It's surreal how life plays out sometimes. You never know how several seemingly small random pieces will fit together to form a beautiful picture later on in life. Every decision, every person you meet, and every entrepreneurial adventure you embark on is like a new puzzle piece.
When you fail to take chances, or when you fail to act, you'll perhaps look back one day, as you're staring at your unfinished puzzle, and say, "this would have been a beautiful picture if I only had that piece." If I only followed that dream, or took that chance, things may have turned out differently.
Check out this string of random decisions:
1. I graduated with honors and good SAT scores but I didn't get into PENN, so I went to Temple.
2. During my sophomore year at Temple, the university decided that they would not be offering student housing to Juniors and Seniors.
3. Thinking like an entrepreneur, I sent out 639 "I will buy your house" flyers to every beat up looking house within 2 blocks of Temple University's campus. I was 19, and I had no money at all.
4. Out of those 639 flyers, 1 person called me back. Her house had no roof. There was a very bad fire 8 months earlier.
5. I asked my aunt to co-sign a construction loan for me, and we bought the house and fixed it up.
6. I rented the house out to Temple students.
7. To help pay the mortgage if the student rent was slow, I got a job delivering packages in Center City. I was an errand boy for a corporate lawyer. While working at his office, I learned how to setup LLCs, and I started doing his bookkeeping.
8. One of my tenants was a Temple student named Matthew McLean. He was a full-time student, majoring in criminal justice. He had a handy-man company, and wanted to start a kitchen and bathroom remodeling business called Ferrarini. I setup his LLC, and started doing his accounting.
9. Ferrarini took off right out of the gate. They just opened a state of the art showroom in Elkins Park, PA. This is 3 years after we set up the company.
10. I was fortunate enough to buy a small ownership stake in the company, and joined the team earlier this year as the Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
My goal is to help Ferrarini grow into an even more amazing company. I want to look back one day and say, "Wow, I used to work there."
This puzzle is fitting together quite nicely.
My goal is to help Ferrarini grow into an even more amazing company. I want to look back one day and say, "Wow, I used to work there."
This puzzle is fitting together quite nicely.
Wow Rayce! You are amazing. This is very inspiring! This shows how important it is to take chances and go after those opportunities that He places in front of us. So many people allow fear to hold them back, which just leads to unhappiness and “just getting by.” An employee responded to my question of how he was doing with “I’m just surviving.” What! That’s no way to live. No way to enjoy life! You need to do more than “just survive” to live a purposeful, happy life. And it appears that YOU are doing just that, Rayce! Enjoy! So proud of you!
Thanks a million Shaketa. I believe that life is too short not to do something that you truly enjoy. We’re programmed to go to work, to buy stuff we don’t need, to get by, and to save for a retirement that may or may not happen. People are afraid to take risk because they are afraid of change and uncertainty. They have faith in the status quo because they’ve seen it, and you don’t need faith for things you can already see and touch. As a Christian, faith is apart of my normal routine. Without faith its impossible to please God. You need faith to believe in Jesus Christ and go to heaven, and you need faith to know that God is your ultimate provider, and that He’ll always take care of you. I figured that if God was with me, and he promised never to leave me or forsake me, and I’m going to heaven regardless, I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose. There’s nothing to fear, not even change or uncertainty.
From you building that relationship with Matt, I had the privilege of meeting you through Matt . I can honestly say through random fortuitous events, I have a great core of friends around me old and new. We are going to do great things together and I look forward to buliding our personal and business relstionship. I learn something new everyday from you.
Thanks,