I Was Supposed to Be a Surgeon

I used to change the channel every time Shark Tank came on.

Not because I didn't like it. Because I liked it too much. Watching people stand in front of those investors and pitch something they built from nothing — it made my stomach turn. Not in a bad way. In a way I didn't have words for at the time.

Jealousy. Anxiety. A deep, restless ache that whispered: that should be you up there.

So I'd flip to something else. Pretend I didn't care. Then flip back ten minutes later because I couldn't help myself.

That's not even the interesting part.

The Path I Thought I Wanted

I was a biology major. Pre-med. On track to become a surgeon.

If you asked me why, I had a polished answer ready — something about helping people, making a difference, the challenge of it all. But the honest answer? Money. Surgeons make a lot of it, and I grew up watching what not having enough looked like.

There was family pressure too, but not the kind you'd think. My family was supportive of whatever I chose. The pressure was internal. I thought picking the hardest, most prestigious path would make them proud. Would make me feel like I'd earned something.

But here's the thing...

The deeper I got into that path, the more a different feeling crept in. Not excitement. Not motivation. Dread.

I started doing the math on what that life actually looked like. Eight more years of school. Residency. Fellowship. Hundreds of thousands in debt. And at the end of it all? You're still working for a hospital. Still on someone else's schedule. Still trading your time — just for a bigger paycheck.

No location freedom. No autonomy. No ceiling you set yourself.

I kept showing up to class, but something inside me had already checked out.

The Drip That Never Stopped

The thing is, this didn't start in college. It started way earlier.

As a teenager, I was already deep in a certain corner of the internet. Gary Vaynerchuk yelling at me through my phone about starting something. Dan Coe on Twitter showing what was possible. A constant stream of entrepreneurs, creators, and self-made people flooding my feed with the same message:

Create a business. Unlimited income. Never work for a boss. Set your own time.

I ate it up. Every word. Every video. Every tweet.

But I also did absolutely nothing about it.

That's the part nobody talks about — the gap between consuming content about building something and actually building it. I lived in that gap for years. Absorbing, dreaming, scrolling, but never doing.

And the whole time, that restless feeling kept growing. Every time I saw someone launch something, every time I watched another Shark Tank pitch, every time I read about a 22-year-old making six figures from their laptop — the ache got worse.

I didn't want to be a spectator anymore.

Knocking on Strangers' Doors

My first real move was the least glamorous thing you can imagine.

Door-to-door solar sales. I was maybe 20, 21. I needed money, and someone told me the commissions were good. So I showed up, got a clipboard, and started knocking.

It was brutal.

The rejection. The awkward conversations. The anxiety of walking up to someone's house knowing they probably didn't want to talk to you. Some days I'd drive to a neighborhood, sit in my car for twenty minutes just trying to work up the nerve to get out.

But it taught me something no classroom ever could. How to talk to people. How to handle "no." How to keep going when every part of you wants to quit.

It wasn't entrepreneurship. Not even close. But it was the first time I chose discomfort on purpose. The first time I bet on myself instead of following the safe path.

Here's what nobody tells you...

The skills that actually matter in business? You don't learn them in lecture halls. You learn them on someone's doorstep at 4 PM on a Tuesday, sweating through your shirt, trying to explain why solar panels are worth their time.

The First Real Taste

Then COVID hit. And everything changed.

One of my buddies was the co-owner of a Discord community called Cosmic Flips. It was a group of people buying and reselling electronics, GPUs, hype items — anything you could flip for a profit during a time when supply chains were broken and demand was through the roof.

I joined. Started small. Bought a few things, sold them for more.

And then the numbers started climbing. Hundreds. Then thousands.

The first time I made real money that didn't come from a paycheck — money I created from my own decisions, my own hustle, my own risk — something shifted inside me that never shifted back.

It wasn't just the money. It was the proof. Proof that I could do this. That there was another way besides the path everyone told me to follow. That the stuff I'd been watching on my phone for years wasn't just content — it was a real possibility.

I felt euphoria. Relief. And immediately, hunger for more.

So I dove deeper. NFTs. Crypto. More reselling. Botting. Anything I could get my hands on. I wasn't being strategic — I was being hungry. I was chasing that feeling of making something happen on my own terms.

Was every move smart? No. Did I lose money on some of it? Absolutely.

But I was in the game. Finally. After years of watching from the sideline.

The Messy Middle

After college, I started an e-commerce business with Amazon FBA. Learned fulfillment, logistics, marketing — the real mechanics of running an actual business, not just flipping products.

Now I run an AI automation agency. And if teenage me could see where I ended up, he probably wouldn't believe it. Not because it's some glamorous empire. But because I actually did it. I actually started.

But here's the honest part — the part that would disappoint the kid who watched all those Gary Vee videos.

I work more than I ever would at a 9-to-5.

Way more. There's no clocking out. No "someone else will handle it." No weekend where the business just pauses because you want to sleep in.

The social media version of entrepreneurship — the one with laptops on beaches and "passive income" and four-hour workweeks — that's not my reality. Not even close.

I don't work less. I work more. But I don't feel trapped. And that distinction is everything.

I have location freedom. I choose what I work on. The ceiling on what I can build is set by me, not by a salary band or a manager's opinion. When I work hard now, I'm building something that's mine.

That's a completely different feeling than working hard to make someone else's vision happen.

What I'd Tell the Kid on the Couch

If I could go back and talk to teenage me — the one flipping between Shark Tank and whatever else was on, stomach churning with jealousy and ambition — I'd tell him this:

That feeling you have? The restlessness? The anxiety of watching other people build things? Don't run from it. Don't numb it with more content. Don't convince yourself that the safe path will make it go away.

It won't.

That feeling is the signal.

The path isn't clean. It's not what the influencers show you. You'll knock on doors that never open. You'll lose money. You'll work harder than your friends who took the "normal" route, and some days you'll wonder if you made a mistake.

But you'll also know something they don't.

You'll know what it feels like to bet on yourself and watch it pay off — even a little, even once. And that feeling changes you in a way that no paycheck, no title, no degree ever could.

Here's what I wish someone told me sooner...

Just because everyone is doing something doesn't mean it's right for you. If you've ever sat in a classroom, a cubicle, or a meeting and felt that quiet voice saying this isn't it — listen to it. That voice doesn't get quieter. It gets louder.

It's okay to question the default path. It's okay for the journey to be messy. Every failure builds a skill set you carry into the next thing. Even when it feels like you're going nowhere, you're learning how to build — and that knowledge compounds in ways you can't see yet.

Execute more than you plan. Start before you feel ready. And when it gets ugly — because it will — remember that ugly progress is still progress.

I was supposed to be a surgeon. I'm glad I'm not.

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Next up: the real cost of starting a business that nobody warns you about — and why I'd pay it again without thinking twice.