071. Senior Man Is a Title You Have to Earn: Frontline Optics [Part 1]

You can love the job and still build the next chapter.

 In Part 1, former firefighter-paramedic Mike Ettenberg tells us how a kid who chased sirens on a bike turned his party-bus side hustle into Frontline Optics. From the EMT grind to 30 failed applications, Mike shows why the firefighter mindset, solve problems and never quit, works in business too.

What You’ll Learn:

• How to stay hungry after 30 “no’s” and finally land the job
• Why small-department mandatories can push you to create Plan B
• The cake-takes-time rule: slowing your firefighter feedback loop for business success
• A step-by-step look at bootstrapping 300 pairs of shades into a six-figure brand
• The paralysis-by-analysis trap—and simple ways to beat it and just start

If you’re a firefighter who’s dreaming about life after the job, or already growing a side hustle, this one’s for you.

Check out Frontline Optics and our firefighter training tools at keepthepromisefire.com.
Subscribe, share, and keep the promise - to your crew and your future.

Transcript

TJ: Today's episode is one that every firefighter, past, present, or future needs to hear. My guess is Mike Ettenberg a guy who took the long road into the fire service, lived the job with heart, and made the incredibly tough decision to leave it all behind to build something of his own. We talk about everything from launching a party bus business in college to grinding through EMS, and finally landing the fire gig.

To walking away from it all at the peak of burnout to start frontline optics. It's raw, it's honest, and it's packed with lessons for anyone feeling stuck between loyalty to the job and the magnetism of a new purpose. If you've ever questioned whether it's okay to want more, this one's for you.

Narrator: Welcome to the Keep the Promise Podcast, where we help build resilient and well-rounded firefighters.

TJ: I've been looking forward to this probably since, since I met you a couple months ago, because you have taken that path.

The fire service business, we've talked about life after the job. You've lived all of it, and there are so many aspects of your story that are definitely going to hit home with the audience today, especially those who might be sitting at that crossroads of trying to figure out where to go within the fire service or even outside of the fire service.

And I'm excited to have a guy who went from Party Bus to Successful Entrepreneur, and we're gonna cover all of those things. So, Mike, welcome to the Keep the Promise podcast.

Mike: Thanks for having me.

TJ: You didn't quite take the usual route that most people take to get into the fire service. Talk to me about it please, because you kind of, you kind of hopped a little bit from one goofy place to the next until you ended up in a firehouse.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Well, um, I guess we gotta like back it all the way up to when I was a little kid to like build the foundation here. So, um, as a little kid, like most of us, I had like a weird fascination with any flashing lights. So fire, um, ambulances, police, like you name it, if there was flashing lights, I wanted to see what was going on.

Um, that kind of stuck with me when I was. 14, I think it was. I got, um, a scanner radio and um, a Thomas book map guide. And I used to listen to the tones go off in the city and I learned like what tones were in my area. I would flip to the page of the Thomas book, map guide, jump on my bike if I could get there and try and catch a glimpse, right?

Like I was a, I, I loved it. Weird, right? Um, at the same time, two people in my family who I very much looked up to, um, were both entrepreneurs and in that entrepreneurial space. So my uncle built a, um, a very large marketing company and, um, did very well for himself. And so we would always go to his country house and have like big family reunions and it was like, you know, we get to drive around in the Porsches and uh, you know, he had a 66 stingray and just like an awesome life.

And he was always home, right? Because he had made all this money and he'd exited. And so I, he was like, um, what I thought life was supposed to be like as an adult when you're successful. Uh, additionally, my, my cousin was coming up at the time, and he's very successful now, but at the time he was running a tool business, um, where he was buying tools from like China essentially.

Um, they maxed out credit cards, brought all these things in, and he would go to these tiny little towns that didn't have like the equivalent of a Home Depot. And we'd do these pop-up shops like throughout Canada, they're Canadian, um, throughout Canada and just like sell all their inventory in like three days.

And then they would buy even more and do it again and rinse and repeat. And he like made a boatload of money and that was his start. So I'm looking at these two guys doing these incredible things, and so I'm like, wow. Like that's, that's awesome. So that's, I guess where the like entrepreneurial seed was, but my like adrenaline seed was the fire service.

So, um. F flash forward now to college. Uh, I am, first class I take is an EMT class in college. And like some 18-year-old kids are dialed, right? Like I teach EMTs and paramedics now there's kids who come through my class and I'm like, cool, like, you're ready to have like some someone who's dying in your hands and like, you can handle this.

I was not that kid. Um, so I still distinctly remember there was a career day during that time and I went over to the booth where the Santa Barbara County fire department was. And like I had a beard and my hair was all over the place. And, you know, flip flops on, I watered up to 'em. I'm like, Hey, I wanna be a firefighter, right?

And they just laughed at me, uh, and basically told me, grow up nicely. But like, you need to grow up. We don't want kids in the firehouse. We're looking for adults. Why don't you do something else in your life, um, and get some life experience. And then once you have all of that and you're a little more mature, if you're ready to commit yourself to the process, come back and talk to us and we'll point you in the right direction.

Which was awesome advice. And so, um, so I chose to pursue business and that's what led me kind of down the business road and into this party bus, as you had mentioned, um, while I was in college. Um, so that was pretty long, uh, long-winded story, but, um,

TJ: I mean, I wanna know more about the party bus. Yeah.

Mike: Yeah. I mean I went to San Diego State, right?

So like San Diego State, big Party school back then. This was before Lyft, before Uber. And like the big area that everybody used to party at was a, um, an area called Pacific Beach. It was about 10 miles from the college campus. Cab rides cost you like 70 bucks each way. Um. The alternative was one of your friends would pretend to be the designated driver, and then he'd only have four drinks, you know, on the way there and back.

So, um, saw a need in the market, decided to start a transportation company and we would transport kids on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights for $15 round trip on a 40 passenger bus with ghetto rope lights and a, um, sound system on the inside. But truly it was just an old converted city bus. And then we would bus kids back and forth from, uh, San Diego State to Pacific Beach.

Um, that was my first, like, my first business, right? My first taste of business. And it was fun, but like, you are not gonna make a million bucks, you know, taking kids back and forth for $15 a trip three nights a week. Um, and so while I was on this one, you know, we're out late at night and so, um, I went home.

Or I, I was coming from home back to where the bus ends its night to clean everything up and the puke and whatever else was in there. Uh, and on my way I saw somebody crash her car on the 15 freeway and like flipped it in the ice plant. So I pulled over, I went over, I tried to help, uh, emergency scene kind of developed around me, and that was that like light bulb moment again where I was like, this is it.

Right? This is purpose. This is like what I wanna do. I want to be one of these guys. And that's when I, you know, committed to the path of, uh, of becoming a first responder.

TJ: Okay. And you went, you didn't go straight into the fire department, you got, you became an EMT first and went from there. Did you do private ambo like most people do, or Oof? Tell me more.

Mike: inner facility garbage, um, for about, I think four months. And then I got hired by a company called Rural Metro, uh, which had the 9 1 1 contract here in San Diego. Um, worked there again, EFT for IFT for about six months. IFT, everyone on this probably knows, but inner facility transport. So it's you're just taking people from like a nursing home to the hospital or a discharge from the ER to a nursing home or whatever it may be, not glorious.

Uh, after about six months of that, I was able to become a bridge DMT and work alongside a paramedic, and that was my first taste of like 9 1 1. Um, and then from there it was another five years before I landed my first fire job.

TJ: Okay, so it was a path that took, took quite a bit of time to get there. You weren't my buddy job from Phoenix calls it first try Fridays. The people who just apply once and immediately get hired, you were, you were not one of those.

Mike: Not one of them. No, no. It took me time. I kind of knew it would. Went through the normal progression, EMT to paramedic, then small kind of combination department, um, volunteers and career guys. That was my first career job. It was dedicated to the ambulance. Um, but we were, you know, it was a rescue ambulance.

Um, that was my, you know, my first experience. And then after, uh, just shy of the year there, um, I got the call from the city of Coronado, which is where I did the, the bulk of my fire career.

TJ: And how was it going from that EMS path into the fire service? So tell me more about that, that progression, because there are a lot of folks who might be staring at the second, third, fourth, you know, denial on their application, being like, dude, what the fuck? Like, it's been three, four years and I still can't get hired.

Tell me about your story.

Mike: I mean, I think I applied to 30 departments before I finally like made it. So, um, if you're trying right, like keep trying. Every time you do it, you'll learn something, you'll get better, you'll get more comfortable in the interview and you'll kind of work your way up. And then the next thing you know, almost everyone you go to, you keep getting chiefs, but you're not passing the chiefs.

And you gotta figure that side of it out. And then, um, really what it comes down to at those chiefs interview is like, did you say something during your interview that connected with them where they're like, you know what, this guy, I can, I see myself in this guy. And then that's pretty much who they hire.

So, um, for me, I had somebody who had gone to Santa Barbara City College much like me in my process. And so as I was telling my story, they resonated with it 'cause they had kind of walked in those, that same path. And that's, um, that was the thing that set, set me apart and gave me my opportunity. So you never know, um, you don't know the department that you're gonna end up at.

You may grow up thinking you're gonna work at a particular place, but unless you've got family there, um, or some other ties. Most likely, like the culture might not be the right fit for you, and you're gonna end up where you're supposed to end up. So trust that process and just keep going.

TJ: And then make it your own When you get there, make, contribute to that culture and, and put in that love to make the department what you want it to be.

Mike: Absolutely.

TJ: Okay, so now you're in the fire department. You made a Corona hang out with Navy Seals and shit. What did you love the most about it?

Mike: Um, the comradery, just being like, like the guys, the, I mean, anyone who's been in it knows, like the conversations that go on in the headsets in the back of a rig, um, or even in an ambulance is like, there's nothing like it. Um, we're professional outside those doors, but on the inside we're like a bunch of little kids, right?

Like, we're, that, that's really what we are. Uh, and I, I, I mean, I have missed that more than anything. It's just to have that like group of guys to just. Laugh at the dumbest little things over

TJ: I am glad you said headsets because we used to get in fights all the time about headsets, no headsets. There were shifts that absolutely hated them. We were one of the shifts that actually used them. But it just makes you feel that everybody's there in the conversation, like all three, four people who might be in the end, in the ladder truck,

Mike: Yep. The tiller man in the back chimes

TJ: I mean, right. 

Mike: right.

Like it's all good until somebody starts eating chips with their mic on.

TJ: Okay, so we've talked about the stuff that you love and, and we're kind of, I don't wanna say fast forwarding through the fire service, but I think that I want to focus on, on the transformation on the journey I. Into the fire service, but also out of it. And I don't want the listeners to think that we're not paying any service to what you've done, but I think it's important for all of us to realize that there is a life outside of the fire service and you are a prime example of somebody who has made a phenomenal life after taking that leap.

So it's not us fast forwarding through, but we're kind of trying to get to the meat and potatoes of, of this exciting interview. So there came a point that I assume the job started wearing you down is, was there a specific incident? Was there a time that you just said, I'm done? Or was it just steadily over time things just degraded until you saw that it was time for a change?

Mike: A little of both. Um, I mean it's, you get told going into it. Greatest job in the world. That's like all you ever hear, right? Oh, it's the greatest job in the world. Best job I ever had, all this kind of stuff. But like, there's three letters in there that keep being said, and that's job, right? It is a job. Um, there is definitely things about any job that are not glamorous and those kind of get skipped over.

And when they dangle the carrot in front of you to get you to, to chase it, right? Uh, and you don't realize any of those things until you're inside. Um, mandatories are like a common occurrence in the fire service and those mandatories can stack onto each other and it's like, cool, like you were supposed to go to your kid's baseball game, or you promised 'em you're gonna be at a recital or whatever it may be.

And it's like, oh, sorry. You know, better luck next time. Oh, it's Father's Day, so and so called out sick. And now you're gonna spend Father's Day there or Mother's Day right at the station 'cause somebody called out sick. Um, just, you know, those little things that, that people don't necessarily talk about.

Um, especially at a smaller department, they, um, they show up a little bit more 'cause there's not as big of an applicant pool for those like, handful of guys that are just hungry for overtime all the time. You know, the, uh, in a bigger department, I think it, it kind of washes out a little more with those, those people picking up the slack.

Whereas at a smaller department, sure you might have one or two, but if there's three openings that day, there's still someone getting forced. Um, so there was that. And then, you know, COVID happened and during COVID we had people leaving California. So we had, you know, people leave the state, two guys left the state, um, at the firefighter rank.

So that created two holes. We had some guys that retired, um, we had a few guys who had babies. Um, you know, and this is a small department, right? And so, like our firefighter rank was just completely decimated. And during this period of time, we're not hosting tests. 'cause you can't get a bunch of people in a room, you're not allowed.

Um, it just got very complicated and convoluted very quickly. And I don't think our management at the time did a great job of, um, taking care of us. They just looked at it and said like, well, the guy, the guys are working, you know, the shifts are filled. Instead of looking to say, well, guys are working, you know, 26 days outta the month,

that's not healthy.

Um, and that, you know, that was, that was where I kind of started to, to have enough. Um, additionally I had my business, which is now flourishing, that was happening on the side. So that was growing as my kind of resentment towards the way that we were treated as just a number. Um. By the cities and, and by management.

So, um, it made it a little bit easier for me to, to transition out.

TJ: So towards the end, that must have been stressful 

because here you have this best job I ever had, right? Like that we, we always remember that. We always remember what it felt like getting hired, getting that phone call or that. I think I got an email or a letter, I forget. Obviously I don't remember it that well apparently, but we all remember it that first day, those butterflies, and now here you are coming to that crossroads of.

Saying to yourself, there's another path, and I feel like I'm turning my back on the one that I should give my entire life to. What was going through your mind at that point?

Mike: So many things. Um, that was the most. Mentally challenging period of my life because of all that, right? I'd spent my, pretty much my adult life working towards getting into the fire service. And now here I am looking at getting out young, right? With five years in, at, at the career at this point, right? So, um, it was challenging.

Uh, I actually used a life coach. I thought that they were just like fufu garbage for a really long time. But, uh, I had, uh, my sister-in-law's, uh, was a life coach and she kept telling me like, you gotta talk to a life coach. Got it. And I'm like, whatever, Tammy, right? Like, I don't, I don't need to hear about this.

And finally I was like, you know what? Screw it. I'll talk to one of them. Um, that one hour call gave me the most like clarity I've ever had in my life. And I came out of that knowing that like, it was, it was time to walk away from the job. It, um, I went in and put in my notice and. Two weeks later, I was free.

TJ: Wow, that quick, huh?

Mike: I had put feelers out prior to, um, like a month earlier. I had talked to the, I had talked to the chief, um, and I told him, I don't, I don't know if I want to do this anymore. And he was like, wait, you know, like, look at these guys that I'm about to hire, like, look how great this is gonna be. And I'm like, all right.

Like, I'll think about it, but like, I'm just letting you know where my head space is at right now. Like, I'm not, I'm not happy. Um, and then, yeah, once I had that call, I was looking at a, um, 11 day force. Basically it was like my two shifts and then four days forced, and then my two shifts, and then right, like, so it was gonna be 11 days in a row that was looming when I took this call.

So that obviously helped. Um, but again, management looked at that. They didn't look to say like, oh, there's a guy getting forced 11 days in a row. We shouldn't allow this to happen. They just. We're like,

TJ: Hold up. 

Mike: the cards are dealt.

TJ: What, what shift did, like, what kind of shift structure did you guys have?

Mike: We were on a 48 96, so two days on, four

TJ: Oh my God, 

Mike: So,

TJ: You do weird shit in California, dude. 11 days.

Mike: Yeah.

TJ: Had you done one of those before?

Mike: Uh, that, no, that was the, the highest I had I'd ever been, I mean, there's guys who will do that 'cause they're out on a strike team. But like, you're on an assignment, right? You're on a campaign fire. That makes sense. But to do like 11 days at the fire station, just

TJ: Oh my 

Mike: rinse and repeat, like

TJ: dude, I think that by day three I would become feral. Like by day four I would be, I don't know, probably like dangling half naked from the rafters. And by the fifth day I'm probably like jumping off the top of the host tower. I 

I cannot fathom that.

Mike: the one thing again that I had going for me was that I knew they only had me for 14 days. And that like

TJ: That's it, right? 

Mike: going. That kept me going, and then I played like a lot of pickleball.

TJ: Oh my God, dude, I would Wow. Hats off to you guys for doing 48 hour shifts. They were, I remember there was a discussion, a very public, angry discussion online recently about, and some, some of the folks in my department who were, um. Advocating one of the guys at a slow station was like, oh, we could totally do a 48 hour shift.

And one of the guys at the busy station that runs, you know, 15 to 20 runs a shift was like, abso fucking lly. Not, dude. Imagine doing like 40 runs in 48 hours. You're outta your mind.

Mike: Yeah. No thank you.

TJ: Okay, so mental stress, you're at that point that you're like, dude, 11 days I'm gonna get like I, I am in for this torture.

It's time, it's time for that next step. And that next step is frontline optics.

Mike: Correct.

TJ: Tell me 

Mike: time, I wanna like emphasize frontline optics was growing substantially, but was nowhere near ready to be a source of income. Um, but it

was 

TJ: was just a side hustle. 

Mike: it was very much a side hustle, but it was a side hustle that had had roots, um, and was showing promise. And so it was like, all right, well let's water this thing and see where it goes.

And, um,

TJ: So what are the roots? 

Mike: yeah. It ended up being the right move.

TJ: Okay. Tell me about how it came about. Tell me when, when you planted that seed and started seeing those roots for the, for the company.

Mike: Yeah. So, um, you know, back up a little bit, and I'm on, I'm still working for the fire department and. I was a big sunglasses guy. I love sunglasses, right? Our uniforms completely picked out for us. There's nothing that we can do to bring our own style to the uniform other than our sunglasses. So, um, I naturally took to 'em, I had a bunch of different mirrored lenses, right?

I was a big Oakley guy at the time. Um, and I loved 'em, but I kept on like forgetting that they were in my lap and we're pulling into the bay and then I open and it does that long drop down to the ground and boom scratched, right? Or it falls between the metal seats and then it's like scratched or you know, broken and um, you know, it was a couple hundred bucks every single time.

Some of 'em were prescriptions, so even more, right? So it's like it just started getting super expensive and I figured there had to be a better way, uh, started looking into making it myself. And that's kind of how the idea for frontline optics was born. Uh, during this period of time, I was getting forced like crazy, so I had a lot of extra money.

So I took some of that, you know, force. Income, I guess you could say. Um, took that five grand and bought a trademark, bought 300 pairs of sunglasses, got a Shopify store up and running with a little bit of budget left over for marketing and like I was in business, uh, didn't know what I was doing. Figured like, oh, you put it on the internet, people just buy it.

No, doesn't, does not work like that at all. Um, but uh, you know, that was kind of how it started. And then from there realizing it was gonna take being a little bit more clever to sell it. Um, I started, you know, focusing on, on marketing, became a student of marketing and while everybody was, you know, watching the nightly movie or whatever, right on my downtime, I was in my room, like watching YouTube videos on marketing and like reading blogs and setting up campaigns and doing all of this stuff until, you know, it finally started to work.

Um, it took me. Nine months or so before I finally discovered like the first hook that worked in a video. And I had that slow motion pair of glasses falling from a fire engine down onto the ground with like my bunker gear staged behind it. And I like just voiced over it, stop beating up your expensive sunglasses on the job and then cool music and a bunch of pictures of like cops and firefighters wearing the glasses.

And that was the first ad that took off and made the company, you know, a six figure company with one single ad. And that was like that aha moment of like you grab their attention and then you can sell a good product. And from there it was like that was the roots. And I was pretty much off to the races at that point.

And we've grown almost a hundred percent year over year, over year since.

TJ: Which is fantastic 'cause you and I will have discussions about business and you are that role model and that big brother in this, in this enterprise because watching you grow is just phenomenal. I'm like, hell yeah. One of the, one of the guys is, is doing, is doing a great job, but we, I mean it, it's marketed and it's made for first responders, right?

It came from the pain that you experienced of gouging and scratching and crushing your oakleys. That's cool. We understand that. But the part that I really wanna focus on is that firefighter mindset when it comes to business, because I think that those of us who spend time wearing the uniform and in turnout gear, we have a set of skills that sets us apart from the everyday entrepreneur that is being used to getting forced for 11 days and getting kicked in the deck for 11 days straight at a firehouse is the 3:00 AM calls.

Like it's all the things that we hate about the fire department that actually mold us into pretty solid business people. So tell me about that aspect. Tell me about what you think and how you feel that your fire service experience set you up to deal with all the blows that come from being a business owner.

Mike: Well, um, what do we do as firefighters, right? We solve problems. We have to solve the problem. Every problem comes to an end, right? Then you learn from that problem and you apply that knowledge to the next time you experience that problem. That's, that's business, right? Like, you do something, it didn't work well, why didn't it work?

Do a debrief. Take that information, apply it the next time. Did it work better? Right. And you just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, and you get, you get better and better and better. Um, every problem that you encompass, whether it's, you know, a fulfillment type issue or a sourcing issue, um, or a sales issue or a marketing, like, there's always a solution, right?

Otherwise, there would be no businesses. So understanding that you just have to, to find it and keep grinding and keep moving forward. Like, if you quit on a fire, you die. Can't, can't do that, right? So if you quit in a business, your business dies. Can't do that either, but a lot of people do, right? Because it's not life and death because they can sit there and be like, it just didn't work.

Right? I'll try something else next time. Like, cool, good luck. You, you know, if you can't see this thing through. Long enough to truly know if it's got, you know, roots, then, you know, just giving up because you got one hurdle, um, you're never gonna make it. So, you know, I would say that that mindset is really the thing that's helped, helped drive me, um, aggressive patients.

Right? Um, the one difference I would say is that business takes a long time. Firefighting is a little bit more instantaneous. So you have to understand that to see something through to the end is, is not minutes, right? It's not one bottle, right? It's, um, it could be months, you know, to, to truly see if whatever plan you have works before pivoting.

So don't pivot too soon, but all that stuff helps, um, to drive you forward.

TJ: And I think that's a. Let's call it the dark side of fire service entrepreneurship, is that we are used to such fast feedback cycles, like super quick, Hey, you try to force a door this way, it didn't work. Okay, we're gonna move a couple inches up, or we're gonna try to attack the lock a different way. You try to advance a hose a certain way, or you know, there are times that you flow water and immediately the environment gets better and sometimes it doesn't.

But you have those super quick feedback loops. Whereas in business, like you said, it takes days if you're lucky, and it takes months. More often than not, how do you take that old mic from the fire service who wants that quick feedback? And train him to be new Mike in the business world where it's like, Hey bro, we gotta wait.

Like what? What skills, what? And this is a lot for me because I'm trying to learn these skills as well.

Mike: Yeah. Um, you know, I'm gonna give a lot of credit here to, um, there's a guy named Andy Ella. Um, he's the owner of First Form, um, there, and if you've ever heard of 75, hard right? He's the guy who created 75 hard. Um, he can be very rough around the edges, but he has this one quote that he keeps going back to, which is that the cake takes time to bake.

Uh, and I repeat that one in my head all the time, and, and his example is, um, Martha Stewart gives you a recipe for a cake, right? And she says, you take these ingredients, you mix 'em these ways, you do this, then you put it into the oven at this temperature for this amount of time, and it comes out, you're gonna have the perfect cake every time. And then you decide, well, if I crank the temperature in the oven up by like, you know. An extra a hundred degrees, it'll cook twice as fast and we'll have this, the cake twice as fast. But when the cake comes out, it's all burnt on the outside. It's not cooked on the inside, it's completely ruined, and you destroy the perfect recipe.

So, um, I listen to that and I've like very much ingrained it in the way that I think about anything as I'm doing it is the eager, quick feedback loop Mike from the fire service wants to see, okay, like, I've turned on this campaign right. In advertising and like, I wanna log in in an hour and see that it's successful.

No. Right? It might take 30 days before the algorithm figures it all out, right? The cake takes time to bake. So, um, that's, that's kind of been my go-to, to reset myself every time I feel myself kind of edging myself forward and trying to be too fast. Um, I remember that and, and look at what this guy built without ever taking any outside funding or venture capital, right?

So same kind of thing that I'm doing, you bootstrap that business into a, you know. Billion dollar brand, and I'm trying to emulate that exact same thing.

TJ: So we got the cake analogy. That's one way that you do it, and that's one way of dealing with that need and that want for the short feedback loop. There's a lot more fears that come with being an entrepreneur and a business owner. Can you talk about some of the other ones that most people may not even realize?

Mike: Yeah, I mean, um, there's, uh, there's like data overload, right? Like the fear of like, I don't know enough. Um, and I'm gonna get para, what is it? Paralysis by analysis. I'm just gonna like, keep learning. And every time I'm learning something new, it contradicts something else that I learned. So wait, now I need to dig more on that.

And now you contradicted what you just learned before and so now you need to dig more on that. And next thing you know, a year goes by and you haven't taken a single step. Um, so you know, you, you gotta just do it right, like. I know a ton about the eyewear industry now. I knew nothing about the eyewear industry.

When I bought 300 pairs of sunglasses and decided to start selling sunglasses, I knew nothing. Right? As I went through the process, I learned as I went, I had to pivot. I, you know, learned about different components, different manufacturing processes, different materials, um, different places to source different like, like everything.

And now all of that knowledge is there from experience that I'm able to apply to my future decisions. But if I hadn't ever taken that first step, I never would've made it. So, um, don't get that paralysis right? You need to just leap out from the fear and understand that the only way for you to like learn is to forge your own path.

And that's, that's building, right? Entrepreneurs are builders. We're different than the norm. We're going out on our own. We might be on a, a multitude of different paths with some periods of like forging through the brush. And that's just what you gotta do and learn from it and take that feedback as you go and build the Rolodex of information in your mind that you can apply.