January 2024 marks the first month in what I hope will be the first step into a very creative chapter of my life. December 2023 was when I closed out the last month of my 18 years as a Business Intelligence consultant, to focus completely on Mango Display.
I will write more about the origin story, along with the ups, downs, twists and turns of entrepreneurship another time. But suffice to say it has been several years of trial and error, puzzles to piece together and problems that needed solving, which ultimately led to a business blossoming into more than I could have even imagined. One that gives me complete agency over my time and location. The ability to work whenever and wherever I want. I love it.
On the personal side I’ve been able to spend more time to exercise, cook and eat healthier, pick up my kids whenever needed without even thinking of the day or time. I’ve set a work schedule as well, but as it was before, I keep drifting into working on Mango even on the evenings when I’m relaxing on the couch.
These words from Confucius & Naval never rang so true for me:
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life
Confucius
It’s not that my years as a consultant or even an employee prior to that have been bad. In fact, I was quite lucky in that I worked on some interesting projects with great people and really enjoyed what I did. But even in those roles you are always executing to someone else’s vision. At the strategic level, you are the ‘doer’ of things and not the ‘thinker’ of things.
What I really wanted to do was be both the thinker and the doer of something unique, creative, fun, and valued enough by other people that they would actually pay a small slice of their hard earned money to use it. This is the ultimate validation of an idea’s value to human society, no matter how big or small. I’ve found that joy with Mango Display, we currently have happy paying customers from over 50 countries in the world.
Here is Steve Jobs on Thinker and Doers
Apart from Mango Display, I have another big idea with plans that need to be made and actions that need to be taken in order to bring it to fruition. I plan to write a blog post at least once a month from here on out, both as record and diary of this new period in my life and in the hopes that it will inspire others.
Dave's Dharma 