Questioning is just how I operate.
I ask why about everything. Always have. Why is it done this way? Why does this system work? Why is it built like that? Questioning is just how I operate. It is the one thing about me that has never changed. What has changed is what I can now do with it.
I started at EY at 18. My early career was in restructuring, which really just means being in the room when things go wrong. That is where you learn how systems actually work.
The boundaries between those things were always made up.
At some point the walls between disciplines stopped making sense. Business incorporates everything. Strategy, finance, operations, creativity, execution. It is the closest thing to a real-world test of how you think. The boundaries between those things were always made up.
I am an accidental philosopher.
I am impatient and stubborn and obsessive. After enough thinking and talking, you have got to do. Just do it. I can not just live in the thinking world, so I can not just be a philosopher or a saint. I am an accidental philosopher. A practical one. The material world still matters to me.
I sit there and think about things a lot; sometimes I can not switch off.
But I am also building. AI products, hardware, websites, apps. I am looking for a problem that is really worth solving. Something difficult, something I believe in. I have not found it yet, but that is what the experimenting is for.
Think in decades, act in days.
I am always 0 or 100. All or nothing. Maybe this is good. Maybe bad. Maybe it is just the Scorpio in me. I want to think in decades, act in days; satisfy my curiosity but also my impatience. I am trying to make a ten year plan happen in 1. We accept failures in the gym because that is how you grow. So, why do we treat failure differently everywhere else.
If you are not a little delusional, you are not thinking big enough.
I have always been a bit different. Contrarian by nature, not by choice. Everyone around me is settling into the expected path and I am still chasing something most people would call unreasonable. I genuinely believe I am meant for something extraordinary. Maybe that sounds arrogant. Maybe delusional. But if you are not a little delusional, you are not thinking big enough.
It is going to be messy. And that is fine. I am still optimistic.