I’ve always liked building things.
Not in the hammer-and-nails sense. Businesses. Ideas. Places. Teams. Taking something that exists mostly in your head and seeing whether you can turn it into something people will actually walk through the door and pay for.
I’ve owned restaurants, built music schools, worked in media and creative businesses, and started more than a few projects over the years. Some became successful. Some lasted longer than I expected. Others taught me very expensive lessons.
That’s business.
What interests me about it isn’t really the corporate world. It’s the human side of entrepreneurship. The excitement of opening the doors for the first time. Making payroll when things are tight. Hiring someone and watching them become great at what they do. Figuring out why customers love one idea and couldn’t care less about another.
And then there are the mistakes.
I’ve made plenty.
I’ve learned that being right about an idea doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve figured out how to make money from it. I’ve learned that growing can create as many problems as struggling. I’ve learned that the numbers eventually get a vote, regardless of how much you love what you’ve built.
I’ve also learned that sometimes things end.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they failed.
This section is where I’ll write about those experiences. Restaurants, entrepreneurship, customer service, employees, money, marketing, ideas that worked, ideas that didn’t and the strange reality of trying to build something from scratch.
I’m not writing any of it as a business guru.
God knows there are enough of those.
I’m writing as someone who’s spent a good part of his life building things, occasionally watching them fall apart, and then, for reasons I’m still trying to understand, deciding to build something else.