I nearly missed it.
Final week, at 9pm on September 11, I used to be placing my daughter to mattress after I realized—it was A Higher Lemonade Stand’s birthday.
12 years outdated.
September eleventh is definitely the anniversary of many main occasions in my life, each good and unhealthy.
It was precisely a yr prior on September eleventh, 2011, that I used to be laid off from my first profession out of faculty, and it set of a series of occasions that has dictated my life ever since.
The Layoffs
I used to be out in Vancouver, Canada, and for five years, I had been working for a neighborhood chain of leisure complexes (Just like Dave & Busters) and golf & nation golf equipment.
I made my approach up the chain fairly shortly, managing the advertising and marketing and operations for a number of places with a couple of hundred workers.
Nonetheless, within the years I used to be there, we confronted growing monetary pressures.
The proprietor was a reclusive wealthy man who was shopping for up wealthy man issues (Nation Golf equipment) and was overextending himself.
By 2010, the monetary stress of his purchases grew to become an excessive amount of. The proprietor tasked the Vice President of the corporate with chopping prices considerably, and it was determined that this value chopping would principally come from layoffs.
The VP tapped me to help within the layoffs.
Thoughts you, I used to be extremely younger presently and had no concept what I used to be actually doing, however the VP was additionally a mentor to me, and this was his approach of throwing me into the hearth and giving me a real-life enterprise expertise I’d possible by no means usually get to expertise.
And so it started—a slaughterfest.
We started shedding dozens of workers, beginning with junior positions and shortly escalating to senior departments – administration, operations, accounting, and advertising and marketing.
I had no say in who was getting minimize, however right here I used to be, as a 25-year-old child, telling individuals twice my age they have been being laid off.
The dread and guilt consumed me with each dialog.
The method wasn’t fast both. Because the proprietor confronted increasingly monetary stress, the cuts continued over months.
Strolling the grounds, you questioned what everybody was serious about you. Once they talked to you, have been they simply appearing additional good as a result of they have been afraid for his or her job?
Spoiler alert, they have been.
At one level, each the VP and myself questioned if we should always even eat at our personal restaurant amenities anymore for concern of being poisoned.
As we slowly got here to the tip of all of the cuts we might make with out shutting down the companies fully, I began to really feel uneasy and principally defeated from the expertise. We have been an organization with a barebones employees, nervous workers, a diminished model & product, and continued monetary pressures.
The Turning Level
Then, one night, I acquired the textual content from the VP that I immediately knew was going to alter my life: “Richard, can we meet tomorrow?”
It was my flip.
The subsequent day, September 11, 2011, I met with the VP to get a style of the exact same medication I had helped dish out to over 100 others within the months prior.
Whereas I can’t say I used to be blissful, it felt like a definitive finish to a really attention-grabbing chapter and exhausting few months in my life.
A New Path
Within the weeks after being laid off, I bought The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss, which might set off the subsequent chapter in my life.
I learn the ebook cowl to cowl in a couple of nights and keep in mind considering with such readability that this was my future.
I wished to construct my very own enterprise and be accountable for my very own future.
Impressed by the ebook, I spent the subsequent yr constructing small ecommerce companies—studying how to decide on successful merchandise, negotiating with suppliers in China, importing merchandise into Canada, establishing a web based retailer, and on-line advertising and marketing.
The Delivery of A Higher Lemonade Stand
Mockingly, it was precisely a yr later, on September eleventh, 2012, that I registered abetterlemonadestand.com—principally as an area to distill my ideas, concepts, and experiences in ecommerce.
It’s wild that the one resolution to start out writing about my ideas and experiences would change the course of the remainder of my life.
Solely a yr and a half after I began running a blog, A Higher Lemonade Stand caught the eye of Shopify, and I joined the Progress workforce, serving to them develop the Shopify weblog from 200k to 2 million guests throughout my tenure and experiencing the as soon as in a lifetime alternative of taking part in a tech IPO.
As a lot as I beloved Shopify, the product, and the individuals I labored with, I left Shopify only a yr and a half later to pursue entrepreneurship full time and to proceed charting my very own path.
From Defeat to Dedication
September eleventh has at all times been a symbolic day for me—a day of each nice losses and even better beginnings. From dropping my job and questioning my function to launching A Higher Lemonade Stand and discovering my ardour once more, every September eleventh has nudged me nearer to who I’m meant to be.
It’s a reminder that success doesn’t come with out setbacks. In truth, these setbacks are what give the highs their that means.
For me, this was by no means nearly constructing companies—it’s about constructing myself by way of the companies I create, the dangers I take, the teachings I study, and who I grow to be alongside the way in which.
Over the previous decade, I’ve weathered storms that examined my resilience and skilled highs I by no means imagined. However the one fixed by way of all of it? My dedication to development. Whether or not I’m serving to somebody launch their first product, navigating new digital landscapes, or creating an area the place fellow entrepreneurs can thrive, I’ve at all times been pushed by a need to create one thing greater than myself.
And that’s why, even in any case this time, I’m nonetheless right here. I’m nonetheless creating. I’m nonetheless studying. And I’m nonetheless displaying up for that subsequent chapter 12 years later.
