Deciding to be an Entrepreneur

Ok, I’ll be honest: the actual moment of decision was a lot less somber than this adrenaline rushed one.

If you’re here reading these words, you’ve likely been thinking about making the jump into becoming an entrepreneur.

You can go all in, slowly wade into the water, or wait another decade thinking about it. It’s really up to you what pace you take and when, and if ever, you decide to jump.

I started this blog because I know firsthand how scary it can seem—how ridiculousy tied up this choice to live on your own terms can be fear based, frightening, and totally nerve wrecking.

This is where I sense the inherent overlap of my work.

Getting out of your head and consistently tapping into grounding practices can be key. Getting out of your head (if swimming in anxiety, fear, and panic) and getting into a visceral sense of calm radiant confidence.

It’s not always easy, but it definitely can be done.

Entrepreneurship is synonymous with calculated risk. But at some point, you either make the move or you don't. You leap or you don't. I realized that faith does not have to be religious in context, but in many ways is quite spiritual. Skydiving. Inversions. Starting a business. Fear based. Fleeting thought: what if death is also no big deal

Once upon a time, starting a business, writing, and exposing myself to the public as a solo entrepreneur seemed pretty intimidating.

Fearful of the ramifications of placing my words, ideas, and musings into a public sphere, I waited YEARS before I finally built this platform to integrate my myriad of passions via Peace to the People.

To successfully launch this site, I knew I'd eventually have to become what I'd always longed to be: an author, alive and interactive in the present moment.

I launched my first and hopefully lifelong business (Peace to the People, LLC) in the state of Ohio in August of 2016 and by April, it seemed time to finally jump out of an airplane.

The symbolism was too striking. 

As Freudian dream analysis suggests: the fear of falling represents a fear of failure.

My New Year Resolutions had "Skydive" on the top of each list for over fifteen years. 

My only semblance of recurring dreams were of falling, over and over and over in infinite scenarios, strongly sensing that weightless shift in the gut as I consciously acknowledged I was plummeting to a grim fate without an ounce of control.

Dreams of wild colors over an ocean, clinking upward and upward and upward towards the infinitely high sky, growing conscious of how far away the ground is, how unlikely it would be to survive a fall of this height if something went wrong.

That clenching in your gut, the tightening of the chest, the lapsing of breath, the fear-fear-fear-sweat mindset of panic arising from within.

Then of course, was the fear of falling: the 

Another significance of this jump was dedicated to one of my best friends who committed suicide several years ago by stepping from seven stories to asphalt.

Let's just say that event really stuck with me, especially given my lifelong fear of falling.

A huge portion of my drive to live life to the fullest comes from the contrast of driving through my hometown and knowing he is buried in the fields aside me.

Life has a whole lot of meaning aside death.

In fact, the logo of this very business was inspired from the charcoal heart I drew way back when in art school: a tribute to loving yourself: to never giving up on yourself or your life.: to risk.

If life could come to such a tragic and sudden stop, should I not attempt to give this life I have my all?

In the meantime, I daydreamed of becoming a successful entrepreneur, just like my parents and grandparents and great grandparents before me. 

My extended family and friends reminded me it was "in my blood" to run my own business.

But what was it about running a successful business? You had to really believe in yourself and your abilities—or really, what the hell is the point?

I had felt this since the age of sixteen as I had started my first mini-businesses and became president of my high school Entrepreneurship Club.

For over a decade I dreamed of the moment I would believe in myself enough to own who I was and what I had to offer to the world around me.

But what does entrepreneurship inevitably require?

Risk.

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