I ran my first business inside a video game.
that's me ↓I was a kid. I didn't know the word entrepreneur. I needed money for my gaming hobby, then found out people would pay for services inside the game I was playing.
I met people who built things for a living. Then my friend handed me a VR headset in 2016 and I was gone.
First company: language learning through VR simulation. Built the MVP.
I started an agency because it was the only thing I thought I could sell.
The power went off more than once. Eventually I rented out the spare rooms: free rent, expenses covered.
Clients came in one at a time, with long gaps. It went like that for a little over a year.
A video a day.
Every platform I could find, including ones that don't exist anymore.
Then LinkedIn.
I was one of the first people ever putting video there. I brought over everything I'd learned on platforms nobody in that room was using.
It looked like innovation. It was just paying attention somewhere else.
Somewhere in there I got a $40 hat.
I wore it in everything. People started stopping me in airports, on sidewalks, in cities I'd never been to. "Hey, you're Q. I watch your videos!"
We called ourselves the Milwaukee Misfits.
A community online and in person. People flew in from other countries to meet us.
Off the back of it we launched a video and personal branding agency, working with brands and with people.
A new company: strategy, video, personal branding, ghostwriting, events.
Eleven employees.
We did a lot of video projects for brands, and we launched a lot of personal brands too.
Every event we ever ran sold out.
For about three months, while we were launching it and getting it off the ground, I was homeless, sleeping on the office floor. Then a client cosigned my apartment.
A TEDx talk. VidCon. INBOUND. 40+ speaking engagements.
Life got good.
Stages, brand deals, clients, travel, micro-fame. All of it at once.
Really good.
For a while there, everything I touched worked.
Then, my brother passed away.
I tried to hold it together. Then COVID hit, and we closed the doors. Two of the team carried the work forward and made it into something good. But I spiraled.
I launched a narrative podcast and went big on guests: people I didn't know, on a show nobody had heard of yet. Lewis Howes said yes.
That led to leading the marketing team for his company. Challenges, launches, email, content. An amazing experience.
After Lewis, I left to focus on my mental health and became a full-time creator.
My main platforms: TikTok, LinkedIn, and an official Snapchat partnered show. This is what that looked like: one experiment at a time.
Then I stopped: shame and guilt I hadn't worked through yet. I learned to sell without a name attached. Outbound, cold, no audience. Coached creators for a while. Then stopped again.
I walked into a LAN center and talked them into backing me quitting my career to go "pro" at a video game.
I got good. Built a thriving Discord community around it that's still going strong today. But I didn't want to look back on my thirties and see that the only thing I did was get good at a video game.
Then I came back.
Two years after I stopped posting, I hit publish on LinkedIn again. I didn't expect much.
It got over 1,000 likes. LinkedIn itself commented. Hundreds of people talked about my hat, my old videos, the time we met. Friends texted me screenshots of DMs other people sent them: "did you see Q is back?" People brought it up on other people's posts.
I never expected any of that. It filled me with so much gratitude.
I wasted years trying to find the perfect offer, the perfect time to come back to content, quitting things when they were going well. Holding myself back the whole way.
I'm done holding back
I'm done trying to build the perfect thing.
I'm building. Creating. And getting a little better every day. Every Tuesday I write about believing in things that don't exist yet, and figuring out how to make them real.