As a kid, my curiosity brought me to an old camcorder. I spent my days in school writing stories and my evenings filming them with my friends. I often rallied the neighborhood kids together to bring my visions of quirky characters and entertaining plots to life.
At that time, questions like these drove me:
How do I work this camera? How do I convince my friends to play these characters? How do I help them act better? What story do people want to watch? What story do I want to make? How do I edit the footage once I have it?
School quickly dulled my curiosity and brought my movie-making days to an end. You can read more about that story here.
Fast forward to now. I have reclaimed my curiosity and, more importantly, the freedom to let it drive my creativity. These questions (mentioned in my recent video) are the result:
How do I build a business? How do I work this camera? How do I make videos that capture and engage attention better than anyone else? How do I convince people to pay me for those videos? How do I get a team of people excited about a vision of something that doesn’t exist yet? How do I leverage strengths and delegate effectively within a team? How do I cultivate a company culture that extends directly from my core values?
These questions come from the deepest part of my self. They are the things I wonder about when I’m doing things I don’t want to be doing. It is a purely selfish curiosity.
Finding the answers is seen by most people as irresponsible, distracting, and unnecessary. When we believe them, we lose ourselves in school, work, and life, and end up chasing things we don’t actually want.
This brings me to the strongest core principle by which I live:
Be yourself.
It sounds cliché, but it is the one thing that allows you to ignore everything that is trying to knock you off-course.
I spent a lot of my life attempting to be a persona that I believed other people wanted to see. It only took me farther away from my own success and happiness. Every time I oriented my actions toward achieving something that didn’t come from the same place that those core questions originated, I ended up confused, unhappy, and in a situation I needed to exit.
Example: Since elementary school, I was constantly told that I was smart. Despite my hatred for math, I went to college to study Aerospace Engineering to live up to this expectation. I got increasingly unhappy until I finally hit the point where I needed to exit the situation. I dropped out.
Honestly accepting and embracing my own desires is a compass that points me towards the ideal version of myself that I always strive to be.
This is why my blog is named “RealSimon.” Here, you get the real me. None of that fake shit.
What’s Next for Me
A good friend of mine started a video marketing company a few months ago and I’m jumping in as a partner. The goal of the company is to help businesses tell their story through engaging video content that attracts the best possible customers.
It is very young. I will be the fourth member to join the team, and they have already produced several paid jobs. It’s called Bonanza Media Group.
We apply the principle of self-honesty on every level.
When we meet with clients to develop a vision for their videos, our goal is to understand exactly the core of what their business stands for by finding the answers to these questions: What makes them unique? What is the best way to convey that to their customers through a video?
When we bring on new employees, we don’t fit them into existing job descriptions. We give them the freedom to create their own job within the company by doing the things they naturally do best. We create a challenging and trusting environment for them to thrive in their own way.
I am immersing myself in this business. I am getting up close and personal with existing problems, systems, customers, and employees, so that I can shape it into a bigger and more efficient machine.
Since I’m already blogging every day, I’m going to write my next 30 posts about this adventure. Each day I will be tackling new problems, experimenting, and building systems. Since this business will be on the front of my mind anyway, blogging about it will help me better understand the things I’m doing day-to-day.
It will also give you a look inside the early successes and struggles of a startup. I already know there will be a lot of struggles. None of us know what we are doing yet, but there’s only one way to figure it out. I’m excited to share this journey with you.
It’s time to put my money where my mouth is. I said I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Here’s my chance.
This is Day 0.