Parallels Between My Trip and Entrepreneurship

This is a topic that I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and I have finally gotten around to writing about it. One of the main reasons I’m going on this trip is because I want to be an entrepreneur, and I think this trip will help me develop entrepreneurial skills. So, in this post I’m going to talk about how this trip is similar to entrepreneurship.

1. Thinking vs Doing – This is one of the big challenges for wanna-be entrepreneurs. A lot of people talk about ideas they have for businesses they want to start, but they just talk about them. In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to get into the habit of DOING stuff, rather than just talking about it. Well, with this trip, it could be the kind of thing that I just talk about and never do. Lots of people think up cool ideas for trips or other things, but they never follow through. That’s why it’s important that I actually get out and do it.

2. Don’t Have to Have Everything Planned – This is similar to the last post, but there’s an important distinction. The reason lots of people struggle with doing things, is because they want to have every possible problem solved before they face it. When people ask me about my trip, they often ask what I’m going to do in certain situations when they come up. Now, I’ve thought about lots of different things, but there is no way I can plan for everything. There will be experiences that I couldn’t anticipate or plan for. As an entrepreneur, that’s something I’ll have to get used to. You have an initial idea, and you make plans on how to execute that idea. Then, you just start doing stuff and learn as you go along.

3. Adapt – These parallels are kind of making a progression because they build on one another. When an entrepreneur has an idea and starts doing things to make that idea a reality, he needs to be open to adaptation. Many successful businesses came about after an entrepreneur saw an opportunity, and adapted his existing business idea to go after that opportunity. I have a specific plan and purpose in mind. I’m going on my trip to explore cities, jobs, and companies. However, maybe once I get out there, I’ll realize that my survival is taking up a lot more time than I thought. Well, then I’ll have to adapt my purpose and goals for the trip based upon that experience.

4. Risk – We all know that entrepreneurs take risks, and they have to get comfortable with that. Their taking financial, emotional, and personal risks when they try to start businesses. Well, on this trip I’ll also be facing a lot of different risks. I’ll be facing the risk of not having a place to stay, not having enough to eat, not having any friends, and not being able to get to where I need. These are risks that scare a lot of people, and I’ll be honest, I’m scared of them too. However, I also think that where there is a great risk, there is also a great reward. As I get comfortable with risks on this trip, I think it will help me be able to face risks later as an entrepreneur.

5. Creativity – As entrepreneurs face different challenges the have to continually adapt and think of new solutions to problems. Lots of times, this requires a great amount of creativity on their part. An entrepreneur can face funding constraints, talent constraints, and time constraints. They have to learn how to be creative in order to accomplish their goals. I will face very similar challenges on my trip, and I’ll have to be creative and think of ways to overcome them. How will I make money? How will I find places to stay? How will I get to where I need to go? I may find that my initial ideas on how to accomplish these things may not work. Well, then I’ll have to be creative and think of quick solutions to my problems. Especially since I don’t have a home to go to at the end of the day.

6. Leverage – Entrepreneurs learn to leverage others time, money, and talents. An entrepreneur really is a master at finding the right talents, people, and abilities to make a business happen. It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to get people to work for free for a long time. Now that’s some impressive leveraging ability. I’ll also need to learn how to use leverage on my trip. I’ll try to leverage the power of my own network, of the people I meet, and my followers online. Almost every day I’ll be relying on my ability to leverage others and their assistance on my behalf.

7. Sell Yourself – If there’s one thing I hear a lot, it’s that as an entrepreneur, you have to sell yourself. Leverage has a lot to do with your ability to sell. You need to convince people of your idea, your ability, and your vision. Only by successfully selling yourself will you get the help you need. I’ll be doing the same thing. My survival is completely dependent on my ability to sell myself. Every amount of assistance I get will come from my ability to sell me. I’ll try to convince businesses to come let me shadow, people to give me rides or couches to crash on, and somehow convince somebody to give me money, for whatever I decide to do to get that.

8. Have a vision – Entrepreneurs have to have a vision of what they accomplish and be optimistic through their challenges in order to succeed. They will face many setbacks and challenges, and only if they have a vision and the optimism that they can be successful will they be able to make it through. I will definitely face some hardships and struggles on my trip, and it is only through my optimism and my vision that I’ll be able to keep going in spite of them. I can give up anytime I want, so it will really be my vision of what I want to accomplish that will keep me going.

9. Overtake Your Life – I’ve heard that starting a business can be extremely overwhelming and often takes over your life. You eat, sleep, and drink your business in order to make it a success. Well, my trip will be the same way. I’m basically eliminating all options to ever get a break from my trip. I won’t have a car, a house, or a regular job. I will always have to be thinking and trying to come up with ways to make my trip work. So, I guess you could say I’m jumping in with both feet.

Ok, well, I’m sure there are other parallels, but I think that is sufficient. These are just some of the main parallels that I’ve thought of, and it can give some insight into why I want to do this trip.

Making the Plans

Well, while I was at my sales job today I just wasn’t feeling it. I already want to quit and just get ready for my trip. So, I think I’ve decided that I’m going to quit in two weeks so that I don’t have to pay for rent for the month of December. Then, I think I’ll live in Provo for another week and just couchsurf for that week. That will help me learn better how to use the couchsurfing website, as well as get some positive reviews for my couchsurfing profile. I’m excited, but I better work hard these next two weeks so I don’t have to worry about money.

The more I think about it, the more I’d like to try and get sponsors. I mean, even if I don’t get them, I’ll learn from the experience of trying to get them. I was wondering who the people are that I’m going to want to talk to and what not, when I realized that I could probably just talk to Brogg and ask him about it. Brogg started BBSC Endurance sports and I know that he’ll have experience contacting companies for sponsorships. The sponsorship amounts that I’ll be asking for will be so small that I’m sure companies will go for it. Either that, or they’ll wonder if I’m for real. That’s the bigger concern, that they don’t take me seriously. Oh well, somebody will I’m sure. If not, I’ll forge ahead anyway.

I’ve made some more definite plans about what I’d like to do on the trip. I’d like to make my trip a combination of two successful projects I’ve seen: LetMeStayForADay.com and OneWeekJob.com. I want to stay with a different person every night and go to work with a different person every day. I’m not going to set any restrictions on when I’d like to finish or not, because I’m genuinely going on a journey looking for occupations that I could enjoy or cities I might like to live in. Once I find what I’m looking for, I can stop my journey at anytime. However, I don’t want to make any decision until I’ve seen a majority of the U.S. and most of the major cities. Well, tomorrow I’m going to start calling companies for sponsorships. I guess we’ll see how it goes.

Same Old Thoughts

I think that I continue to have the same thoughts about my options, but writing them down just seems to make those thoughts that much clearer, and it seems to help me make a decision. The nice thing at this point is that I don’t feel pressure to make a decision soon. I have time. I mean, I still have two months, or, more like a month a half to make a decision. So, I can continue to weigh the pros and cons and see what kind of options come up for me.

As far as the job search goes, I’ve decided that I don’t really want to keep looking for jobs the traditional ways. If I meet somebody and they tell me about a job, then great, but looking for jobs and submitting my resume to companies and stuff just isn’t my style. I think once I get my first job, that I’ll never apply for another job in my life. I just think I’ll continue to see opportunities because of people I meet along the way. However, at this point, I’ve never been looking for a job and so those opportunities may have presented themselves, I just wasn’t ready when they came.

The two jobs I’ve applied for right now are to work for Ragnar Relay and Launch Sales and Marketing. Ragnar seems like it would be a fun work environment. It’s a new company and is growing really fast. It is in an industry that I’m passionate about, and I’d be getting involved in Sponsorship sales. I haven’t heard back from them yet since I submitted my resume, but I think working for them is a great option.

Second, is Launch Sales and Marketing. They are a B2B sales outsourcing company that takes care of different portions of the sales cycle for technology and service companies. I’m not exactly sure how it would be, but it seems like the job would involve a lot of change. That’s what I would like. I could see myself selling something for a certain company for a while, and then getting moved over to a new product or service after a few months. It seems like it would be a good job to have because it would help me get experience selling lots of different things. Not only that, if sales is all the company does, you would think they would have a good training program and have their sales cycle pretty well figured out.

So, those are really the only two jobs I’m interested in at this point. If I decide to work for one of these companies(assuming they offer me a job), I want to work for them for a while. The only question that remains is if I’d be happy working for either one of these companies in Utah.

One of the problems with me getting a job is that I always wonder what else is out there. If I don’t enjoy some aspects of my job, I instantly start trying to think of other options that might exist that I would enjoy better. I wonder if these part of me will ever go away. It may not. That’s why the trip might be beneficial in helping me explore and see what other types of careers and jobs are out there. I really just think I’m very hands on. I can do all the research I want and I can read up on what careers do what. But, until I get out and talk to people and actually see what’s involved in certain jobs, I really don’t know what to expect. So, unless any other jobs come up that I think I’ll really be interested in, it looks like I’m deciding between one of these jobs and the trip.

Have Interest

Well, today I was getting sick of trying to sell and I hadn’t made any sales. Two days in a row without making sales? Yeah, that would hurt. So, I started thinking about quitting and how I just don’t know if I can sell a product that I don’t feel good about. Not even that I don’t feel good about selling the product, more that I just don’t feel good about selling it to the people I talk to. Anyway, I started talking to this one lady, and we just got a talking. We ended up having a great conversation, and I could tell she really liked me. She told me to never be a teacher because she hates her job, and I was telling her about the hard time I was having deciding what I want to do with my life.

To make a long story short, I ended up selling this lady, even though she wanted to wait. I remembered how this morning I had read a chapter in How to Win Friends that talked about how we should show a genuine interest in people. That’s what I did with her, and I ended up selling her. Although I don’t think selling her was the most important part, my spirits lifted considerably after that call. I remembered how sometimes when I got sick of knocking doors and selling pest control, I would just try to find somebody nice to talk to. I would just make a friend, and I would a lot of times sell that person. But, I liked that because it rejuvenated me. Rather than feeling like a selling machine that didn’t really care about people, I felt like I was making friends and still giving my friends something they could benefit from. Well, after my first phone sale, the next lady I called I used a similar approach. I just started joking with her and she thought I was “a riot”. Her words, not mine. Well, I ended up selling her as well. What started as a horrible selling day and where I thought I was going to just quit and hate my job, turned into a very rewarding and fun day. I need to use that approach more often when I sell. I need to have a more genuine interest in the people I sell and just make friends with them on the phone.

During the time that I was having a hard time selling, I was talking to my coworker David. He’s the one who went on the trip from California to Rome. We talked about how I’m planning on getting a job, but that I still have my nomadic trip as a backup option. Well, he invited me to read some of the journal entries from his trip that he has posted on facebook. He has the first 19 days of his trip posted, so I went and read them tonight after work. They were so fun and interesting to watch, and they got me laughing really hard on multiple occasions. The trip just sounds so much fun.

I think one of the biggest fears I have about going on a trip is that I’ll regret going on it. Although one side of me does want to go out and explore and experience more of what is around me, the other side of me wants to start learning a profession and to get good at something. I just don’t want to go on my trip and regret not getting a job and getting started on life. However, reading his journal entries has fueled some of my desire to go on a trip. I’m just not sure. I’m just realizing more and more that there are tons of different occupational options that sound like lots of fun to me.

I think consulting, Venture Capital, Private Equity, and sales all sound like careers I would join. However, that’s only based on my personal experience and my personal experience is very limited. Also, as I search for jobs, I just feel like it’s useless. I’d much rather get a job because I know somebody, not because I apply on some website or something. So, if I go out every day, meet and talk to people and see new places, I’ll gain more experiences that I can then utilize to make a more educated decision. If I make a decision based up on my limited experience, will I continue to wonder if it’s the best thing for me? Will I ever be content with what I do until I’ve explored other options? These are the questions I face.

Wait for the Check

I didn’t sell anything today at my sales job. Since I work on commission only, I didn’t make any money. It kind of sucked. But, we also just got a new dialer and there are a bunch of kinks to work out. That has also been annoying. The people that I did talk to gave me their sob stories of all the money they’ve spent on coaching and how it hasn’t helped them anyway. Listening to them made me sad. It’s true, the coaching industry is pretty shady. It’s hard for me to want to sell to people after they’ve told me about all of that. Although I do think our product can help people be successful, I know a lot of times that they won’t be successful, no matter what products they purchase. As I was reflecting on that, it made me want to do B2B sales a lot more. There isn’t any emotion to the sale, rather, it’s very logical the decision making process in a business. I won’t ever feel bad about selling something to a business.

So, that was an interesting day at work. After work our FHE group met at this Pirate restaurant for dinner. It was really fun and the restaurant was really well put together. We had a big group of us and so it took forever to get our checks at the end and to get out of there. I remember that was the most annoying thing about going out to eat dinner when I sold pest control. We always had a big group of us, and it always took way to long to get our checks at the end of the night. However, tonight I realized that’s a big problem that might present itself as an opportunity for a business. It’s so funny how I see problems now. Before, I got annoyed at how long it took. Today, when it was taking a long time, I realized how that’s a problem that needs a solution. Whenever a problem exists, there is opportunity for a business. So, I don’t know enough about credit cards and why things are done the way they are done now, but I know there has to be a better way. I’m pretty sure I’ve slid my credit card for services or things before I knew what the exact total amount would be. If that’s possible, there is potential for people to pre-pay for their meal. I mean, with big groups they charge everybody a certain gratuity anyway, so, that wouldn’t even deter the tip-giving. Anyway, that’s a problem that I could think more about.

The Budgeted Nomad?

Well, I’m sick. I’m a little surprised by that, because I don’t remember the last time I was seriously sick. It was before my mission sometime. I think part of the reason I may be sick is because I haven’t been exercising as regularly as I usually do, and I’ve stopped being quite as diligent in my eating habits. I guess it could also be that I just got a virus. I guess I shouldn’t expect to never get sick no matter how healthy I keep myself.

I continue to mull around in my head the idea of this nomadic trip. I would really like to make a decision, but I just want to make sure I’m going to commit to whatever I decide to do. On Sunday I went to personal finance class that our Stake wants to be taught to every ward. I really enjoyed it, and I learned a lot. When I was listening to it, I realized that I really need to start saving and putting money away. I guess you could say, I need to start planning for my future and being financially prepared for it. That’s one of the bigger doubts that I’m having now. I mean, I’m almost 25, and I have nothing saved away. Nothing. A lot of people my age are in debt, but that’s not really an excuse.

So, if I go on this trip, it will probably only delay the amount of time until I start making money and putting it away for long-term plans and goals. See, there is one part of me that is starting to realize all the lessons that I’ve learned from my many different post-graduation jobs. The reason I kept getting new jobs is because I wanted to find something that I loved doing. I kept telling myself that the money isn’t important, and that if I find something I love, the money will follow. Well, I’m starting to realize that is true in a sense, but if doing what you love doesn’t pay enough to satisfy your daily wants and needs, then it taints the activity and you start not to enjoy it as much. I’ve been so concerned on finding exactly what I’d like to do, that I haven’t been consistent with anything. I think that a better plan is to find a job I enjoy that pays well, but that still gives me the time and freedom to explore other options at the same time. See, I could have had a part-time sales job during all of these different adventures I’ve had. Then, since I wouldn’t have financial necessity to worry about, I could more fully analyze how much I enjoy the different projects I get involved in.

I’m an entrepreneur by heart. I see opportunities, and I always get excited about trying something new. Although having money isn’t necessary to make businesses successful, it sure makes them a lot easier. There are some ideas that I’ve had that I just couldn’t pursue because I didn’t have the financial resources to pursue them.

For example, with RateMySummerSalesJob.com, I got sick of going through the website and trying to search for problems that needed to be fixed. If I could just hire someone to do the beta testing for me, I could be off and running on the project. So, although starting a business is a great and worthy goal, I need to have a job that pays well while I explore different business options. That way, I won’t even consider myself to be finicky. I’ll have a job that I do regularly, but I can just consider my different business adventures as hobbies. And that’s completely fine to me if I have lots of different hobbies.

Also, to me it’s not necessarily just the excitement of working on my own ideas that intrigues me about entrepreneurship. I think it’s the idea of taking nothing to something that sounds so fun, whether it be my idea or not. In the Utah Valley, there are a lot of startup companies, and I would love to get in on the ground floor of many of them. However, I need to have a specialty that I can bring to the table. Although I consider myself really good at fixing problems, being very organized, and having an eye for opportunity, those aren’t the kinds of skills you sell yourself on. I need to have a specialty that will make me a valuable asset to any company, especially startups. I think the best thing for me to become specialized in is sales. I like sales, and that’s the lifeblood of any company, especially startups.

So, I guess my concern is if I go on this trip, I’m just delaying making money and starting my life. However, I can still go on this trip, make money, and put it away like anything else. In fact, if I don’t have to pay for housing, my expenses will be lower, although my food expense will increase, and my travel expenses could increase as well. But, I could set up a very specific budget for my trip that I need to stay under, while still working and making money through my sales job. I’ve been feeling more and more how I need to set a very specific budget. I want to live for about $1000 a month as far as my living expenses are concerned. That seems like it would be rather easy to stay under while traveling on the road, and I could make a budget specific to my nomadic lifestyle. Once I want to return to a “normal life”, I can just readjust my budget to the different expenses that will be associated with how I live.

Work or not to Work?

I’ve been thinking some more about my trip, and analyzing the different options that I have and what would be the best. I’ve been thinking more about how to make money on the trip. By going on the trip without money, I’m making the trip a very entrepreneurial venture. I’m forcing myself to be creative, scrappy, and to find ways to make money along the way. Those are things that I really like about that option. But, is that too much to worry about every day? Even if I have enough money in the bank for food every day, that still leaves me plenty of things to worry about. How am I going to get to my next location? Where am I going to stay? etc.

So, the other option, which I’m really liking right now, is trying to do my sales job while I travel. Right now, I’m working 4 hours a day doing phone sales. Everything I use to sell the service, I have access to online. Even the phone calls I make are on a business Skype account. It would be very easy for me to bring my laptop around with me, and to sell remotely. Well, it might still be a struggle because I’d have to find good Wi-Fi in a location where I could talk out loud on my phone. I also don’t even know if this would be a possibility for me. I’m not going to talk to the company about this possibility until I’ve been there for a while, and once I really start doing well with the sales. Once I’m really good, I’m sure they’d be willing to work something out with me.

Anyway, that option appeals to me because money would be something I wouldn’t have to worry about. It would be easier for me to travel more frequently and to see more sites, because I wouldn’t be dependent on my ability to make money. Also, if I have no money on the trip, I might end up getting really crappy jobs that kind of suck to have. I mean, since I graduated, I have kind of been scraping by and doing some random jobs that really haven’t been that great. Although having to use my imagination to find jobs would give me lots of experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise, I’m not sure those are the experiences I want to have. For example, let’s say I get to Cali and I want to go to Hawaii. Although it would interesting to try and find out ways to make enough money to get to Hawaii. What if it takes me a month to get enough money for a plane ticket? Then, I’m in California for a month, and I might get sick of it. Whereas, if I’m working daily, and I have money to travel when I want, it might be more interesting and fun.

I’m not sure which option I would like better. In reality, I’m not even sure doing phone sales remotely is an option. But, there are good and bad things about both options. It really just boils down to what reasons are the most important to me for this trip. If my main reason is to get out of Utah, see and experience as many new places as possible, then it would be better to have a job and money. But, if my main reason is to face all of my fears, learn as much as possible from my experience, then going penniless is the best option.

Another thing I just thought about is how me having to worry about making money every day might actually not be the most entrepreneurial way to go. On this trip, I plan on creating a blog and trying to get as many people to follow it as possible. I can learn a ton from the whole process of creating and maintaining a blog. I’ll want to write good content every day, continue to adapt the blog to meet the wants of my growing number of readers, learn better ways of monetizing it, figure out new ideas to market the blog, etc. If I have to worry about money every day, then I might not be able to spend as much time figuring out how to make my blog a success. Some of the travel blogs I have found have turned into full-time jobs for the writers.

As I was thinking of any new ideas I could use for my blog today, I gained some inspiration from a blog I was visiting called WhereTheHeckIsMatt? The guy does a little jig at all of the different places that he visits. I mean, it’s kind of funny, but the cool thing is how his little jig became viral, and people started telling others to watch the goofy guy dancing. Well, somehow, Stride gum ended up getting a copy of one of his dance videos. So, they paid for him to travel around the world and do dance videos, twice. Anyway, as I was thinking about something unique I could do, I thought of doing music videos. I don’t know exactly what I could do, but I was thinking of just making music videos about different portions of my trip. The would be parodies on existing songs, and then I would just post them on my blog and online. My first idea is to make a parody of the song by Miley Cyrus, Party in the USA:

Instead of Party in the USA, I would make the song be “Couchsurfing in the USA”. And let’s admit it, Miley Cyrus songs and music videos are perfect to do parodies of. So, I’m not exactly sure how my music videos would turn out, but I think it would be fun to do parody music videos about certain aspects of my trip. If I do a somewhat decent job, that might be something that could go viral. So, I might have to learn some video editing skills before I go.

The Doubts Start

Well, I started having some doubts today about my trip. I was actually surprised that I felt so good about everything so far, so, I guess I kind of expected myself to have doubts. I mean, I still haven’t made my mind up for sure about the whole thing, so it’s understandable that I’ll have doubts. I think I’m just starting to fear some things.

First off, I’m a little nervous about the cold. Even though my plan is to start in Arizona and then head off to CA, it’s still the winter time. During the winter, it’s cold outside, and so I’m not sure if I’ll want to be outside all the time in the cold. This is actually probably one of my biggest fears of the whole trip: timing. Would it be better to go at another time?

Second off, money. I know facing my fears is one of the points of the trip, so it’s natural to have a fear that I won’t have enough money. I just wonder if I’ll get caught some where, unable to raise the funds I need. I just might end up doing crappy jobs just to get by, where, I could just work for money here, and then go on more trips. I was also thinking today of the possibility of keeping my sales job, and just working remotely. That way I could pay for all of my expenses with my job, but I could just travel around while I’m doing it.

So, I think those are my biggest concerns right now. I’m still very optimistic about the trip, but I’m just not feeling as sure as I was. I’ve been doing a lot of reading about travel blogs and stuff online, and it has been educational to see all of the different blogs that are out there and crazy things that people do. I really do want to get out and see more parts of the country, but is the best way to do that penniless? That’s the question to be answered I guess.

On another thought, I’m kind of surprised at how accepted dishonesty is in the sales profession. I like my sales job right now, but I’m just surprised at how comfortable people are with bending the truth. I don’t ever want to make anything up or be dishonest, but other people don’t seem to mind the means, as long as the person understands what they are getting into in the end. I just don’t agree with that.

A new job?

I had an interview for a job today. I think it’s a pretty good fit for me and I’m hoping that I get it. It’s a phone sales job, but I’ll be selling to consumers, so the sales cycle is much shorter than a B2B sales job. Also, we only contact leads, so, I like that about it as well.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately while analyzing my career and what to do with my life is how your career affects your ability to serve. I always thought that being an entrepreneur would be great because once you achieve a certain amount of wealth, you can stop worrying about yourself, and all your time and efforts can be put into helping others. That’s a good point, the fact that the less you HAVE to worry about yourself, the more you CAN think about and do service for others. Like, right now, as I’ve been worried and stressed about what kind of jobs I should have, it’s been very hard for me to think about service. Even last weekend, when I was working 15-hour days, it was easier for me to think about service. My schedule was pre-determined, and so my energy could be spent in making the most of my day and helping those around me. When I have to worry about my schedule and what I’m going to do, it leaves a lot less time to worry about helping other people. So, I’m not sure being an entrepreneur is the best way to help others. With a job, a lot of times you only have to think about the job for a certain amount of time, and then you are done thinking about it. An entrepreneur rarely gets a break from thinking about his business. I always wanted a job that I didn’t have to bring home with me, and so with a job it’s much more likely you can leave it at work.

If you are an entrepreneur, you have to think about a lot more, and that additional effort required on your part leaves less time to think about others. So, being an employee actually might be a better way to serve. However, typically an entrepreneur is helping people by the fact that he is building a business. Businesses create jobs, spur the economy, and often better society.

I guess I’m just seeing more and more why being an employee really isn’t as bad as I have made it out to be. One of the biggest things I wanted out of being an entrepreneur is freedom. However, when you are a really good salesman, you can pretty much do whatever you want. Companies kiss the butts of their favorite salesmen. If they want to take work off or whatever, they really don’t have limitations because they are such an indispensible part of a business. So, I can get those same benefits of freedom from a career in sales.

My Life’s Work?

After doing the triathlon event last weekend, I realized that it wasn’t the most fun I’d ever had. I thought that I really wanted to go into race management, and after the race, I didn’t feel so sure any more. I think one thing that I’ve decided for sure is that I really don’t care what I do. I’ve been thinking that I want to be an entrepreneur, because it could afford me so many things that I want. I’m not even sure that’s what I want anymore. I just want to do things that I really enjoy. I could see myself being happy as an employee, but I can also see myself being happy as an entrepreneur. I think entrepreneurship has always interested me because it just seems like I would go crazy as an employee. I thought the way for me to be happiest was to always be able to progress and not to have the limitations that are placed upon oneself as an employee. Now, I think that in any job or occupation you have, you can continue to progress. Maybe not in the way of progressing to make more money, but one can always get better and more efficient at what one does. I think I can continue to learn and grow no matter what job I decide to do.

So, with that being said, I decided this weekend that I’m not giving my career interests a good enough chance before dropping them. I think I need to get a job that I can enjoy and make enough money so that I don’t have to worry about money. Then, I can pursue other interests and occupations in my spare time. That will really help me to see what I’m interested in, because necessity won’t dictate where my time is spent. Whatever job I have right now is not indicative of what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life, so I don’t need to feel like I’m settling or getting stuck in a job I don’t like. However, I DO think I should stick things out a little longer before deciding I’m not interested. For example, real estate investing. I really wanted to do that, and all of a sudden I’m no longer interested? What’s that crap? I have never even done any investments, so how can I all of a sudden not be interested? B2B sales. Did I ever make any successful sales before quitting my jobs? No, I decided I didn’t have the patience to wait that long. Well, I think that anything I try, I need to do it long enough so that I have success in that career. If I’m quitting jobs before having success, of course I’m not going to enjoy them.

So, this is my plan as of now. I need to get another job to make some money. I think I’m going to get a part-time job in sales somewhere. I still feel like sales is something I would enjoy, I just need to find the right sales jobs. There are so many different sales jobs, and I need to find ones that allow me to interact more with people in person. I would love going to trade shows, sporting events, or even just meeting with potential clients. So, it’s not the fact that sales isn’t a good fit for me, I just think that maybe talking on the phone all day type of sales isn’t good for me. And, who knows, I might even be able to enjoy that once I stick it out long enough to be successful at it. Did I love door to door? No, but I was successful, and so there were certain things about that I learned to really like.

Ok, so after I get that other job, then I can pursue all of the other interests and projects I have going on. I can work on RateMySummerSalesJob.com, real estate investments, getting sponsorships for Bike2Bike.org, and get my real estate license. Another example I just thought of is my experience with RateMySummerSalesJob.com. I never made money with that site, so is the fact of the matter that I don’t enjoy working with online websites? Or, is it just the fact that I got frustrated at the site maintenance, and so I dropped the site? It’s the latter. I need to stick with things until I have some moderate success, and then I’ll be able to know whether I like it or not. I’ve been tasting the bitter of all these different jobs and been quitting before tasting the sweet. It’s not a matter of settling Aaron, it’s a matter of doing your best first, before quitting.

Wow, typing this out has really helped me to see how silly I’ve been. I’m still a little confused about what job I’m going to get. But, one thing is for sure, I’m not going to quit until I’m successful at it. Then, once I rock at what I do, I can give it the boot. Think of how my life would be different if after the first day of knocking doors to sell pest control, when I got rejected and hated my life, I quit. I wouldn’t have learned anything. On the contrary, I think of how much I learned and grew from my experiences with door to door sales. I’m not allowing myself to learn from my personal experiences, because I’m not pushing through that moment of struggle that sucks before I start to have success.

The last example I can think of was my bike selling business. I got old bikes, fixed them up, and I sold them. I remember the first bike I sold was so fun to me. Just the fun of making money all on my own was very rewarding. Then, after I fixed up a few bikes, I realized that I didn’t really enjoy the bike-fixing-part. I enjoyed making money in a venture of my own, but I didn’t enjoy the surrounding events that helped me to make the money. I had success with the business, and I probably made around $500-$1000, but my interest fizzled out. Now, I have no more interest in a used bicycle business. I did before, but now I’m tried it, had some relative success, and I’ve been there done that. That’s the difference between what I should do and what I’ve done. I have no regrets or thoughts of what could be with used bicycles because I did it long enough to have success. Then, you can actually make a decision about whether or not it’s a good fit.