Less than ten years before I started Marquis Jet—a company that would eventually do $5 billion in sales—I was a kiddie pool attendant.
Let me repeat that. I went from cleaning kiddie pools to running a company doing billions in revenue in less than a decade.
When people ask me about my journey, this is the part that still amazes me. Not because of the money, but because of what it proves about the limits we put on ourselves.
I was literally cleaning pools, selling vegetables door-to-door, sleeping on 19 different friends' couches... I tried everything and got rejected constantly.
Then at 28, I got the rare opportunity to walk onto a private jet as a guest, and it was like that scene in The Wizard of Oz when everything goes from black and white to color. I thought, "People fly like this? This is insane. I want to fly like this."
That's how we got the idea for Marquis Jet.
So how do you go from kiddie pool attendant to navigating the Department of Transportation, FAA approvals, sales teams, and raising money?
The same way you approach running 100 miles—flag pole to flag pole, tree to tree. You don't think about the whole distance. You just focus on the next step.
My dad owned a plumbing supply house. We never talked about business. I had no entrepreneurial training, no business background, no network. But that became a blessing because I was forced to cultivate my own approach. My own style. My own way.
The lesson isn't that everyone can build a billion-dollar company. The lesson is that the distance between where you are and where you could be is probably a lot smaller than you think. Stay consistent and take a small step every day.
What could you do in a decade if you stopped limiting yourself based on where you are today?
