Hello Steemit Community,
In the spirit of the Labor Day holiday, I felt it would be a fitting personal introduction to Steemit in sharing how I became a stay at home dad and found happiness along the way.
First, about me in less than 140 characters:
“Scientist, biz dev, freelance artist, dad and strong belief system that both risk and change are necessary to achieve happyness”.
If you are still interested, here’s my entire professional life story in a friendly single serving portion:
Right out of college, I started in the lab as a molecular biologist. I performed standard procedures such as DNA sequencing, PCR, and identifying unique expressing genes for potential disease markers. Sounds cool but in reality I was just in a production group so the work was very repetitive and monotonous. The pay was good and my robot lab skills were on par so I was content. The best part about that first job were the people and how we always kept it fun. Here is an animated gif I made some sixteen years ago in the lab with my first digital camera.
It was a startup company just about to go public. I remember during a company meeting, we were shown a financial chart and told that our stock options would be worth millions. The CEO started buying everyone $1000 Herman Miller desk chairs and decorating the lab hallways with expensive art work to impress potential venture capitalist during walk through visits. I was young and more than naïve back then so I bought into the chatter. A few months later, the company ended up getting swallowed up by the dot.com bubble burst and I got laid off via voicemail. This was my introduction into the corporate world of America.
I was lucky to quickly land another position with a biotech that sold life science equipment and reagents. I was in R&D and was the youngest in the department. I was given the opportunity to create and develop my own product. I happily accepted the challenge and the process from concept to product launch took just over a year. I was quickly promoted and congratulated for my achievement. I was supposed to be happy moving up the ladder but for months all I did was stare out the lab windows while listening to Dave Matthews on my first iPod. I broke the news to my manager that I decided to leave science and start a small business. I was compelled to drop everything, go against the status quo and strike out on my own.
I took some community college classes and wrote my first business plan intending to open a Japanese restaurant. What did I do, I ended up starting an eBay shop which bloomed into a full blown multi-channel ecommerce and wholesale business. I specialized in movie memorabilia, designer toys, and all that stuff you see at Comic Con. I ran that business for six years entirely from a home office and garage. I personally packed, shipped and fulfilled over twelve thousand orders. My imaginary co-workers at the time was the Howard Stern show and the folks at the post office I visited every day. You can learn a lot about yourself from starting your own business. This truly was an entrepreneurial venture that gave me years of real life experience in sales, marketing and business development.
Here is young Rudy, bootstrapping and shipping out orders on a Cyber Monday.
Times were good and people were spending like crazy. I remember sending out a monthly newsletter introducing some new plastic crap from Japan, which sold out in a few days. When I say plastic crap, I literally mean a plastic toy that looks like a piece of sh*t but with a smiley face.
Business was rolling and all things on the surface seemed to be going very well from my end. Then came September 2008 and the financial collapse. Orders pretty much came to a standstill. I tried to tighten my belt and make it work for another year but the market for non-essential goods was all but gone.
We just had our first baby girl and another on the way. I decided to close up shop, brush up my resume, find a new suit and transition into biotech sales.
Here I am transformed back into a blissful company man.
I traveled and ran around the U.S. wheeling and dealing life science equipment for two years. Little did I know that I would go through two more corporate layoffs, back to back in one year. Was it bad luck or a loud and clear signal that the corporate world just did not need me? I decided it was fate telling me to trade in the cheesy suit and take another chance on myself.
This is me again, running around trying to make a dollar outta fifteen cents.
Build It Workshops from
Inspired by my daughters and learning from past mistakes, I carefully crafted and followed a real business plan. My business plan was awarded into a startup entrepreneurial program that allowed me to open up shop, incubate for one year with free rent.
We were blessed with free publicity from local news stations, magazines, mommy bloggers, social media and word of mouth recommendations. We also had an overwhelming response from the learning community, schools, teachers, and all other like-minded parents.
We had over 5000+ guests, 65+ group/school field trips, and made over 3000+ robots with students! It was a crazy roller coaster ride but even with all those great fortunes bestowed upon us, the business still continually struggled and bootstrapped financially every month.
As a startup business and a brand new concept, all the projections and business planning in the world can never predict what will actually happen. You just don’t know what to expect until you get into the space and open the doors to guests. You then start to figure out the actual sales capacity and bandwidth that the space and your team can handle. It was a good run but like most small business it ended much sooner than planned and hoped.
These days, I am just a stay at home dad. A big geek, raising two little geeks in this crazy world. If I am not playing freeze tag or cutting the crust off of peanut butter toast, I’m either tinkering with my camera, reading zerohedge, learning Japanese, or running the marathon of life.
I am more than lucky to have my family, friends, experiences and opportunities.
My story is not special and I’ve met many people that struggled and are still struggling way more than I ever had. I just remember that when times were tough, it always helped to know that I wasn’t the only one climbing a mountain.
One of the greatest things that I learned from being a scientist was the discipline of how to tackle and figure things out in the real world. Life is just like the lab bench. Analyzing, calculating, hypothesizing and then like any good scientist finally taking a chance on your beliefs, your dreams and yourself.
Thanks for reading and follow me and I’ll follow you right back.
Cheers!