Eleven years ago I started my journey as an entrepreneur. I quit my safe, traditional full time job at age 26 and took a leap into the unknown.
And while I didn't know anything about running a business, I knew one thing: I wanted more.
I tried blending in, tried following the traditional career path, but the pull towards the road less taken kept calling me. A call to make something that was uniquely mine.
To me, entrepreneurship is a way of life you feel called to long before you ever make the leap.
I've always said being a small business owner isn’t for everyone --- and certainly not for the faint of heart. But if you feel the pull, it isn’t optional either.
It’s the thing that won’t let you settle. The quiet pressure that builds even when everything looks “fine.” The knowing that you’re meant to move—toward something undefined, unfinished, and entirely your own.
I didn’t grow up around entrepreneurs.
There were no founders in my family, no business lessons at the dinner table, no roadmap showing me how this life worked. I didn't go to business school, no childhood dream of owning a company. Heck, I didn't even work in retail!
What I did have was a hunger to do things my own way.
From a young age, I had this desire to be different. Loud. Extra. Unapologetically myself. And for a long time I tried to hide that. Being “too much” made me stand out, and not always in ways that felt safe or celebrated.
So I did what a lot of us do. I tried to soften. Blend in. Become a chameleon. I followed paths that were already paved—traditional routes I was told would lead to fulfillment, stability, success.
But a few years after college, that undercurrent to be different and pave my own path grew louder. A restlessness I couldn’t explain.
I didn’t want to climb higher. I wanted to step sideways. Off the path entirely.
What I wanted—what I needed—was freedom. Independence. Challenge. I thrived at the edge. I wasn’t afraid of being seen, of failing loudly, of falling on my ass in public if that’s what it took to find something real.
Entrepreneurship didn’t come from rebellion. It came from honesty. From finally admitting that the life I was building looked good—but didn’t quite fit who I wanted to be, and become.
Outgrowing containers isn’t about failure. It’s about recognizing when something truer is asking to take the lead.
As entrepreneurs, we live inside a question most people are taught to suppress: What do I deeply, truly want to experience? And am I brave enough to find out?
We don’t ask this once. We live inside it. We go to sleep holding the possibility. We wake up to it again the next day. We refuse to let it die.
Of course, we want to build things. Achieve things. Learn things. Influence. Add value.
But underneath all of that is something simpler—and more dangerous.
We want to be free.
Free to create lives that actually fit us. Free to stop apologizing for our intensity, our ambition, our desire for more. Free to remind others that there is no single right way to live—and that fulfillment doesn’t come from blending in, but from standing fully in who you are.
So we create. We leap. We test ourselves.
Sometimes we land on our ass. Sometimes we land strutting like a boss ass bitch. Either way, we’re alive.
The world doesn’t always know what to do with people like us. Systems try to tame us, rush us, shrink us into something easier to manage.
So we choose uncertainty. We choose creative tension. We choose the practice of turning toward fear, doubt, and resistance—not as enemies, but as proof that we’re touching something that matters.
Living this way doesn’t mean chaos. It means agency. It means choosing yourself again and again, even when the path isn’t clear.
There are no guarantees. But there is freedom—earned, claimed, and lived.
So you do you, entrepreneur. You're the only one who can do it just like you.