Just finished it. What a nice way to end the work day. The man is truely inspiring. Living your childhood dreams, what a concept. How many people actually do that today? When I was younger I can remember what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a lawyer. I had no idea what a lawyer did at young age. I just thought it was cool how the lawyers on tv would walk through those little doors and set their briefcase down. To me it was about the look, and I thought lawyers looked cool.
After watching this video, I am now thinking about why I did not go after some of my dreams. I think a big part of those dreams are crushed by mentors that never got to live out there own dream. In highschool I was advised to look into Public Service jobs for my career. After being ranked 104 in a class of 138 most people gave up hope for me. Hell when I punched out a whopping 770 on my SAT’s I gave up hope for myself.
In highschool my dreams changed, I was always intrigued about business. How it works, how it changes and how will technology impact it. I know it doesn’t make complete sense, but it was interesting to me. Unfortunately I really did not have anyone to motivate me to apply to colleges. So the summer after I graduated from highschool I applied to the Police Academy in Ohio. They pretty much let anyone in, so I figured I might as well give it a shot and that would be my career. I was pretty set on this idea, since highschool advisers were so kind to advise me not to look into higher education.
I was all set to take on this career as a public servant until I got a phone call. A neighbor of mine started a robot company. He wanted to see if my brother and I wanted to help him on some of the mundane building of parts. Mind you this was during the .com boom so everyone was always in a hurry to hit the market first. It was September and he wanted a full launch by November. He offered me 10 dollars per hour under the table. i thought this was a pretty decent deal. So i took it. Moved all my stuff back to Pittsburgh and started at the robot shop in October.
While working at the robot shop, I got recognized for my computer skills. Skills I always took for granted, actually were useful in the workplace. Soon after I started they increased my responsibility. I was now working on a website that was getting thousands of hits a day, maintaining all the computers for the business, networked the office together and I even got to work on some higher level robotics stuff. Unfortunately come December we really did not sell many units and I was informed I was losing my job in January.
At this point I was not sure what to do with my life. Henry Thorne the owner of Probotics had a suggesstion for me. He gave me the go to college speech. I half listened to him as I thought I did not have a chance. Henry was a seasoned entrepreneur and all around genius so I figured maybe I should at least entertain the idea.
I went home and applied to RMU. Why RMU? They had a free application online so I figured I was not out anything if they did not accept me. I did this all on my own, my parents were supportive but skeptical.
So long story short, I was pretty good at college. I turned a 3.86 in my major and made deans list many of times. I was able to come out of school with a degree that had opportunity. Along the way I started pittspeed as well as two other companys that most people don’t know about. And now I have an integral role at a million dollar year company at the age of 26. This past year has been like a dream come true. Now to set higher goals and make more dreams come true in the next years to come.
So through all my rambling I hope to get one point across to some of the younger pittspeeders. Surround yourself with positive people, and do not listen to the negative people out there in the world. Work hard and you will receive anything you want.
A question for some of the older pittspeeders… What were your dreams? Have you reached them?
CLIFF NOTES: blah blah blah