When ecommerce was just starting to show its face in Spain back in 2010, I decided to quit my job and start a business in the ecommerce world.
I set up my own online store. I got a dropshipping provider and got down to work without having a clue.
I didn’t sell shit…
But the idea was not to sell, but to learn ecommerce by doing. This way I could do better the real task: to create a good ecommerce platform for my customers.
During the gold rush those who got rich were not those who searched for gold, but those who sold picks and shovels.
Or so I thought.
My goal was to create my own Shopify based on Magento.
But I ended up making custom webshops and therefor, although I earned well, burning out after 6 years.
It just was not my time for entrepreneurship.
So I closed as soon as the first company offered me a job.
Bye bye entrepreneurship! Hello timetables, fixed income, weekends and vacations!
But all that experience, both at technical and business level, helped me to be part of very interesting projects.
For example, a large Spanish multinational company hired me to create and lead an ecommerce department.
The best salary I had in Spain.
But going from working 12 hours a day and 7 days a week to a big company environment where you could be relaxed at your desk reading the newspaper for hours… it killed me.
I mean, I don’t read the newspaper, I haven’t for many years at least, but I wanted to put that image in your head so you understand the situation. And those were the words my boss said to me, as I will relate below.
They took that ecommerce department very slowly. Six months later, when I decided to leave, it was still in the pipeline.
When I presented my resignation letter to the director, he told me: “I understand you, Javier, anyone else would have spent six more months reading the newspaper, but you want to do things“.
Nailed it.
It is not in my CV because I did NOTHING.
But what I will never forget is something I have never seen again in any other place I have been.
I’ve seen many things even worse, but not like that.
On the floor where I worked in pre-sales and project management, there was a very attractive, blonde, blue-eyed, young, hot girl. All the guys were behind her, drooling like pigs. Literally. A truly lamentable situation and spectacle for any human being with a minimum of control over his animal instincts.
But not for her! She was enjoying all that attention.
One day the director called me into his office. Seeing me bored doing pre-sales bullshit, he found a project for me to take on as project manager. “Finally something to do!“, I said to myself.
I made the mistake of telling a “colleague” about it. One day I will talk about the fascinating world of “colleagues“.
Apparently, the girl had hopes that she would be given that project.
And as soon as it was known that the director was going to give it to me and not to her, everyone (all the men around, at least) lobbied for that project to be given to this girl.
Guess what happened?
That’s right. I was left without that project, and a few days later I quit.
Any moral?
Not working with very attractive women?
Certainly not with weak men!
Flee from weak men.
Quote
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.
Jim Rohn