I did not create MyPlate.com because I figured life out.

The Man Behind the Mission

My name is Egypt McKee, and I am the Founder and Chief Steward of MyPlate.com. I am a U.S. Veteran, business leader, entrepreneur, speaker, father, and grandfather. I am also a former homeschool parent who helped educate my three children from kindergarten through high school. I have spent a meaningful portion of my life serving, leading, speaking, building, mentoring, parenting, listening, and trying to understand what helps people become stronger without losing themselves in the process.

I did not create MyPlate.com because I figured life out. I created it, in part, because I learned what it feels like when life does not go according to plan.

I have experienced success, and I have experienced failure. I have stood in front of rooms where people listened when I spoke, and I have lived through seasons when I had more questions than answers. I have built things that worked and things that did not. I have made decisions I remain proud of and others I would approach differently with the wisdom I have today.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that the most meaningful thing a person can become is impressive. I began believing that it is far more important to become honest, grounded, responsible, useful, trustworthy, and faithful to whatever has been placed in your hands.

That belief is at the center of MyPlate.com.

A Vision Carried for More Than Twenty Years

When I acquired MyPlate.com in 2004, I had a vision. Looking back, however, I did not yet have all of the life experience necessary to fully understand what that vision would require. The idea was early, the technology was early, and, if I am honest, I was early too.

So I waited.

During the years that followed, I worked, learned, raised a family, built businesses, spoke, served, made mistakes, and changed. The world changed. Technology changed. And over time, the meaning of the opportunity in front of me became clearer.

For years, MyPlate.com remained something I carried rather than something I rushed to launch. Today, I believe that waiting was not wasted. The platform I am building now could not have been built by the younger version of me.

When the Encourager Needed Encouragement

For much of my adult life, I have spoken into the lives of other people. I have talked about identity, purpose, leadership, responsibility, character, and becoming. I have encouraged people not to quit, not to settle, and not to allow one chapter of their story to define the entire book.

Eventually, life required me to live those words in ways I had not expected.

There were seasons when opportunities disappeared, plans changed, business became harder than expected, relationships were tested, financial pressure became real, and confidence that once felt natural became something I had to rebuild. At one point, I found myself confronting a question I had never fully considered:

Who encourages the encourager?

That question changed me because there is a great difference between speaking about strength and discovering what strength actually costs.

I learned that capable people can still become tired. Leaders can still feel uncertain. Strong people can still hurt. People who carry others can still need someone to carry them. Parents can wonder whether they are doing enough. Veterans can search for what mission means in a new chapter of life. Business leaders can achieve something publicly while privately wrestling with what success is supposed to mean.

I have lived enough of those realities to stop pretending that human beings are simple.

We are not.

And that is one of the reasons MyPlate.com exists.

What Failure Taught Me About People

Failure has a way of introducing you to yourself. It shows you where pride was hiding, where identity became attached to momentum, where success became too important, where you were stronger than you realized, and where you were not nearly as strong as you thought.

I have had to face those things, and I am grateful that I did.

Failure taught me compassion for people who are starting over. It taught me patience for people who do not have everything figured out. It taught me not to judge someone by one bad chapter. It taught me how much courage it takes to rebuild, and it taught me that dignity should not be reserved only for people who are winning.

That lesson matters deeply to me because MyPlate.com is not being built for an imaginary perfect person. It is being built for real people: people who are trying, carrying responsibility, doing better than they were but not yet where they want to be, succeeding and still searching, rebuilding, leading, and learning how to lead themselves.

It is being built for people whose stories are still being written.

The People I Understand Are Not Theoretical to Me

I understand service because I have served. I understand responsibility because I have carried it. I understand parenting because I have raised children, and I understand the unique weight of homeschooling because I lived the K–12 journey with my family.

I understand leadership because I have led. I understand business because I have built. I understand the pressure of standing in front of people because I have spent years speaking. And I understand starting again because I have had to do it.

Those experiences do not make me better than anyone else. They simply mean that when I say I care about the realities people carry, I am not speaking only from research.

I am speaking from life.

Why I Believe Technology Must Become More Human

We have more tools than ever before: more applications, more platforms, more notifications, more dashboards, more data, and more ways to measure nearly everything. Yet many people feel increasingly fragmented.

Our calendars live in one place. Our tasks live somewhere else. Our relationships, goals, reflections, priorities, responsibilities, and commitments often exist in disconnected pieces.

We have become very good at building systems that manage pieces of people. I believe we need to become much better at building systems that respect the whole person.

That is the deeper idea behind MyPlate.com.

I do not believe people need another platform demanding more of their attention. I believe people need better ways to see what already matters, understand where their time is going, protect the people and responsibilities they value, create healthier rhythms, stay connected to purpose, and grow without turning life into an endless performance metric.

Technology can help with that, but only if technology remembers its place.

Why I Call Myself a Steward

That is why I describe myself as Chief Steward, not simply Founder or Owner.

The word reminds me that responsibility comes before entitlement.

MyPlate.com may carry my name on its founding documents, but the people who eventually trust it with parts of their lives will always matter more than my title.

I want this company to grow. I want it to succeed. I want it to generate meaningful revenue and become valuable. But I do not believe growth excuses manipulation. I do not believe profit justifies exploiting vulnerability. I do not believe technology companies should intentionally make people dependent simply because dependency improves engagement metrics, and I do not believe a company should sacrifice human dignity because doing so improves conversion.

There may be things we refuse to build. There may be revenue we refuse to take, shortcuts we refuse to use, and moments when the fastest decision is not the right decision.

I am comfortable with that.

I Am Still Becoming

I am not interested in pretending that I have every answer. I do not.

I am not interested in presenting myself as flawless, because I am not. And I am not interested in building a personality cult around a Founder. That would contradict the very principles I say I believe.

I want people around me who think, question, challenge assumptions, care enough to tell the truth, and are strong enough to disagree respectfully. Any system that becomes dependent upon the unquestioned perfection of one person eventually becomes fragile.

I want MyPlate.com to become stronger than that. Stronger than me. Capable of continuing long after I am gone.

Why I Believe I Exist

I believe I exist to serve, build, encourage, challenge, speak truth, help people see possibilities they may have forgotten, create things that outlive me, and leave something behind for people I may never meet.

I want to steward whatever influence, experience, opportunity, and responsibility I have been given with as much integrity as I can.

I am still becoming that man. I am not finished. And I hope I never become so convinced of my own success that I stop becoming.

What I Hope You See When You Look at Me

I do not need you to think I am extraordinary. I would rather you believe I am sincere.

I do not need you to be impressed by me. I would rather earn your respect.

I do not need you to follow me because I told you to. I would rather live and build in a way that allows you to decide whether I may be worth walking with.

And I do not need you to believe every word on this page immediately.

Watch what I do next. Examine the work. Ask difficult questions. Look for consistency. Look for humility. Look for whether the promises match the decisions.

Then decide for yourself.

That is the kind of trust I want. Not blind trust. Earned trust.

My Commitment

I have carried MyPlate.com for more than two decades. I do not know exactly what it will become over the next twenty, but I know what I want it to stand for: people before platforms, dignity before manipulation, truth before convenience, stewardship before scale, responsibility before entitlement, long-term value before short-term applause, and technology that remembers the human being it was created to serve.

I cannot promise perfection. I can promise stewardship.

I cannot promise that every decision will be easy, but I can promise that I will take the difficult ones seriously. I cannot promise that MyPlate.com will always grow quickly, but I can promise that I would rather grow with integrity than grow without it. I cannot promise that every person will understand this vision, but I can promise that I will keep working to make it clearer.

And I cannot promise that I will live long enough to see everything this becomes.

I do not need to.

A person does not have to sit beneath the shade of every tree he plants. Sometimes his responsibility is simply to plant faithfully.

I have spent more than twenty years carrying this seed. Now it is time to plant.

A Final Word From Me to You

You may have arrived here because you are curious about MyPlate.com. You may be considering MyPlate Presence. You may be a parent, leader, veteran, entrepreneur, teacher, caregiver, person rebuilding, or simply someone trying to live with more intention than yesterday.

Whatever brought you here, I want you to know something.

You are more than a user. You are more than a subscription. You are more than a data point. Your life matters beyond what any platform can measure.

If MyPlate.com earns a place in your life, my responsibility is to remember that. Always.

Thank you for taking the time to know something about the man behind the mission. I do not take your attention lightly, and I will not take your trust lightly either.

Continue Exploring

If something in this story resonates, you are welcome to explore what is being built or begin a conversation.