Relentless

It was a muggy Saturday afternoon, I finished an episode of “Thundercats” and my gang of women who at that time were much bigger, older and stronger loaded up in the station wagon and headed to the Saturday ritual of going to “el salon” to get their hair done. I jump on the freshly refurbished BMX and start cruising around Silver Oaks mobile home neighborhood as if I owned it. As I was riding, I stumbled upon a broken down lawn mower in someone’s front yard, it had a sign that said “FREE”. I did the only thing a 13 year old kid would do, took that lawnmower home as if I stole it.

As soon as I got it home, moms came out acting like I actually did steal it yelling from the front porch in Spanish acting like we didn’t have neighbors. ”Muchacho de donde sacaste eso!!!!”

After I convinced her that I found it in the trash I looked at my step father (aka BILLY THE KID), three hours later we had that green machine operational. I called it the “green machine”. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it.

The very next day after Sunday morning church I got some flash cards, put my name on them and began spreading them around the neighborhood but only to houses that didn’t have dogs.

LAWN MOWING SERVICE

HALF $3.00

FULL $5.00

The very same day, I got my very first customer. I rode home, got the green machine, hitched it to the BMX and began what many of you see today. At that exact moment my entrepreneurial journey began.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be doing the thing I said I would never do, I'm launching a podcast about my story, journey as an entrepreneur turned filmmaker. The Podcast is being produced by the only person capable of this task, Jatin Setia. Jatin is an Indian American executive, producer, and friend who founded the Twin Cities Film Festival in Minneapolis, MN. Jatin and I became fast friends after meeting on a panel we were both on. The journey began mowing lawns with the green machine to the Chief Executive Officer assignment at a large NGO, working internationally with heads of state to filmmaking. Here goes nothing and everything.

Stay tuned.