I’ve Always Wanted to Build Something
Over the last few years, I have learned that I am extremely ambitious, entrepreneurial, and business-minded. These traits, I believe, have always been there; I just didn’t know what to do with them, or how to act on them.
When I was younger, even before I was 10, I was fascinated with pulling things apart, learning how they worked, and then trying to put them back together. I also had a “project” binder, which I still have to this day, filled with all the stuff I had designed that I wanted to build: remote control drones and boats, a bass guitar, some other stuff I wanted to make out of Damascus steel, and everything in between.
This led to my parents encouraging me to go into engineering, and rightly so; that is the sort of thing engineers do. And to be fair, if I had gone into engineering, I probably would have enjoyed it, at least for a while.
But what they didn’t see or know was the reason I was coming up with all of these designs: I wanted to make them for the purpose of selling them, to have my own store, and to be my own boss.
The Part we Usually Don’t Hear
Back to today, these traits of unrestricted ambition, entrepreneurial vigor, and business-minded, along with the desire to be my own boss and work for myself, have grown exponentially as I worked a terrible job driving truck under a pretty crappy boss.
However, driving so many hours in a week, as mind-numbing as it was, allowed me to listen to hundreds of different business, investing, and entrepreneurial podcasts and books, which have helped give me the knowledge I needed to start acting on my ambitions.
However, I have also noticed a pattern that the vast majority of books and podcasts follow that I have grown quite tired of. This is the real catalyst for this article and newsletter.
When founders are interviewed and tell their stories, it is almost always done in retrospect. They have made it. They are at the top of the mountain looking back at their journey, and the story becomes cleaner and easier than reality actually was. Every decision they made can seem like it was all a part of their master plan toward success.
They don’t talk about the sleepless nights, wondering if they are making the right decisions. They do not talk about the failures they experienced or the hardships they endured, the countless ideas that failed before they found one that didn’t, how long they expected it would take to get where they are compared to how long it actually took, how their personal lives were affected by pursuing business, what sort of personal challenges they had while trying to build a business, and so on.
So, Here I am at Zero
This is exactly why I am starting this, whatever this is. Maybe one day I will transition to podcasts. I know I certainly have the face for it; not sure about my voice though… But I am at zero.
I have a normal, full-time job. I am not making millions every year, nor am I making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year either. I do not have a large amount in savings, —barely any, actually. Nor do I have daddy’s money or any other outside income source besides my regular job. In other words, there isn’t anything particularly interesting about my starting point.
I want to document my journey to “success,” whatever success is, as an aid to myself, to help me reflect on and remember the past, to remind me what I was thinking, what I was feeling, how it was going, what decisions I was making, and to see how far I have come along the way, —assuming I get anywhere!
Let’s See What Happens
And I want to document my journey for your sake: to share what a real, honest path of entrepreneurship and business looks like without the story being tainted by retrospect.
You will be able to experience with me the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, the sleepless nights, and the wondering if this idea is going to work or if I should move on to the next one. You'll see what I try, what seems to work, what doesn't, what I change my mind about, and what I learn along the way.
I have no idea how this journey will end, and neither do you,
And that is what I think makes it so exciting!