I should have been an Actor.

I really should have. I think about it more often than is probably healthy. I was planning on striking it big in tinsel town when I graduated from high school, and I think I would have had a good shot if I do say so myself. I was coming off being the lead in a whole 3 community theater projects. I was such a hot commodity that other theater programs from two towns over were recruiting me ;). On top of that, my screen credits were starting to skyrocket. Being the lead in a short film, and bagging not just an Ugg, but also a regional New Balance commercial had 17 year old me thinking I was going to be the next Dacre Montgomery (hey, it was 2018, he was hot stuff back then).

But, as with every story of forgone ambition, I met a girl.

She was amazing. Arguably most amazing was that she didn’t think I was too bad either. We have been happily married for nearly four years now.

During our courtship she made it clear that despite my obviously near perfect resume, she had some reservations about me resting all of my professional ambitions on making it in Hollywood. Fair enough. So, together, we settled on the next best career option: entrepreneurship.

Out of the frying pan…

To be fair, we didn’t land on entrepreneurship immediately. The plan was for me to finish college, and then from there we would see where things went.

Just one semester in to this new life plan my wife had the idea to start a business. Less had the idea, and more it was required for a class, but nonetheless she was in need of an idea and a handsome business partner. Lucky her.

It is here that I would like to take a moment and point out she was the one who started me down this road. Much to her eternal regret and my eternal thanks.

The idea wasn’t anything crazy, a small startup that would connect people who needed to move with local movers in their area. I had helped move some friends and family before and thought that if I was willing to make some quick cash carrying heavy boxes then so would other broke twenty-somethings. I turned out to be right and people ate it up.

Over then next two years we ran that business close to the sun and then straight off a cliff and everywhere in between. While that is a story in its own right, for the context of this blog suffice it to say that those two years changed my life and opened my eyes to the opportunities of building something that people give their attention. I got a real taste of what it is like to build something that people love and value, to the extent that they would give us their hard earned money, and nothing had ever felt so good.

We ended up shutting down the company (a process I talk about here if your interested) but the kool-aid had already gone down the gullet; I was hooked on building.

ADHD? You tell me

This foray into entrepreneurship was actually not my first attempt at building a business.

As I have reflected on my youth I realized that this desire to build something great has been a part of me for a long time.

My earliest memory of creating something for someone else is in elementary school: somewhere between 2nd and 5th grade my friend Parker and I started a comic book that we would sell for 25 cents. Each copy was four pages long, and we would release a new story each week. Parker, ever the artist, would do all of the drawings and I would do the grueling, laborious work of adding in the captions. I don’t ever remember making more than a few bucks each week, but I do remember how excited my friends were for the next week’s edition of our comic. And I certainly remember how happy it made me being called one of the “comic book kids”.

In 6th grade I came up with board shorts that had belt loops and a water proof belt because, as a ridiculously skinny kid, I never fit into my friends swim shorts. While it never really made it past the idea phase, I did get as far as a hand drawn logo and a name: “Legit Board Shorts”. Inspired by my friends at the time building Blenders Eye Wear and Matuse wetsuits, I was sure this was going to be the next big thing that all my favorite surfers would wear. I wanted to build for them.

High School was a bit of a lull, admittedly. Beyond some freelance landscaping and tutoring, sports and school had me tied up. “Building” took a new meaning and I tried to build my own academic, athletic, and, as previously stated, acting resume in order to be more marketable. To find success I needed to become a sellable product.

Looking back, I never saw these attempts at build a product or a brand as entrepreneurial; if anything it was a way to quell my undiagnosed ADHD. It just felt normal… correction it felt better to be building something in tadem with my regular life.

I don’t do blood

I really wish I could be a doctor. But blood makes me queasy.

I wish I could be a lawyer.

I wish I could be an accountant.

I wish that my heart pined for something stable and real.

Certainly my wife would appreciate some semblance of stability or a plan or any type of scheduled paycheck. My son and my future children are probably owed that as well.

But, try as I might, this desire to build something great just won’t go away. It’s not about the money; making money doesn’t really rev my engine. It’s about what proceeds the money. Money follows attention, and attention is hard to come by.

In a world with endless options and unlimited uses of our time, capturing someone’s attention is more impressive to me than just about anything else. Building a product that people care enough about to give their attention to it: that’s what stirs my soul.

Though, as I think about it, if it was people’s attention that I wanted then maybe I just should have been an actor.