Recently, I always thought that I was starting my entrepreneurship journey when I first started
my podcast, or at the very least in those at least couple of weeks prior to that, like
that summer. This most recent summer, summer of 2023 is when I thought that I had started
my entrepreneurship journey. But I've been doing this. I've been really taking storytelling
seriously lately. And in this book, The Power of Personal Storytelling, he gives actionable
steps at the end of every single chapter. So he gives like an exercise to do at the
end of every single chapter. And I told myself, I wasn't going to move on to the next chapter
until I complete the actionable step, because I have a tendency to be addicted to reading.
I told my friend this over the summer, and that was the first time I'd ever like said
that. And that was the first time I came to realize that I was addicted to reading because
I was into reading so much over the summer that I didn't even take action. I was just
reading, reading, reading. And I told him I was addicted to reading. So I said, I'm not
going to read until I get 10 leads at the time I was working on a lead magnet and a funnel.
And I failed. Over the summer, I did fail that quest. I failed within like two days.
So it was not that it was, I didn't even try to be honest. And so I'm like asking myself
like, what do I need to do to take action? Now lately, taking action has been a lot easier.
And I've been a lot better at it because I am actually passionate about what I'm doing
now. Whereas before I wasn't really sure what I was trying to do. I was just kind of aimlessly
doing whatever I wanted. But now I'm pretty confident that this is what I'm going to be
doing for months to years to come. And what I'm, so coming back to the story, I thought
that I began my entrepreneur journey last summer, like six, seven months ago. But like
I said, I've been doing a lot of exercises for storytelling. And one of the exercises
was to try and remember your childhood. So lately over the past week, I've been pondering
my childhood a lot. And I came to a lot of conclusions and I came to a lot of epiphanies
and I learned a lot of things that I talked about over the past couple episodes. But what
I want to talk about today is I didn't just start my entrepreneurship journey. I've been
an entrepreneur my entire life. And shoot, I was gonna, I wrote down all of the things,
all of the things that I did throughout my life as an entrepreneur on a sheet of paper
upstairs. It's in my journal upstairs and I was going to bring it down here and read
them all to you. But I forgot and I already started recording. So I'm just going to try
and remember pretty much the first thing that I can really remember doing as an entrepreneur
was when I was in like elementary school. I was really into makers, which is like donut
maker, ice cream maker, and then like all the different makers. So we put like me and
my sister saved up money and we convinced my mom to buy us a bunch of makers. And this
one maker in particular, well actually before I even started this, let's go back. The original
entrepreneur journey that I had was a lemonade stand. Classic, right? Everyone has that.
I remember setting up a table in front of my house right next to the sidewalk and just
sitting there for hours waiting for people to walk by. And we probably made like $40
total over the course of like a lot. We were sitting there for hours. It was not a very
good business model. And we did that for days also. We didn't just do that once. We did
that a lot. And then we got into makers. Like I said, we got into like donut machines, ice
cream machines, all kinds of making machines. And my specialty was donut machine. So what
I ended up doing was I got really good at making donuts. I found a good recipe and I
started making them a lot. And we would eat them and I would give them to like my parents
to sample. And it was like this tiny donut machine. It was like, it didn't make full
sized donuts. It made the shape of a full sized donut. It's like the circle, but it
was like the size of a munchkin. So it's like smaller than my fist, but the size of
a donut. So it's like a circle. But so I get good at making these. And this one summer
is my friend's block party. So I'm like, I see an opportunity here. I see an opportunity
to make money. And I, my friend invites me to his block party and I decide to make a
bunch of donuts. So me and my friend make a bunch of donuts and we like stack it all
up and we bring them to the block party because bring the goods to the market. And we brought
all of these donuts and we like walked around and tried to sell. We made like, we made like
one or two sales. It was pretty slow. And then we found something. We found someone.
We found our hyperactive buyer. He was someone who came right up to us and then bought like
three donuts. And then we're like, Oh, do you want more? And then he like went back
to his parents to get more money and he came back for more. And we're like, Oh, do you
just want to buy everything? And so we sell him, he sells us out. Like he bought our entire
stock of donuts. So we probably made a decent amount of money that day, like $40. It's a
lot for elementary school kid. And so we make these donuts, we sell it out. That was like
my first instance of, or that was one of my earlier instances of entrepreneurship. And
I have lots of different times. I like I said, I listed out all of the things that I could
remember. And it took up the entire page. So like a few of them that I can remember right
now are freshman year during COVID. I wanted to get rich online like everyone did. And
so I was trying to learn how to code a game. I wanted to my thing at the time was I thought
that I could it would make me a lot of money to program a game. So that was what I was
into. I like did a lot of research on how to program and what were the best programming
languages. And I ended up deciding C sharp was the one that I wanted to do. And at the
time I only had a Chromebook, a school Chromebook, I didn't have a computer or anything. I had
an Xbox, but that's that's nothing like that's not going to work for this. So I had to basically
I figured that I was planning on getting a PC soon, because I had some money saved up.
And this was actually one of my early reasons why I got my PC. It's the one right there,
the one that I have on my desk. And so I save up all my money for this PC. And I realized
that this is not a limiter. Like the fact that I don't have a PC is not a limiter, because
I can still learn all of this stuff on my Chromebook. And so what I do was this was
during the pandemic. And so we're in e learning. And we're also in hybrid. So my school, during
my freshman year had a hybrid thing. So we would go online for most of our classes, but
then for like a third of the time, we would be in the building. And so I just remember
sitting in my study hall in the back, literally just scribbling notes, learning about programming
on my journal on my notebook. And so that's basically what I did. And I didn't really
get very far, because I like lost mo I lost like, I don't I think it was just because
lack of discipline and lack of like true passion for it. And then I did a lot of different
things. So one of the big things I can remember also is in middle school, I would I wasn't
the rule in my household was we had to pay for our own lunch if we wanted to get hot
lunch at school. So we had to pay for with our own money. But my mom would go shopping
for food. If we so she would pay for food if we packed our own lunch. And me being lazy,
I didn't want to pack my own lunch. And also it was a point that the school hot lunch was
really good, at least at the time. And so I figured out a solution. I was like, Oh,
okay, well, I want the hot lunch, but I don't get it for free. Like, I'd have to pay for
myself like I wouldn't get it paid for by my parents. But then I identified that a lot
of my friends got their parents to pay for their hot lunches for them. And then I also
figured out what they wanted that I had. So they wanted snacks, they wanted chips, they
wanted like applesauce packets, they wanted all kinds of snacks. And they didn't have
that their parents wouldn't buy that stuff. But my parents did my mom would buy like the
big, big box from Costco of like chips of snacking chips like hot like Doritos, Lays,
all that stuff. And she would also buy like applesauce packets that I could trade. So
I basically made a bunch of deals, I would bring a bunch of applesauce packets and a
bunch of chips with me to school. And then in the early days, I would walk around trying
to find customers, I would literally just walk around with my chips and my applesauce
packets right at the end of the hot lunch line, like right when they got their food,
I'd be like, Hey, do you want to trade like two chips for your lunch? And I made a lot
of deals. I remember like a lot of times, I never went hungry, by the way, I never I
would only bring chips to school. And I didn't like chips. So I wouldn't eat them myself.
I made a risk every single day to rely on my customers to pay for me like to rely on my
customers to provide lunch for me, because I didn't like chips. I didn't eat them. I
didn't like them. And they were gross to me. So every single day, I always made a deal.
Like I would always get a lunch. Now, some days I got a lunch for like one chip. And
other days I had to trade like three or four chips depending on like other people's desires
at the time. And I built up a clientele. I remember at my the peak of my business, I
had like two or three regular purchasers. So every single day, I would bring like, I
had a deal with them, I had like a regular guaranteed rate with them. So I would trade
like two chips for one lunch guaranteed every single day, which the normal price was one
chip per lunch for other people. But since these guys were my regular, I paid them more.
So it was like a whole thing that I had going on. And then sometimes other people would
just see that I had chips and they'd offer me money and I take it. And it was this whole
like whole thing. And I remember at the end of the year, I had to clean out my locker
and there was literally mice in my locker and like a bunch of chip dust everywhere because
like a bunch of chips exploded. It was not a good site. And there was actually a mouse
that ran out of my locker when I opened it. So that was that. And that like, that was
one of another of my entrepreneur endeavors. And also I got pretty good at that. I went
on a this was all during middle school, by the way, I went on a field trip to it was like
overnight field trip over the weekend to amusement park to Cedar Point, it was out
of state. So we had to drive all the way down and we did it because it was like we were
in a competition, we played the competition and then we went to the amusement park. And
I just remember my mom gave me like $40 for the whole weekend, which would provide like
all of my food. And I did pack a lunch also. So I really it was just $40 for just the park,
which is a lot of money because I mean, the park food is expensive. So I remember I went
to the park and I bought all my food that I wanted. I did not hold back because I was
given $40. So I bought like a big massive nice burger, I bought a bunch of other like
fruit, fries, all kinds of stuff. I like pretty much spent nearly all my money. And at the
end of the day, I remember I only had like 10, maybe $10 left. And what I did was I was
like, okay, I see an opportunity here, a bunch of people on the bus ride home are gonna want
a snack, but they're not gonna have any money because they're gonna they probably all spent
all their money already. So I can take or not okay, not that they probably didn't realize
that they're gonna have to sit in a bus ride without any food. And they probably saved
a bunch of money for the bus ride home, which wasn't until the next day. But I was gonna
take advantage of the fact that everyone was tired from an entire day of playing our instruments.
We played in a competition in the morning. And then we went to an amusement park in the
entire afternoon and we didn't leave to like late at night. And so I was gonna take advantage
of a bus full of tired middle schoolers that want like food. And they all have money because
they save they save it for the bus ride home, which they're gonna have to pay for food on
the way home. So and I had like $10 left. So what I did was I went to the store, like
the candy shop, and I bought these like gourmet starbursts. Oh, high juice, they're called
high juice. And they're basically like starbursts, but like gourmet and fancy. That's what I
like to think of them as. And I buy like a few packs of these. And there was I like
walked around the bus, think of a coach bus like, is that what it's called? It's like
a nice bus like you know, the buses that have like recliners and have nice seats. And then
there's an actual bathroom in the bus also. That was the bus we were sitting at. So I
was walking up and down the aisles, like basically advertising the product. And not really many
people wanted it. But there was one dude that really wanted it. He was like, give it to
me for free, give it to me for free. I really want it like he really wanted it. But I held
off I didn't give him anything for free. And eventually, he broke down and he bought my
entire supply. And I was not cheap with it. I was selling for $1 each, each tiny little
packet. So you know, a starburst like that tiny, like the starburst is about the size
of your thumb. I was selling each high juice for $1. So tiny little things. I was over
selling extremely. And this guy bought me out and I ended up coming home. I left for
that field trip with $40. And I remember coming home with like $37 and like 23 cents. So that
was another very successful entrepreneur endeavor. And then another thing that I was working on
last winter was trying to figure out how to code websites. Because I thought I wanted
to build my own business online, but I didn't want to have to outsource for a website builder
and I wasn't aware of like click funnels or anything like that. I just thought that you'd
have to build it yourself if you want to actually done how you want it. And that was that went
well for like a month. I actually got pretty decent at building websites. Like I could
actually style it pretty well. And I was practicing at school also like on my school Chromebook
there was a website it was like code dev or I don't I don't know what it's called but
I forgot what it's called but I was using that and I was basically able to code an entire
website from that. That website on my Chromebook. So that was another entrepreneurial endeavor.
And eventually, I kind of realized that I was kind of dumb. And now I'm focused over
the summer I started focusing on the podcast. And I realized that no one's going to discover
me just on the podcast. So I wanted to focus on YouTube shorts and TikTok. And then I realized
that I wasn't really I didn't really want to target those people. Like those weren't
really the people like the people watching my YouTube shorts and TikToks were not really
the people that I wanted to target. And also it wasn't really building the type of relationship
that I wanted to build. Like long form builds a much more intimate relationship than just
like a two 20 second TikTok. And eventually I decided to just go all in on the long form
on YouTube and just making the best video every single day. And that's a whole story
on how I came to that conclusion, which I haven't actually worked out that story in
my head yet. But the one of the big changers was after I made like my third episode, I
went on a vacation to the Dominican Republic. And I was thinking to myself, how can I like
what what how can I move this YouTube channel? Like where do I want this YouTube channel
to go? And the one of the biggest epiphanies that I came down that I wrote down in my journal
was just make videos that I would actually watch like make videos that I would actually
watch because at the time I was extremely selfish. I was not really spending that much
time. And I was just putting out a bunch of garbage, like all those like literally every
single podcast episode, like the first 100. So podcast episodes were all garbage. And
even like these recent podcast episodes, I don't consider very good because I just see
them as practice. I am this podcast is purely practice for me. Like I'm literally just practicing
all of my techniques for the YouTube channel. So I'm not really worried about the podcast,
but the early like the first three YouTube videos were really trash. And then once I
made the mediocrity is not your role model, that was like the first video that I actually
spent like a decent amount of time on I spent 15 hours on that one. And then ever since
then I've spent more than 15 hours on every single one. So that's like the story. And
it was all because I don't know. But there was something I wanted to bring this all connected
to. I don't know that I went on a huge tangent. I just wanted to say all of the entrepreneurial
endeavors that I went on and how I didn't actually realize that I was an entrepreneur
all my life and do like pondering my childhood has been very valuable for me because I'm
getting way more confidence over myself because I always thought that I was wasting my life
until like sophomore year. I was thought that my entire 15 years, the beginning, the first
15 years of my life, I always thought it was just a waste. And if you think that way, then
that is a huge confidence destroyer, because then you only have three years of experience
while everyone else has their age like 1825, 50 years of experience, while I only had three
years of experience. But now pondering my childhood and finding all the value behind
my childhood, like what I just went through today about my entrepreneurial journeys is
an extreme confidence boost because now I reclaim all of those 15 years that I lost
because I decided that I was wasting my life even though I wasn't really wasting my life.