I fit into a lot of stereotypes, but I shatter most! As a young black man, I have always had hops. This is why I am good at every sport that’s imaginable. Basketball, football, baseball, bowling, kickball… you name it! I am an athlete and I know that I can run fast, learn quick, and jump high. But what would happen if I didn’t have hops? I would be playing the sport with a huge disadvantage. This is exactly why I stayed in Corporate America for so long. I did not know anything about starting a business; plus, I was super comfortable with my software engineering dream job. When I say super comfortable, in no way whatsoever am I exaggerating. I will tell you more about my comfort zone in chapter 1. I did know that I could program software, develop mobile apps, and design websites because that was basically what I was doing for my comfy corporate job. But becoming a business owner was a completely new sport, in which I had NO HOPS!
No hops, meaning that I knew nothing about marketing, promoting, accounting, customer acquisition, customer relations, networking, legal stuff, business structures, taxes, business credit, business plans, financial projections, investors, or anything other than my skill. We are used to playing sports that we know everything about. Sports that we know the rules to. Sports that are comfortable to us. But we need to realize that just because we don’t have hops, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t play the game. That’s what squats, calf raises, and air alert is for. They say white man can’t jump… Hell, they don’t need to… They know how to leap with no hops.