An Itch Worth Scratchng

I have an itch. It's that restless feeling that keeps gnawing at me, pushing me to build something of my own, to earn the title of entrepreneur. But why? The truth is, I can't quite put my finger on it. Over the past 20-years, I've worked hard to carve out a successful career as a chartered engineer, rising through the ranks in a respected consulting firm, and currently occupy the position of Associate in a well-respected consulting company. I’m on an upward trajectory, my colleagues commend my work, and performance reviews are filled with promises of limitless potential.

My wife, herself a business owner, dreams of stepping away from the responsibilities of entrepreneurship. Yet, here I am, yearning to dive headfirst into the unpredictable world of starting my own venture; with two young children this unpredictability, could be at best detrimental and worst a chaos bringing demon straining, my finances, family life, and sanity. And yet, the itch persists.

Here I sit in my makeshift office—a spare room cluttered with the usual debris of  domestic life, on the wall hangs a meticulously crafted roadmap outlining my entrepreneurial aspirations. It's a vision born amidst the uncertainties of the COVID-19 pandemic, fuelled by the surge of new businesses emerging despite the odds – at that time it seemed every man and his dog had ambitious plans to start companies that would rival amazon. Following this trend my plan was ambitious, envisioning the launch of three businesses and moonlighting as a property developer within three years.

Fast forward four years, and reality falls short of the grand vision. BBLD Places exists on paper—a fledgling development company with a single property under its belt. The opportunity to grow this company exists, however the actual tasks needed to ensure this is the case rarely seem to happen. Other tasks always seem to take priority; another tragically unrealistic deadline in work, wanting to spend a few hours on the couch, and the ever-reliable rabbit hole of YouTube, all mean that focus on the tasks needed to establish and grow a business of my own never happen. This doesn’t happen in my day job. If a task needs to be done, it get’s done and this I think comes down to accountability. The perception of my failure through others people’s eyes terrifies me more than the perception of failure in my own eyes, and so being accountable to others seems to be the driving force behind my career success. I need to emulate this for my own ventures.  

Writing this serves to act as my own form of accountability – outlining my plans, goals and progress towards them to nobody and everybody will I hope give, me a level of accountability that I can use to generate a fear of failure. In doing so I’m also hoping to give you an insight into if and how starting a business in whatever form that takes eventually can be done. I’ll provide some clarity on this point, I’m not a writer by any stretch of the imagination so you’ll mainly see how I work and then hopefully you can use this to see if it will work.

Together, let's navigate the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, learning from my successes and failures – but first things first; let’s start scratching and figure out what business start??