“An entrepreneur tends to bite off a little bit more than (s)he can chew hoping (s)he’ll quickly learn how to chew it.” – Roy Ash
When the LDI opportunity was presented in late 2006, we had been telecommuting for over a year. The conversation with my now ex- husband went something like this…
“I have two choices. I can get a j-o-b. I can work for another Factor or bank and probably make more money. I will most likely work in the City which means being on the train, in a suit, every day before the sun comes up and coming home, on the train, every day after the sun goes down. For the foreseeable future, you will have to pick up the slack with the dogs, the house…everything. But hey, I can make more money.”
“Or, we can bet on the come. I will make less money, put everything we have at risk, AND be able to walk the dogs every morning, cook dinner, see the morning sun come through the front room window and eliminate my dry cleaning bill”.
It was a no-brainer. LDI was born.
Several years later, during a particularly stressful time, I was talking with one of my industry besties in upstate New York. I was throwing a temper tantrum – a loud and childish one – complete with foot stomping – ranting that I was no entrepreneur and I had no business starting a company. Who did I think I was anyway? In that moment, I hated everything about factoring, LDI, my house, dogs…EVERYTHING. I was going to shut it down and go make more money working for someone else – anyone else. Punch in. Punch out. Collect check. Let the buck stop somewhere else. I ended my tirade with “So, really, tell me why in the hell we do this?”
Sally, in her Texas drawl, responded: “Darlin’ we do this because we make crappy employees”. There was such a deep truth in her words, we had to laugh. We laughed until we cried.
“Entrepreneurship is not an appointed title. It is a state of being.” – Mike Macedonio
I do have the chicken/egg conundrum. Was I a “closet entrepreneur” when I worked for someone else and the LDI opportunity let my inner-entrepreneur shine? Or, did the LDI opportunity force me, at times kicking and screaming, into an entrepreneurial state of being?
I will probably never know.
What I do know is this…I L-O-V-E love being able to create, innovate and improve. I even love being able to make mistakes and learn from them (OK, I don’t love that part; I have learned to accept it as part of the gig…most of the time).
We CREATED LDI. We took a 4000 year old form of finance, with industry norms and accepted practices, cherry picked the parts we liked, tossed the parts we didn’t and created a factoring company built on the human component and the state of being unique to the 21st century entrepreneur. We want our clients, investors, networking partners and colleagues have a personal and empowering experience when working with us.
We don’t always get it right, but we do always work to make it better than it was before…better, stronger, faster. (I am showing my age…did you get “The Six Million Dollar Man” reference?)
That’s the lesson…
You don’t always have to get it right; you just have to want to work to make it better, stronger and faster.
In…
Everything.
Melissa~