When I moved down to the Research Triangle in North Carolina (that’s what everyone round here calls Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill), I had exactly one friend (whom I only really knew from Facebook)… no personal contacts… no family… nothing.
I still remember my first night in my new place.
I didn’t even have all my stuff… just what I had brought with me in my car.
There was some kind of mix up with the moving company and they weren’t going to be able to deliver my bed and clothes and furniture for another week or two weeks (I can’t remember) so…
So… I was on my own.
No food… and no bed.
And no lights other than the ceiling lights (which were only in my bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen… NOT the living room).
I slept on the floor of an empty room… on a blanket… with another blanket covering me up.
Good times.
Two things happened as a result of that experience:
1) I got to know what it’s like to be a squatter in an empty building and;
2) I got to know the Raleigh-Durham area a little better.
With nothing to entertain myself but my phone, I headed out into the big scary world.
Now, mind you, I come from bumblefrak, New York.
Total population in my jerkwater town was about 30,000 people. Total population in the FOUR SURROUNDING COUNTIES was less than 300,000 people.
The population inside the research triangle area is over 2 million people… add the surrounding areas and… oh forget it.
I was a little fish in a big fraking pond now.
Onward.
The landlord had suggested I check out some of the local grocery stores and the Crabtree Mall… pointed me in the general direction and patted me on the arse and sent me on my way.
On one of these trips, I somehow got lost (imagine that) and ended up in some weird strip mall thingie… stopped into a coffee shop and talked to the owner for a while.
Now I had never been a big coffee drinker… in fact, I wasn’t a coffee drinker at all.
But he convinced me to try something and I was instantly hooked.
Coffee like nothing else I’ve ever tasted so I can’t really describe it (I know a lot of people say stuff like that but in this instance it’s true). It didn’t even taste “like coffee.”
Anyway, We became fast friends and I started talking to him about what I do…
Guy is pretty bright. Very on top of things… but at the time he was just starting out.
New coffee shop owner… knows his stuff… but also struggling in a crowded market.
So, I bring up the idea of life insurance as a way to help fund his business… he nods in agreement and tells me “yeah I’m already doing that.”
BAM.
OK…
Awesome.
I knew there was a reason I liked this guy.
Anyway so it’s been fun watching his business grow (he isn’t even one of my clients) and today you have to wait in a line that stretched out the door to get one of his custom hand-poured brews.
I watched that dood go from a staff of himself and his wife to a business brimming with customers.
He just recently remodeled the place and it’s nothing short of fabulous.
Lots of happy little stories out there just like that… but you almost never read about them online.
Successful people like him are usually way too busy making money to be bothered with the B.S. on the Interwebs (that’s my job, unfortunately).
And if you want to be like my coffee shop friend, there are a few ways to go about doing what he’s done.
My way is one such way: