You Call the Shots by Cameron Johnson

EXCERPT

From You Call the Shots

Introduction: The Entrepreneurial Life

I started my first business at the age of nine with $50 and a home computer, and ran it from my room at home as a one-kid operation. By the time I was nineteen I had started nearly a dozen profitable businesses, and for my latest venture I had received a very attractive offer of $10 million in venture capital. I turned that offer down and walked away because I didn’t feel good about the conditions that would have been imposed on me if I’d taken the money. The venture capital firm would have called the shots, told me how to run my company, and paid me a salary that would’ve been less than I’d made on my own since I was twelve.

It was a lucrative offer, and who knows? Maybe with their backing and expertise I would have come out way ahead. But I didn’t think it was the right deal for me. I made that decision without regret, and I’ve never looked back.

I knew this was not a now-or-never choice. There would be plenty of other opportunities to create even more successful businesses—because I’d learned the skills it takes to do so. Once you learn these skills, you never have to be tied to any one particular enterprise. I realized that while I could have taken someone else’s $10 million investment, I’d rather invest in myself.

I’ve been fortunate enough to make my first million before graduating from high school and buy my own house at twenty. At twenty-one, I’ve now put away enough in savings and other investments that I could practically retire today . . . if I wanted to. But of course, that’s the last thing on earth I’d want to do. I just enjoy it all too much. Not to say the money isn’t important, but frankly, it’s not why I do what I do. I do it because I love it.

I’ve always loved starting new businesses. I take pleasure in every aspect of it, from coming up with a new concept, or a unique twist on an existing concept, to finding a name that perfectly captures the nature of the business, to building the team, launching the enterprise, and watching it take off and grow. Of the more than a dozen successful businesses I’ve launched over the past twelve years, every one of them has been a unique experience, and I’ve loved the process every time.

That’s what I want to share with you in this book. How to build successful businesses, what it’s like to do it, and why I love it so much—and hope you will too.

Starting your own business is a great path for creating success on your own terms. It’s an excellent way to build a financial base for yourself, but it’s more than that. It’s also about finding ways to exercise your creativity, to challenge yourself, and rise to new levels of ability and experience. It’s about the satisfaction of creating something that makes a contribution to other people’s lives. And perhaps more than anything else, it’s about freedom: the freedom to set your own hours, to do things your own way, to try out new ideas and put your talents to the test.

I wouldn’t exchange the thrill of that freedom for anything in the world.

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