The Why
The year is 2011.
I’m working through college as a part-time tire lube express technician.
And I'm learning a lot about what I don't want in a job:
- having to report to people I didn’t admire.
- not having any money…ever.
- feeling trapped.
- following rules I thought were stupid.
- doing work that anybody else could do.
- doing work that I didn’t care about.
- having to ask another adult for permission to leave.
- trading my most valuable resource (time) for a whopping $7.45/hour.
I wanted to be out in the world, learning and growing, coming and going as I pleased, making lots of money.
I wanted to be free.
But I didn’t know how to escape.
One day, a few weeks later, the solution struck me.
The only people who were living like I wanted to live were not employees at all.
They were entrepreneurs.
What I really wanted was to be a full-time entrepreneur.
But I didn’t know anything about running a business.
I didn’t know what kind of business I wanted to run.
And I had no idea where to start.
13 years later, I have been a full-time entrepreneur (that is, earning my full-time living from business profits) for 10 years.
3 years to figure out how to launch my first one.
And 10 more years to iterate and optimize that business into my present-day operation:
- I have total control over my time.
- I spend my days in precisely the way I want.
- I don’t report to anyone but myself (and my wife, of course).
- I don’t follow any rules I think are stupid, because I make up the rules.
- I don't trade my time for a set hourly rate; instead, I earn the amount I deserve to earn relative to the quality and amount of work I put in.
- And more and more I am earning money today from work that I did in the past.
The goal now is to scale my one person business to 7-figures per year.
The How
I write the Things I Wish I Knew Earlier Newsletter to help people like me who are earlier in the journey.
The goal is to share Big Ideas in each edition that would have drastically sped up my development as a business owner.
Hence the newsletter name.
If you are a professional entrepreneur, or you have a dream to become one, then this newsletter is for you.