me in 10 minutes.
I read. I walk. I tell people about stuff (aka sales + mktg).
My best friend summed me up in one sentence —
“You’d be the easiest person to kill, because I know exactly where you’ll be just by looking at a clock.”
I mean, he’s not wrong…
6 a — reading/writing with coffee 1 p — walk 6 p — gym 9 p — in bed reading
Every hour in between — marketing + selling.
But hear me out…
_I know what I like. _
From the work I pursue, down to the shorts that I wear, or the cup of coffee I make in the morning…
(for reference — Aeropress with 205° water, 30g of fresh ground coffee, brewed for 4 minutes)
I’m picky.
I’ve always been that way.
Some of my earliest memories are me screaming in the back of my mom’s Honda Civic because she is playing music I don’t like…
Or my grandma calling my mom in the middle of the restaurant because the server didn’t know what “Batman pasta and Robin sauce” was…
“It’s just penne pasta and red sauce, but call it Batman pasta so he eats it…”
I was so picky that my parents had to get creative… _Everything became Batman pasta, Batman music, Batman soap… _
To be clear — none of these things actually had anything to do with Batman… But I was so obsessed, that I fell for their marketing!
So, doing the same few things every day doesn’t bother me…
Actually, I love it.
Each day, slowly but surely, working towards one goal…
To build something great.
I mean, as entrepreneurs and creatives that’s what you strive for, right?
Creating something so great, it’s impossible to ignore?
Money in the bank, a nice long waitlist, and a bunch of happy customers.
That’s the dream.
But that’s just the surface.
Deep down… what do you really want — more than anything?
Pride.
Pride in what you’ve built.
Pride in the results for you and for everyone who believed in you.
The deep satisfaction that comes from doing something well, something important…
The pride that can only come from doing something so challenging, where you’ve been beaten down time and time again… yet still — beyond all logic and reason — persevere and build the thing you dreamed of.
That sort of great.
But I have a confession…
I never believed it was actually for me.
You know the saying…
”Winners never quit and quitters never win.”
Well…
I quit… a lot.
I’m talking from baseball and soccer to the saxophone and after school Spanish.
I tried out for the middle school basketball team, I didn’t make it, and I never tried again.
Each time I quit, it felt like I was adding another brick on the wall of self-doubt…
Slowly building higher and higher…
Until, two weeks into sophomore football season…
I’m standing in line to hit the sled at practice…
Mentally, I hit a wall…
I thought to myself, “I’m done.”
And that day… I quit
Now the unfortunate part…
Just a few weeks prior, my dad bought me all the gear I needed for the season…
Which lead to a rather — passionate — conversation when he came walking in the door that evening…
_“Stick it out.” _
“Don’t quit when things get hard.”
But, I’m like a dog that no longer wants to walk…
You can pull all you want, but I’m not moving.
But brick by brick, this doubt had built into a full on mental wall that stood between me and everything I want to do in life.
Making me question whether I should even try…
Like why try? Why do something hard? Why start something new?
“I’m just going to quit.”
So even though I wanted to build something great, I had no reason to believe that I could…
But, this is where the hero swoops in, faces the insurmountable odds, breaks the wall down, and starts to live life on his terms... right?
Not quite.
In reality, I more or less accepted this wall.
I figured I’d go to college, get a good job, and live a “normal” life.
Which, for many years, worked well enough.
I finished high school, started junior college, and was close to transferring to a good school.
So close to my “normal” life…
Except…
In my last year in Junior College…
I’m sitting in an engineering class, thinking about how this will be what I work on the rest of my life…
I hit that familiar wall…
I thought to myself, “I’m done.”
I quit.
But this is the ONE thing I can’t quit! What am I supposed to do now?!
And to rub even more salt on the wound…
Everyone will know I quit this time.
I’d have to tell my family.
I’d have to tell my friends.
So much for making them proud.
I’m sure even people from high school are going to see on Facebook and judge me too…
At that point it can feel really discouraging…
So hard to see past the wall of self-doubt.
And so hard to want to keep trying.
Yet that thought still nags in the back of my mind… I want to build something great…
A few weeks go by…
And the time comes where I now have to tell my family I’m not going to transfer.
I went into this conversation fully prepared for the usual “never quit” gambit…
_“Stick it out.” _
“Don’t quit when things get hard.”
But my mind is made up.
I’m just going to come out with it…
deep breath
“I’m dropping out.”
“…”
“…Ok”
The look on my mom’s face..
It isn’t disappointment.
It isn’t shock.
She understands.
Eventually, she reminds me of the first time I told her I’m dropping out, all the way back in 1st grade…
She’s walking me to school.
I’ve got my big red backpack digging into my shoulders.
Almost comically overfilled, most of which isn’t even school supplies.
“I don’t want to go to school anymore!”
“Oh come on, you need to.”
“Why?”
“So you can learn!”
“But I’m so bored…”
… So bored?
Which made me think…
This whole time was I quitting, because I can’t face challenges? Because I can’t push through? Because I’m weak?
Or…
Because I am bored.
That I know what I like.
That I know what I don’t like.
So, why waste time on things I don’t like?
Steve Jobs said it perfectly…
“Deciding what not to do is as important as deciding what to do”
And I was very good at knowing what NOT to do!
This simple reframe, completely changed how I looked at that “wall of self-doubt.”
Quitting was no no longer an insurmountable wall in my life, keeping me from what I love…
But instead my superpower…
A wall protecting the things I love in life.
Protecting me from the distractions wasting my time and energy.
Because the real real is —
If you want to build something great, it doesn’t mean you never quit…
Building something great requires you to quit. Quit the distractions. Quit the bullshit. Quit everything BUT what you want to be great at.
All…
For the pride of building something great.
And that’s the journey I’m now.
Doing the same few things, every single day, slowly but surely becoming great at sales and marketing…
So, if this resonates with you, I think you’ll like the Modern Marketing Journal…
