While growing up, I had an extremely entrepreneurial spirit. Various ‘business partners’ and I started a number of businesses – a gardening business, a car washing business, a community newsletter, a pencil design business – anything that might make a few dollars.

Only one of these businesses was a ‘success’ – the pencil design business in the 5th grade. But even that was shut down fairly quickly when a newly formed competitor drew too much attention to the marketplace and our teachers forced us to close up the operation.

After that,  I stopped forming businesses and started to focus on my school work…but I knew I wanted to ‘take over the world’.

To ‘take over the world’ at that point was merely code for following the path MOST traveled – graduate high school, get a college degree, begin a career. Afterall, this path served my parents very well. Where I thought my path would diverge from the norm was my expectation that I would immediately start a meteoric rise to CEO.

Meteoric rise into CEO-dom aside, this path mostly served me very well. Before I graduated college I had begun my career (as an entry-level associate) in the homebuilding industry and inside of 6 months, I received my first promotion. Then inside a couple of years, I had received second promotion and then a third and I was further convinced that the trend line was headed in just the direction I had ‘planned’.

And then…the trend flat-lined.

The housing bubble burst and I saw 80% of my co-workers laid off. Anytime HR was on site, everyone was on edge…the company continued to tell everyone left that we were ‘lucky to have jobs’. While these types of comments never sat well with me, they did reset my expectations and certainly precluded me from continually inquiring about more senior positions that were all but eliminated.

A couple of years later, I had the opportunity to join a technology company doing User Acceptance Testing. Again, I was promoted quickly and before I knew it, I was a Product Manager for a multi-million dollar product line.

I was back on the trend line and excited about the future.

In the past few years, I have started to rethink my ‘take over the world’ strategy and have concluded that climbing the corporate ladder and being CEO is not anything I actually want and was driven by my competitive nature and a plan that was set in motion before I could drive.

As a result of this conclusion, I have reset expectations and want to start or buy a business and pro-gress to my childhood aspirations of being an entrepreneur.

This blog will serve as a running series of adventures and reflections on the path I am taking to make this new plan, my new reality.