I miss the biggest.
Last weekend, at 9 pm 11 am. September, I, when I realized, put my daughter in bed – that was a better birthday of the lemonade.
12 years.
September 11 is actually the anniversary of many important events in my life, good and bad.
It was exactly a year before September 11, 2011 that I was released from my first career outside college, namely a set of events chain that dictated my life sincerely.
Permission
I was out in Vancouver in Canada and for 5 years I worked for the local chain of the entertainment complex (like Dave & Busters) and golf and country clubs.
I quickly set out on a chain chain, managed marketing and operations for several rent with several hundred employed.
However, we were facing growing financial pressures in the years when I was there.
The owner was a loner -rich man who bought things a rich man (rural clubs) and extended too much.
By 2010, the financial pressure of his purchases became too big. The owner has the task of the Vice President of the Company with an average reduction in costs and it was decided that this cost reduction would usually come from the release.
The VP tapped me to help.
Do not forget that I was incredibly young at the moment and did not know what I was doing, but the vice president was also a mentor for me, and that was his way to throw me into the fire and give me a real business experience I would never have ever experienced.
And so it started – Slaughterfest.
We started to release dozens of employees, starting with junior positions and escalating quickly to the head of the department – management, operations, accounting and marketing.
I shouldn’t say who was cutting, but here I was like a 25 -year -old cold child and told people twice at my age that they were released.
Fear and guilt consumed me at every conversation.
The process was also not fast. As the owner faced increasing financial pressure, the cuts continued during months.
Walking groups, you wondered what everyone thinks about you. When they talked to you, we just kept extra nice because they were afraid of their work?
The warning of the spoiler was.
At one point, VP and MySelf questioned whether we should even eat in our own restaurant, fear that they would be poisoned.
When we slowly arrived at the end of all the cuts we could do without completing the businesses, I began to feel Unsya and mostly defeated from experience. We were companies with Barebons employees, nervous used, dominated brand and product and continued financial pressures.
Turning point
Then, one event, I get the text from the VP, which I immediately knew that it would change my life: “Richard, can we meet tomorrow?”
I was my turn.
The following day, September 11, 2011, I gave the VP to get the same medicine I have helped to go to more than 100 others in the previous month.
Although I can meet, I was happy, it seemed like the definitive end of the very interesting chapter and exhausting for several months in my life.
New way
In weeks after I was released, I bought a 4 -hour working week Tim Ferriss that would start another chapter in my life.
I read the envelope of the book to cover the book for a few nights and remembered it was my future.
I wanted to build my own company and be in charge of my own destiny.
Inspired by the book, I spent the next year building small electronic trading businesses – learned how to choose winning products, negotiate with suppliers in China, import products to Canada, set up online store and online marketing.
Birth of a better lemonade stand
Ironically, it was exactly a year later, September 11, 2012, that I registered abtermodestastand.com – the strongest as space for distillation of my thoughts, ideas and experience in my throat.
It is wild that the only decision to start writing about my thoughts and experience would change the race of the rest of my life.
Only a year and a half after I started blogging, I attracted a better lemonade stand of Shopify and I joined the growth team, helped them develop a blog shopife from 200,000 to 2 million visitors during my time and experienced once in a lifelong opportunity to participate Technological IPO.
Just as I loved Shopify, product and people with whom the world with which the world, I left Shopify just a year and a half later to devote myself to a full -time business and continued mapping my own way.
From defeat to determination
September 11 has always been a symbolic day – a day of great losses and even more beginnings. From the loss of your work and questioning my purposes to the seizures of a better lemonade stand and re -finding my passion, every 11th. September I told me closer to who I should be.
It is reminded that successful does not come without failure. In fact, these failures are what they give maximum their meaning.
For me it was never just about building businesses – it’s about building my characteristics through the businesses I create about the risks I do, lessons I learn and who I have happened along the way.
Over the last decade, the way in which the weathered storm that has tested my resistance and experienced maximum, which I never imagined. But one constant through it all? My commitment to growth. Whether I help someone to start my first product, navigate a new digital landscape, or create a space in which entrepreneurs can prosper, I am always driven by the desire to create something bigger than me.
And why, even after that time I’m still here. I still create. I’m still learning. And I still appear on the next chapter 12 years later.