Hey there,
My whole dream was $50,000.
I grew up in a town of 8,000 people.
Farm town, railroad town, blue collar.
I lived in a trailer.
And the kid from that trailer had one dream.
Go to school, be an IT person, make $50,000 a year.
That was it. That was the whole plan.
This next part took me almost 20 years to see.
The richest person in my family, ever, prior to me, made about $53,000.
My big, reach for the stars, change the family forever goal was $3,000 short of a record that already existed.
I call it the ceiling you inherit. You absorb it from your family, your town, the numbers you overheard before you were old enough to know what they meant.
And from underneath, it doesn't look like a ceiling.
It looks like ambition.
The climb didn't fix it
Now, that kid hustled. Flipping car audio. Buying and reselling. Doing Gary Vee before Gary Vee was out there talking about it. That was 2007.
Work ethic was never the problem. Let me say that again, because you probably need to hear it about yourself. Work ethic was never the problem.
And I climbed…Car audio installer at Best Buy. Supervisor. Assistant Manager. Then I'm running an $84 million P&L. Then I'm the COO of a company.
I blew past the $50,000 dream by a mile.
The feeling never changed.
My entire career, my skill set was above what I was being paid. Every single stop. I kept taking less than I deserved and I kept calling it a good job.
If you've felt that, you already know it isn't about money. It's about the gap between what you can do and what you're willing to ask for.
Why competent people stay underpaid
There's a name for the reason.
Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Safety sits near the bottom of the stack, and the rule of the stack is brutal. You don't reach for the top while the bottom feels threatened.
Here's roughly how I put it into a voice memo to myself, and I still mean it:
Until you're ready to bet on yourself, you'll always fall to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you don't have the confidence in yourself, you're going to choose safety and security.
I chose safety and security as the COO of a company. Even there. Even with the title.
I had the skill set to run my own company. I chose a secured position and a paycheck on the 1st and the 15th.
The 1st and the 15th. That rhythm owned me for years.
And I know exactly why I made that trade, so I'm not going to pretend it was weakness.
It takes real courage to break past it. Especially when there are people counting on you. That weight is not imaginary and I'm not calling you a coward for feeling it. I made the same trade, over and over, for years.
The question that broke it
What finally cracked it was one question. Not a book, not a seminar. One question.
What's the worst that happens? Burn it all down and start over?
Okay. I've done harder things than that.
I left a town of 8,000 people in my twenties moved to Columbus. I'd been sheltered my whole life up to that point. It was culture shock and nobody prepared me for any of it.
So when I catch myself scared to post a video of me yapping into a camera, I have to laugh. Moving to Columbus was scarier than posting the yapping video. It isn't close.
That comparison is the whole trick, and you can run it tonight.
The fear audit
Three lines. Do it on paper, not in your head, because your head will cheat.
One. Write down the thing you're avoiding right now. The raise. The first client. The price increase. The hard conversation. The video.
Two. Write down the hardest thing you have already survived. Not the worst thing that ever happened to you. The hardest thing you walked through and came out the other side of.
Three. Put them next to each other and read them out loud.
That's the audit. There's no scoring, no worksheet, no fourth step.
Mine reads: Take the risk you Acesa…You didn’t leave everything you knew and moved to Columbus for nothing. You have already experienced way harder pain. Whats the worst that could happen today?
It loses. Every time. Sure just moving to a city might be easy for someone else and it might be the hardest thing someone else ever did.
And that's the part worth sitting with. The thing you're avoiding isn't big. It's just close. Proximity makes it look enormous, and the audit puts it back to scale next to something you've already proven you can survive.
Confidence comes from competence. Not from a mirror, not from a mantra. From evidence you already have and keep forgetting to count.
Built, not born
The raw version:
If you took me for what I was worth based on how I was born, and the last name I carry, you would have said I was going to end up a felon, a drug dealer, somebody who never amounted to anything and dies alone.
I've built it into something more than that. I was the first one in my family to get married. First to do a lot of things.
One decision did that, made over and over before I even knew I was making it.
I never looked at how I was born. I always looked at what I could build.
That's the whole idea. That's why the phrase is Built Not Born and not "born for this." Nobody is born for this. You get built, on purpose, in the direction you point yourself.
What I'm actually betting on
I want to be specific about what I'm reaching for now.
It isn't a number in a bank account. It's option freedom. The freedom to do what I want, where I want, with who I want, from wherever I want, with whatever tools I want.
In practice that looks embarrassingly ordinary. Weekly date nights that don't get cancelled. A partner who isn't carrying financial stress. The marriage getting the best of us, not what's left of us. Being at a pool on a Wednesday at 4pm with my kids and still working at 10 that night because I chose to.
The text I sent my mom
Not long ago I texted my mom. Hey, let's move to where the water, sand, and sky meet.
She said she can't. Because of her mama.
I've turned that one over a lot since, because it's the same thing I've been describing, just one generation up. Where somebody lives. What weather they wake up in. The whole shape of their life. Decided by something nobody ever said out loud.
One person's decision can shape multiple generations.
That runs both directions. It's true of the ceiling and it's true of the floor.
So part of what I'm building is the ability to make that an actual choice instead of a math problem. Hiring my mom as a house manager. Putting her in a candy apple red Mustang GT somewhere warm.
That isn't a flex. That's just what the number is for.
And I'm not writing this from a finish line. Ninety days ago I started this from zero.
This month just crossed $57,000 in a single month.
Same systems I install for other people, running in my own business.
Put that next to the record. The biggest year anyone in my family ever had was $53,000. A lifetime record. $57K just happened in under two weeks.
The bet's not done. I'm trying to hit six figures in a month. That's a real bet and it's not a safe one. I'm placing it in public, and you're watching me place it. Some weeks that's going to look great in this newsletter and some weeks it won't.
The part for you
You've been pricing yourself off how you were born.
Off the ceiling you inherited. The family record. The town. The number you overheard. The story that got handed to you before you could read it.
That number is not a measurement of you.
It's a measurement of what the people around you had access to.
Price yourself off what you can build.
Built, not born.
Build it so it runs without you.
Acesa
P.S. Hit reply and tell me the ceiling you inherited. A number, a title, a story, whatever it was. I read every one. Naming it out loud is the first crack in it, and I'd genuinely like to know what yours was.
P.P.S. Somewhere back in that trailer there's a kid who thought $50,000 was the top of the world. I think about him a lot.
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Rebel Growth Labs · Columbus, OH
