing Jared's knowledge and skills place him in high demand in a competitive global IT marketplace.
Jared Meeks is an outstanding example of what it means to utilize Self-Action Leadership principles and practices to achieve impressive and fulfilling career successes and prosperity. From a middle class kid from a small community in Utah to a C-Level Executive at a growing company in a major metropolitan area, Jared has exemplified the great truth that in the long-run, self-action leaders each write their own story based on how hard you are willing to work, and how diligent, disciplined, and determined you are willing to be all along the way.
What would you have to learn, accomplish, or sacrifice over time to achieve your dream job or ideal career?
What is currently holding you back from pursuing this dream or ideal?
What would it take for you to stop holding back and begin the pursuit of your dream job or ideal career?
What is something you could do today to begin enhancing your knowledge and skills in your current professional position and function?
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 485th Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 275th consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
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