The third time was around 2014. I was working as a professional for a large mortgage company and my salary was precisely $126,000, which in 2014 was real money.
And I had this dream of starting a company. Part of why I came to this country at all was a promise about Harvard Business School that an aunt of mine made and did not keep, and I had carried that ambition the whole way.
So I started talking about the business. I would raise it, and I watched what happened on people's faces. I would say ninety percent of my circle found it uncomfortable. They began pulling me down. Oh, you know, it is not easy, these things never work. I am not telling you they were bad people. I am telling you it is human nature, and the reflex is not malice, it is self-protection.
Ninety percent of the people closest to me discouraged the company. Were they wrong about the risk?
Mostly they were right about it. Businesses fail, it is not easy, and every cautious thing they said was defensible. That is what makes this hard, and it is why willpower is the wrong tool here. They were not giving me bad information. They were giving me accurate information from inside a level I was trying to leave, and accurate information from the wrong altitude will keep you exactly where you are.
I am sorry, this is a stupid analogy. Every time a snake grows, it changes its skin. I felt like the skin doesn't fit anymore. So I stopped involving myself with those people too.
Every single one of these turning points had the same shape. The people I was already with wanted me to stay at their level, and every single time I gave up some relationship, I was able to move up. I am not going to dress that up. It is one of the most painful costs there is, because these are your friends, you have been together many years, and the thing you finally understand is that they are just not there. They do not want to see you there. They want you in their circle, in their lifestyle. So you have to make a call.