My Mobile Catering Journey - Part 1 (Escaping the Grind)

It was still dark outside. 6.50am.

I honestly couldn’t deal with the harshness of the fluorescent lights much longer…

They beamed down on me like they were trying to impersonate the sun.

Why couldn’t we just sit there in the dark for a bit?

The instant coffee. The lights. The plain everything. The mundane. The “make sure you arrive 15 minutes early” when I was already waking up hours before my natural body clock, driving to work half asleep.

The grind.

As I knew it anyway.

And it wasn’t me.

I’d literally rather anything over this.  I didn’t want “easy and comfortable” like I felt like most people did.. I wanted a challenge. I wanted to learn.

Ups, downs, tears, laughter, blood, sweat, innovation, creativity…

I wanted to live life.

And it was never going to happen here.

The icing on the cake was, this wasn’t even easy or comfortable… At least not mentally and emotionally. The only thing it had going for it was the ‘guaranteed’ salary.

Oh and of course the 4 weeks you get off each year…

I would sit there thinking all the things most people think; “why am I spending 90% of my time and energy making money for this company that i don’t even care about. Why am I not utilising my talents and strengths for a living. How can things be different”

Leaving this job was probably the hardest thing I would ever do.. Everyone around me was either still at university or entrenched in the grind so it literally became what I knew as normal daily life… Only, nobody else around me complained about it like I felt like I was warranted.  

I felt odd for feeling like this. Was I just weird?  For me to go and do something different to everyone in my world would be, by definition, weird.

The thing I’ve learnt though, is that there’s one key difference between the people that sit at their desk daydreaming about what life could/should be like and the people that actually go and live that life; at some point the people that actually live that life stop dreaming. They find a way to make the dream come to life…  And then, actually use that “way” that they found to make it happen.

Enough motivational podcasts… Enough fancy morning routines.  Just make the plan and start ripping band-aids off.

And they’re probably not the band aids you had in mind.  I’m talking awkward conversations…  Knowing that people are talking about you (likely negatively)... Then, failing at trying to be weird in front of those people. Over and over and over.

And you might think, “well I really don’t know if I’ve got the stomach for that…”

But let me ask you… what’s the alternative?

What’s your dream? And what’s your plan to pull it off?

For me, anything was better than succumbing to the grind.  And to be honest, up until writing this post I’ve never really wanted to open up on paper about how I really feel about the grind.  It’s a touchy subject because it creates a lot of suffering in many people’s lives and the escape route often feels like an impossible undertaking.

The suffering is swept under the rug because the other way is hard.  We need some money to survive and a bit more to do anything additional. As we gather more commitments, get more comfortable and used to the routine.. “The other way” only gets harder because a consistent guaranteed income becomes more and more valuable to us.

So naturally- I felt weird, terrified, excited… a bit like I was about to go diving into deep unexplored waters (just hopefully for the rest of my life).  Of course, this was an enormous decision so I took it very seriously (everyone thinking I was insane probably made me take it more seriously)... 

One thing was certain to me though- this grind thing wasn’t working.  And I knew it wouldn’t work for me for any amount of money. That I was sure of, so it was clear to me that I had to leave and find another way.  Whether it was a business or a job that offered a more flexible, enjoyable lifestyle.  I came up with two criteria that I wanted to satisfy by heading out into the unchartered waters;

1. I wanted to do something enjoyable. To me that was something social.. Something where I could be creative and let my personality flow through what I was doing. Something that I could be proud of, interested in and ultimately didn’t feel like work (because I’d be enjoying the process).

2. I wanted to do something that gave me enough time outside the thing to live life and not just be resting from work or getting ready for next week.  Something where I could go and travel for 2 months in between or take several weeks off randomly.  Basically something that offered freedom. 
   
   This wasn’t an easy box to tick because I realised that in order to take more time off from earning money, I’d need to make money faster during the time that I was working.

And lastly, it needed to be cheap to start because I only had $5k in the bank.  And fast because I needed to get out of this grind thing ASAP!!

The two ideas I toyed with were: an Amazon merchant business (so I could run the business from my laptop) or a mobile food stall which I thought I could run on weekends through the busy summer season.  

I learnt a lot about the Amazon business and started researching products to source in depth.  I made a game plan and mapped everything out… Strangely, I felt myself losing interest as I needed to pull the trigger on the big decisions (like ordering product). I continued dancing around it until other life things got in the way… I actually also started an online pet product dropshipping store. And I made about $300 in sales. But again, a similar thing happened and the business slowly fizzled as it required me to actually invest and take a bit of risk.

“Screw it, let's do it.” - Richard Branson

It took me a little while to realise I wasn’t passionate about these things. I didn’t have my heart in it…

It was just about trying to make enough money and ticking that freedom box (which is fair enough). But when things got challenging or it didn’t make sense for me to continue, I found it really difficult to keep going and feed the project with more money or time I’d rather spend doing something else..

For me, I realised that I needed a bigger reason than my own personal freedom to be able to succeed as an entrepreneur.  I needed to truly want the project to succeed.  I needed to care about what value I was bringing to the world.  I needed to want it enough so that when things didn’t make sense, I had it somewhere in me to just say “screw it, lets do it” (to quote Richard Branson).

So as I sat there… In my chair at 6:50 under the taunting fluorescent rays... Exhausted as hell. I found it somewhere in me to login to eBay and purchase my first 3x3 marquee for $134.  I continued searching for the pieces to my puzzle.. “Plastic folding trestle table $55.” And another $500 worth of stuff.. 

Enough stuff so that I would know, deep down, that I was in. And that there would be no possibility of turning back.

It was right there in that moment, that I felt my dream being born.

Now I just had to actually go and make it happen.