How to find what you love

The path to riches is what we all want to take, but how does one do it? By "riches" my definition is the best life you can create for yourself. If you talk to a person who has made it already they'll probably say something like: "follow your passion" or "do what you love". I personally am really into technology and come up with about  1 tech idea a day of what I could do to start a business (most are worse than good)…so with this curse I've developed the last year, I'm pretty sure I should be doing technology. Luckily I also know that having a job in this field is not hard to find, but on the flipside there are fields where the chances of making it are very low...good luck making it as a poker pro. 

Who knows what the odds of making it platinum as a musician are and the odds of being a sports star?  Pursuing those things seems a bit crazy to me, which is how I know they're not my cup of tea. I'm very sure business is my sport. I can trace this back to my scheming 8 year old self. I would drive my remote control car around my neighborhood. When kids asked: "can I drive?" I'd say: "yea, but in return I'd like a Pokemon card".  A very efficient model for getting Pokemon cards, but I guess asking for 50 cents would not be so bad either. Plus,  I'd rather be a much less successful version of Bill Gates than Michael Jordon, Mike Myers or Michael Jackson any day so with this logic it's why I love business. Every once in a while I ask myself if this is my passion.....YES! Explodes in my mind…I also have been a bit of a musician in the past creating songs and various arrangements since I was 15. While I love to do that as well, I chose business for the future because, however fun it is being a rapper, being a business man is much more appealing and challenging to me.

I see people all around me that aren't following their path and looking miserable everyday.

So what if I didn’t know what my path was? How do we find out what we love to do?

My hypothesis:

Simply look at your heroes (hopefully you want to be like you heroes) and you follow those footsteps in your own way. The people I admire and try to learn the most from happen to be Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Wozniak, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Gordon Moore, Peter Thiel, Mark Cuban, Sean Parker,  I could dig out a lot more, but you get the point.  So just take your heroes study them, try to get in contact to similar people in the field and have fun. HOWEVER…

As we all know, there is more than one ways to skin a tiger (it’s a cat too) and nothing is set in stone until your last day, so let's look at the other options.

Some believe: "If you wanna be successful just take something like your hobby and blow it up" Even though this could be good advice at first, I think that in the long term it does not apply to everything directly, but can be great advice indirectly. I mean I like playing video games as much as anyone, but being a professional gamer is a bit out of the question…starting my own gaming company isn't though. (No I don't play a lot of video games anymore because my new game and most addicting game is business). Other advice could be to try to jump into a field and see if you fall in love with it, which isn't a bad choice either. Jumping in a field and working for a company can help you find your business passion while making some dough. It takes a lot of balls and I respect it as well.  Anyways, I hope I'm on the right "path to riches" money or no money.

An intro to myself and the blog

Who am I? My name is Vladimir K Mkrtumyan I'm a wannabe funny man/ wantrepreneur/ retired musician and chess player. Currently 20 years old, I'll turn 21 a month from now. I know you're thinking I'll go out partying though, I'm very prudish. I don't drink even though most of my friends do and I find nothing wrong with it whatsoever. I've grown to be a contrarian by nature, so that means if you go one way, I'll try to go the other just to see what happens probably making an ass out of myself most of the time. I try to be financially successful all though I feel I'm having as much success at the task as a flamingo trying to learn how to dance the flamingo…yes my mind does jump around a lot and I need an editor, so please try to follow along…moving on!

I came to this country as an immigrant, so and have always seen my parents work hard. Of course they never had any intentions of building a scalable company and making millions like me, but they did pretty well. My dad is a driver and my mom works in accounting. We have had bad financial luck and after the big boom around 2004 I decided that finances were something that I'd have to really try.  We'll see where I end up and I promise you, that if I can do it and if you can read this blog you should be able to attain my life's progress.  Let me tell you right off the bat…

I don't think I'm a genius by any measure, however like most people I think I'm smarter than the average bear. My justification for this is I got into college and got my degree. Of course I got a D in statistics and negotiated/begged with the teacher to pass that class, but I got my degree 2 years early and I think that's all that counts. Give me another 2 years and I would improve my 2.7 something GPA though I'll probably never go back.  I hated school so much I wanted to find every single short cut, plus I was convinced it doesn't help with life success. My mentor never went to college and he's made it, he tells me I can too and I believe him, but for now…let me get back to focusing on what this blog will be about.

You see, I always imagined when I graduated that everything would come so easy and success would be handed to me in a briefcase of some sort…I went around telling everyone I'd retire before the age of 25 (of course 90% of people laughed) , however giving a go at start up life I'm finding that you have to work tirelessly to get what you want. I've tried various methods of success and don't feel like any major breakthroughs are happening yet.  I've also come to realize that the term "retirement" should be dead, but I'll write a blog about it later. (you see how my mind jumps around? I'll write a post on that later too)

My business experience in the tech industry was virtually 0 a year and a half ago, but teaming up with my cousin and sister I had created a business and made it profitable. (About 5 dollars a week profitable, which is basically nothing.) Soon after we decided to re-model our business with a stealth idea, but my cousin left to pursue a degree of programming in Berkeley, leaving me and my sister stuck trying to learn how to program. I've interviewed and hired graphic designers, talked to dozens of entrepreneurs a handful of millionaires, went to Start Up Weekend Seattle and negotiated with other companies. I'm currently trying to learn how to program and "find myself" or how I'll survive in life/pursue my start up idea. 

So let us begin…

Today marks the day…today marks the start of my blog. For many years I told myself this is going to be the year that everything turns out amazing, the year I'll never have to worry about anything again and that life is going to be one big vacation from this day on. I'll finally be financially independent…

The plain and simple truth:

I know there is probably going to be a lot to worry about, especially for what I'm trying to do.

 I want to own a software company and I don't care if I break my hands typing, cry my eyes out from looking at the screen or look like a complete idiot if I have to.

So feel free to laugh at my mistakes and grab any golden nuggets, you can hopefully use this blog as knowledge/motivation/ or whatever it is that will give you that edge and we'll see what this turns into and you can see how many years it takes me to reach success or have funny failure stories.

Cheers and thanks for reading.