Entrepreneur Journey
Help! I’m called to be an Entrepreneur
What does it even mean to be called…
Who am I to think that I have something of value to add to this incredible global economy…
Why on earth is so much technology so challenging to use, sapping people’s joy in the process…
All these questions and more rattled around in my head as I contemplated this next step. Should I…Shouldn’t I…Now this is the question…
Yikes! How did I even get here?
The Niggle
If I’m honest, my entrepreneur story really started when I was around 6 years old. Every morning I would get up and study the newspaper business section, scouring the papers for information on companies. This was before the time of online news sources like Yahoo Finance and their Yahoo Finance API. Back then I would keep a record of stock prices in a little journal and provide ‘free’ advice to my family on what to invest in. Some of these stock tips even worked out. (Ahem, any information in this blog is not to be considered financial advice. It’s just my story.)
Over time I noticed a trend. Companies which invested heavily in automating their workflows, who invested into long range plans to increase their market share while reducing operating costs — without disadvantaging their employees — really prospered. They would out perform their peers over the 5–10 year timeframe and would represent a considerably more profitable investment than those who didn’t. A question began to rattle around.
If the trend was so obvious, why did some companies invest in this and some not?
At the age of ten I started reading books on finance and investing. One of them really stood out — Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad Poor Dad. The explanations made sense to my 10 year old brain. Bring on investments — those things which put money into my pocket! Boo to liabilities — those things which take money out of my pocket.
Shortly after, driven by this question, I got into technology. The dotcom boom and bust happened in my final years of high school, and I closely followed the news. The future seemed bright. Yes a bust happened, but really, when I took a macro view it all seemed par for the course…a winner or two would emerge and every company in the world would be impacted and we would all be onwards and upwards. Those companies which invested heavily in technology would prosper, those that didn’t would wither.
The concept seemed simple — build a company which invested in technology to build and enhance business and people. My path seemed simple — figure out how to be an investor in those brilliant ideas and concepts. Continue to reinvest the profits back into more businesses. Help as many people as possible. It seemed pretty straightforward.
And if my origin story finished there, I’d be writing a best seller on investing or company transformation.
Instead
Instead, when I took the plunge, I found myself facing a future which felt… intimidating, scary. Still exciting and valuable, but with a clear tension between my 6 year old self and my current self. My story at 6 seemed so clear and straightforward — yet here in ‘the now’ things were different. It felt like a difficult conversation between two parts of myself.
This outcome was entirely unexpected to say the least. I’d started with a simple Niggle about investment and business transformation and suddenly Boom! Hello self-discovery journey! Where did you come from!?!
So I decided to share my story.
It’s my story into entrepreneurship and investing. About how my journey into entrepreneurship and investing kicked off a whole different and unexpected journey. And it’s a story I’m still writing and figuring each day.
