Getting Paid to Learn: The Business Lesson I Learned in a Welding Workshop at 2am

It has been an insane seven years.

Looking back now it is so clear how many mistakes I made. And as I write that I smile, because what else could really be expected when you attempt to build something 100% self taught. As green and as naive as I was, there is something genuinely fun about watching a young man learn the hard way.

The idea that became The Sequoia Project

When the businesses finally became passive enough to step back from, my girlfriend and I started travelling. Somewhere along the way I had this idea that I wanted to help other people avoid some of the mistakes I had made.

But I did not feel like I had enough to offer.

I remember saying out loud "maybe when I have got a whole career's worth of knowledge I will put something together."

Then some of the wisest words I have ever heard came back at me.

"If you wait until the end of your career, the world will be a different place. The things you built today will have no relevance and the people who need the help now will have suffered for no reason. The lessons you have learned will never be more relevant than they are right now."

That was the birth of The Sequoia Project. The machine that has gone on to help over 1,000 businesses across the world so far.

So I share with you the lessons of a young man learning. They may mean something to you or they may not. But these are the lessons that got me from where I was to where I wanted to be.

Young Man Learning: Lesson 1

If you do not know where to start, start by getting paid to learn.

We have all had one. The dead end job. The "there has got to be more to life than this" feeling that creeps in somewhere between clocking on and clocking off.

Mine was welding and fabrication.

The work was fine. I was good at it. But the environment was toxic and the passion was nowhere to be found. I showed up every day wishing I was somewhere else doing something else entirely.

What I did not know at the time was that those hours in the workshop were quietly building the foundation for everything I would go on to build.

Here is the thing nobody tells you when you are starting out with no experience and no money. You do not need to pay to learn what you need to know. You need to pay attention.

Find a role, a trade, a business or an industry that teaches you the skills you actually need while someone else pays you to be there. That way when you eventually go out on your own, the first thing you sell is already closer to profit because you are not starting from zero.

I learned this unknowingly and only recognised it looking back. Maybe you are in the middle of your version of it right now.

The 2:00am workshop shifts felt like wasted time. They were actually tuition.

Just because it is where you are does not mean it is where you will always be.

This is what the TSP Podcast is built around. Real lessons from the journey, shared while they are still relevant. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and come join the conversation in The Sequoia Project community on Facebook.