From a young age, I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I wasn’t ready to make the jump early in my career. I tend to plan out my life in terms of being on the right end of the risk-return curve, and in my early years, it wasn’t in the cards for me.
The first time I really took on the risk of being solely responsible for my income was when I joined GE Capital in 1995 for a position based on 100% commission. I ended up staying in that role for eight years, and it was in that role that I realized that if you hustle and stay focused, good things happen.
A Rocky Start
But as the years passed, my desire to pursue entrepreneurship grew stronger, and I knew I just had to get out there and try it out for myself. I had partners who were familiar with the trucking industry and ended up buying a trucking company a month before the great collapse in 2008.
As you can imagine, this did not end well for me, as the business eventually went under. And yes, I had to lick my wounds for a while, but I was able to get back on my feet.
Throughout that experience, I learned a lot about putting together a deal, doing proper due diligence, having the right capital structure in place, and ensuring I brought on the right partners. Even if the outcome didn’t go as I had hoped, I learned some valuable lessons that would help lead me to future success in my career—I just didn’t know it at the time.
Diving Back into Things
As the years passed, I knew my journey into entrepreneurship wasn’t over, and I eventually took the leap and acquired a moving and storage business. This time around, I brought in all the lessons I learned from last time to ensure a bright future for my newly acquired business. Over three years, I sustainably build up my business and ended up selling it for of what I bought it for.
