This column is part three in a series. Part 1 can be found here, and Part 2 can be found here.
I got everything I could have wanted from going back to college in my thirties, except for the main reason I went, which was to level up my career in IT. As it turned out, the head of the IT department, an incredibly nice man, was... well, not super knowledgeable about that particular area of study.
I still really enjoyed the challenge of going back to school, though, and getting an honest-to-goodness college degree wiped away the admittedly dumb shame I had carried for more than 15 years over never getting a high school diploma.
Within a month of graduation, I accepted a job at Tank Connection, a manufacturer I had driven past every day for the previous year and a half. I felt like IT in the manufacturing world had become my niche, and Tank Connection quickly revealed itself to be a great place to work, with a great boss.
The company offered a then-34-year-old IT guy with a growing family everything he could want in terms of benefits, pay, and treatment. Karen and I had three girls at this point. We had not planned to have our third child while I was back in school with zero income, but, as the saying goes, "Man plans, God laughs."
I busted my rear at Tank Connection. My last 48 hours at B&W had put a sizable chip on my shoulder, and suddenly the work ethic that had eluded me in my twenties and early thirties surfaced, fueled largely by anger over how badly my time there had ended.
It turns out I did have a little bit of my dad's legendary work ethic in me, it just took me more than three decades to find it. I always have been a bit of a late bloomer.
At Tank Connection, I was treated like gold, paid well and given more responsibility than I had ever had before. Despite all that, within a year and a half I was as miserable as I had been when I made the ill-fated decision to leave Atkinson Industries four years earlier.
What the heck was wrong with me?
I couldn't figure it out. Once again, I assumed something was inherently wrong with me.
Joe Works had never left my mind. Still hasn't, actually - I ran into him at the Iola Walmart a couple of weeks ago, and immediately "My Hero" by the Foo Fighters started playing in my head.
What he was doing in Humboldt was the sort of thing I had dreamed of someone doing in Bourbon County, but that seemed impossible.
At one point, I went to the gas station near work and pondered buying a Powerball ticket. So far as I could tell, it was the only way I was ever going to accomplish .0000000001% of what Joe Works had.
In the end, I felt like an idiot and left.
For all I know, I might have hit the jackpot that night, but I really doubt it.
By that point, I had been commuting anywhere from half an hour to more than an hour each way for a decade straight, and I had become hooked on the audiobook subscription service Audible. One night, close to Thanksgiving 2015, I was feeling dejected and scrolling through the catalog looking at books about money.
I came across one that immediately made me roll my eyes: "The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime".
I prepared to scroll right past this obvious get-rich-quick crock... until I saw the thousands of five-star reviews.
I started reading them. As it turned out, this wasn't so much a get-rich-quick book as it was a soup-to-nuts crash course in entrepreneurship and business.
It was written by a guy named MJ DeMarco, who had bounced around from job to job in his twenties and at one point ended up driving a limo.
One night, a client asked if he knew where he could rent a limo in New York City. DeMarco didn't, but the question made him realize there was an unmet need — one that the still-pretty-new internet was perfect for.
He spent the next several months in his apartment building what would become Limos.com, a website that could connect people looking to rent a limo anywhere in the country with companies that could serve them. DeMarco checked out books from the local library, taught himself how to program and spent hours every night building the site.
In 2000, he sold it for $1 million. Within a year, the new owners were bankrupt after the dot-com crash, and DeMarco bought it back for $250,000.
He kept growing it until 2007, when he sold it again for $4.5 million. He retired at 37.
The premise of the book is that there is no such thing as get rich easy, but there is such a thing as get rich quick — if you consider five to 10 years of really hard work "quick."
More importantly, the book finally made me understand what made people like Joe Works so successful.
As it turns out, Joe had not received a vision of the turnover ball hitch like Moses and the burning bush. He and his partner, Roger Baker, had simply realized that people would like to tow a gooseneck trailer without having a giant hitch permanently sticking out of the middle of their truck bed.
Joe and Roger had discovered a problem... and created a solution.
I decided I was going to do the same.
I had no idea what problem I was going to solve or what kind of business I was going to start. But I realized for the first time that what little joy I got from the world of IT came from the feeling of helping people, not really from the tech itself.
I promptly told my boss I was going to start a business, even though I had no idea what kind of business. I told him that once I figured that out, I was going to look for a job closer to home, even if it meant taking a pay cut — which it almost certainly did.
He justifiably thought I was insane and tried to talk me out of it.
As two bald, tall, 36-year-old IT guys, we had bonded during my time there, and he was legitimately worried about me.
Alas, I could not be swayed.
Over the next two months, I listened to countless hours of audiobooks, podcasts and courses looking for the kind of business I wanted to start. I also found a job that would cut my commute in half - and my pay by 20%.
I took it, telling myself the business - whatever it turned out to be - would make up for the 20% pay cut.
The crazy part was that I turned out to be right, and the new job would be the first IT job I ever had that gave me a genuine sense of fulfillment.
Of course, I would end up screwing both up royally...
Part 4: Revenue Does NOT Equal Profit publishes next Saturday.
