I still remember the time I got in a shouting match with my HS biology teacher… “You’re never going to amount to anything – I don’t even know why you are in this class – you should work more hours and drop out already…” He was a bit of a hot head so when I (embarassingly) swore at him and walked myself to the Vice Principal’s office and said, “It was Mr. [Redacted] we were yelling, I told him to eff off,” the Vice Principal had to do something but he knew it was complicated and a mutual breakdown so he gave me two detentions.
In retrospect, the teacher was right – I’ve had a knack for picking stuff up and never finishing, I had intelligence, but my mind wasn’t in school, I worked hard but at work, not school. There are “reasons,” but they don’t excuse it – he was right, and he was trying to get me to take an active role in my own life. I’d love to go back and thank him for that moment of trying. Sadly, it didn’t take, and it would take me years to change things, and I’m still working on them.
My life is made up of impulsive decisions and last-minute heroics. Sitting here on vacation waiting for the family to be up and at it, a post by Steve Jones caught my eye. It was his response to James Serra’s excellent T-SQL Tuesday 196 Prompt: “What career risks have you taken?” That got me thinking…
Straight Path – The Company That Some Risks Built
I think that’s a fairly accurate heading here. I have taken some risks that didn’t pan out along the way. There was the time I decided to leave IT and become a full-time firefighter/medic for the small department I was a volunteer at – I would have been the only fulltimer, it was a huge cut, and the other town employees didn’t love the way I was paid and I realized that being the only medic on a small NH town had some risks I didn’t want. So I stopped paramedic school, went back to DBAing, and still volunteered as a firefighter and EMT-I, just a bit less than before. There have been some clients that didn’t seem right during the sales process, and my gut was right on who aren’t clients anymore. Some business ideas that were the wrong ones, a whole partnership experience, and now we’re in the middle of releasing our own monitoring tool that we will use to replace one we lease today that looks at all clients proactively and reactively and does daily health checking. It’s a big risk as far as finances go, and I’ll know in about a year if it was a wise investment.
But the risks I’m thinking of here all more or less in some way panned out.
Leaving that first job so soon to be a Jr. DBA.
I was working at a hotel – dishwasher, then front desk – and I’m glad I was, because I met my wife there. I worked harder at that job than I ever did in school, and eventually dropped out, just like that teacher predicted. My girlfriend, now my wife, pushed me to finish the few credits I was missing through adult ed and think about a career over a job. I applied for a job at a check-printing software company that was looking for someone with skills in fixing computers and printers, left the comfort of the hotel, and discovered SQL Server.
I wanted more, faster than my employer could give it to me. So I jumped at a Jr. DBA role, and in doing so, pulled the rug out from a director who had stuck his neck out for me. It wasn’t my finest moment. But that next job was where I met Andy Kelly and was mentored by a SQL Server MVP.
I’ll try consulting. What’s the worst thing that could happen?
After 15 years as a DBA and 9 years as a SQL Server MVP, I figured it was time to consult. In 2011, I left full-time employment and de-risked it like a paranoid DBA would – I made my current employer an anchor client, they guaranteed a minimum of hours for the first few months, and I gave them a better rate. That helped. The work did come, though.
I eventually got tangled in a business partnership that put growing my own business on hold. It cost me time and clarity, but I learned what I wanted to do, and more importantly, how I wanted to run things. That turned out to be worth the tuition.
The Straight Path Emerge
All the risks up to that point felt calculated. I was an MVP, I had experience, and I was hirable. Worst case, I go back to full-time employment. But the greatest career risk of them all was that first hire. Then the second. Things got real fast. Technically, they could go find other jobs if it didn’t work out but it stopped feeling like my risk alone. That’s a different calculus entirely.
This post is 15 years after I made the leap to consulting. About 8 years since that first hire. Straight Path is 22 FTEs, serving over 100 clients.
The teacher who told me I’d never amount to anything would probably be surprised, but I wonder if it would have looked different if I had taken an “easier” route to here.
Chase Your Dreams
I wrote a post a while ago about chasing your dreams. I wrote this post the same day I was filing for the incorporation of Straight Path IT Solutions, LLC. I didn’t tell folks that was the day I was doing that but that’s what inspired the post. And 15 years later, I still mean it. Go chase your dreams, they will not come looking for you.