The art of pizza, drums, dancing and startups

About 8 years ago, I was lost.

Well, shit. I was lost for a lot longer than that. But, this particular series of events in my life jabs out in my memory pretty hard.

I was working for a tech company during the day. At night, 3x a week, I would transform my Lexus GS300 into a magical pizza delivery vehicle. Yes, I was a pizza delivery boy - at age 34, with a mortgage, bills pouring out of every single crack and creak in the house.

Sure, there were a lot of other things I could do to make some fast money - but this experience put an imprint on my existence that would fuel the fire for years to come.

It taught me 5 distinct lessons.

1. Be humble. I'm above nothing. My worth is not measured in my work but in how I can impact the lives of others.
2. Brutal Honesty - Some people don't wear clothes, even when they order pizza. Those people always order sausage pizzas. Not sure about that correlation, but the data is fascinating. They also usually tipped very well.
3. Reward - the human reward system is fascinating. I walk up to a house, hand them a pizza or 10, and they hand me money. I do it over and over again, they hand me more money. When I smiled and engaged in conversation - the tips got bigger. One night I made $280 in 3 hours. My goal was to see if I could do $100 per hour, not quite.
4. Fear - be f*cking fearless. The only thing to fear is regret. Lead with your heart, balance with your head.
5. Humility - If you know me by now, you know that I'm not afraid to be stupid, silly, or oftentimes, strange. See this tik tok debut as an example -
6. TIK TOK DANCE

Now, that Domino's pizza boy went and bootsrapped a company and is having the the time of his life.

I didn't grow up in a wealthy family. I didn't get an MBA. I went to a small college in the Prairie in South Dakota with a Communications and Theater degree.

My first major was music, percussion to be exact. (you can see a clip of my former band here - that's me on drums - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CLna31MDm4)

If you have heart, you've got this.

For the haters, y'all get a sausage pizza or 10 on me, (veggies optional.)