New Here (sort of)

[Bounce Back]

Hello Fastlaners.

Years have passed since I last wrote here (I think it was 2016?) - despite many searches here and in my email accounts I can't recall the email address I must've used back then or my username so here I am on a new account. So while I am not technically "new" to be doing an introduction there are so many new faces (but not suprised to see so many of the same still here!) and it has been a bit so figured I'd give an update.

When I last left here I had taken a shot trying to morph my day job of being a coder into starting a custom application development shop. I got a few small opportunities, a medium one that continues in maintenance to this day (~5k a year or so), and a few larger meetings that I was met with skepticism (age and no real success stories, no experience overcoming objections, etc). Previous to this I had too many attempts at various things to list here which all failed from fear of rejection in a nutshell.

I was however rapidly exceling in the slowlane (ironic in a sense) by taking contract jobs to work on newer technologies and leaving as projects were finished and going somewhere else instead of taking the somewhat seemingly easier path of sitting around maintaining what I finished building. I had observed the engineer in my local area got very rusty and couldn't compete on salary if they became primarily maintainers on software that didn't get much updates. These promotions accelerated saving up a small six digit amount.

I then had my first child and something changed in me.

I no longer felt I was going to live forever. Call it sentimentalism or whatever you want to but seeing my child be born made me realize that I was one day going to be like my parents and relatives who had resigned themselves to the slowlane habitual life despite dreams of something different. I wasn't some special case that somehow had so much more time to keep floundering about.

So encouraged to act (primarly by the tone I was reading here at the time) I decided to do something that my wife and family thought was a bit crazy - I quit the highest paying job anyone in my family has ever had (we come from pretty humble financial situation) which required rejecting about a 30% pay raise counter offer. Leading up to that I narrowed down I wanted to do something recurring, B2B, and with a system that just needed someone to grind - nothing gimmicky or fake feeling - something real. So I ended up finding franchise based commercial cleaning business that fit my checklist and used my savings to build that (did I mention my wife became a stay at home mom at this time and this HAD to work?). After multiple interviews with their franchisees and visits to the franchise headquarter I felt it was going to be a sheer sales/cold-calling grit sort of grindy business. It ended up being that but soooo much more.

Let me cut to the chase: it sucked.

But it also was the best thing I ever did.

Did I get rich? No - I lost a lot of money if you look at how much I could've made with my software salary over the same 3-4 years.

But I took something from nothing and at times had 20-30 clients and 20+ employees and sold it for low six digits. Too many lessons learned to share but overall I feel like I was absolutely a moron when it came to business before that experience and both learned what business really is from that experience as well being a man to be a bit corny.

Some might ask why I moved on and again - too long to get in here but I will say when I was at my absolute lowest I got lower. And I did that many times through my experience. But I was determined to give it everything I had and pulled through to end on the best note I could.

With that wrapped up and not sure what to really do next I went back slowlane (software). Stacking, paying off some debts, and doing somethings my patient wife was waiting on while I was heads deep in the business for years. With the lessons learned from the cleaning business within a few opportunities I have now tripled my previous salary - more than making up for what was lost. I've also been approached for a few startup opportunities with rather favorable terms that many people I know would've accepted but I've turned them down.

Because I know I can do more. Instead of being excited about my higher salary it just validates to me that running a business was the best personal growth thing I've done "career" wise. Instead of over the moon about now people wanting to do businesses with me (a dream of mine I had previous to the cleaning business was to just find one really good partner - that was all I needed I would tell myself!) I look at the sort of equity you are offered in that situation when you don't take the big risk yourself and think its too low for what I know I am capable of and the battle-tested fight I now know is inside of me.

I am now on the prowl for most likely a SAAS to launch (ruling out many ideas a day at this point) or preferredly buy and grow. Happy to be back. See you all around.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Ximduni cedl, xjip zua teof dunnisdoem dmiepoph gsepdjoti, O teof “aj uj” - jeqqz vu tii vjev xet e miespoph iyqisoipdi.