03/30/2026
My wife looked at me one evening and asked a question I wasn't ready for.
"If you looked back 30 years from now at what you are doing, what is the one thing you wish you would've tried out?"
I remember the feeling that moved through me when she said it. Not inspiration. Dread. The kind that comes when someone says out loud the exact thing you've been hiding from yourself.
I looked at her and said, "Why did you have to say that? Damn it."
She laughed. "What do you mean?"
For two years I had been carrying this idea around. Offering my knowledge and experience to independent restaurant owners. I had even created a fictitious business name. Opened a bank account for a business that didn't exist yet. Spent late nights thinking about what it could be.
And done absolutely nothing with any of it.
I didn't believe it could become something real. I didn't know what I needed to do. I didn't know who to call or how to walk into a restaurant and connect with an owner in a way that meant anything. I had no framework, no playbook, no proof of concept.
All I had was the idea. And the fear that if I never tried, I would spend the rest of my career managing someone else's vision while mine sat in a bank account I never used.
That conversation was the thing that finally made me move.
Not confidence. Not a business plan. Not a clear path forward.
One sentence from someone who knew me well enough to ask the right question at the right time.
I put in my two weeks notice the following week.
If there is something you have been carrying for two years, I don't know what your version of that question is.
But I think you already know the answer.
