Twenty Years and Still Not There
When six months turns into two decades
Role shifts are strange. You’re moving, but you’re not always sure toward what. That’s the moment when a little accountability goes a long way - not someone pushing you, just someone making sure you’re working on the right things at the right time. If you’re not sure what those things are, start here.
I was 36 when I signed the papers for my first real company. In Romania. A country where I barely understood the language. My wife translated. I nodded. The notary stamped. Done.
That was the easy part.
Before that, I had played at being self-employed early in life. MLM systems first, where you feel free, but you’re really just someone else’s sales channel.
Only with a nicer job title.
Then a life insurance company. Alone when it came to clients. Coached and sheltered when it came to motivation, psychology, and the important inner game.
Someone always held the net underneath me.
But at 36, the net was gone.
The six-month myth
We talk a lot in this publication about transitions that happen in milliseconds.
An accident.
A diagnosis.
A stroke.
Unpredictable. Often caused by someone else’s behaviour.
Not programmable.
But today I want to talk about the other kind.
The ones so slow they don’t even register as transitions. The ones that stretch across years, sometimes decades.
You’re inside one, and you don’t know it, because nobody handed you a before-and-after photo.
The employee-to-entrepreneur shift is one of these. People treat it like a river crossing. You almost certainly get wet, sure.
Maybe you struggle a bit. But you reach the other side, dry off, and it’s done. Six months. A year, tops.
Nobody told me it would take twenty.
Swiss topsoil on Romanian bedrock
Our business plan was simple and, as I believed, brilliant. In Switzerland, entire companies existed and still exist, that did nothing but seal bathrooms, kitchens, and windows with professional-grade silicone.
Quality materials. Precision work. Clients who expected nothing less. And window builders who only worked with the best materials imported.
So we imported that model to Romania. Swiss and German products. Swiss standards. A market that talked about quality all the time.
Talked about it. Implementing it was a completely different animal.
Let me change the scenery for a second.
Here’s what I know from building soil on our homestead. You can add the best compost, the right minerals, the perfect cover crop.
But soil doesn’t rebuild on your schedule. One inch of topsoil takes Nature somewhere between 500 and 1,000 years to create. You can speed that up drastically with good practice. You cannot skip the process.
I tried to skip it in my business. I kind of brought Swiss topsoil to Romanian bedrock and expected a harvest in year one.
The questions were wrong
Twenty years later, not a single company in Romania operates the way I learned it in Switzerland. Not one. The silicone sealing business I imagined? Never materialized in the form I expected.
The window builders who would demand only the best materials? They exist, but the market around them runs by entirely different rules.
Was the idea wrong? Arguably…?
Maybe not.
Were the questions I asked before starting wrong? Absolutely.
I asked: “Does this work in Switzerland?” Yes.
I asked: “Do people here say they want quality?” Yes.
I never asked: “What does quality actually mean in this culture, at this stage of development, in this economy?” That question would have changed everything.
Some transitions take far longer than expected. Not because you can’t see where you’re going. You unknowingly packed for the wrong trip.
One thing you can do this week
If you’re in a transition that feels stuck or endless, here’s what you can try just now. Write down the three questions you asked yourself before you started.
Then ask: were those the right questions, or just the comfortable ones?
The gap between those two versions usually holds the answer. The one you’ve been circling like crows flying above a freshly prepared plot in the garden.
And if you want someone beside you while you sort through that, One Brave Week is built for exactly this. Seven days of simple structure and honest accountability.
Not a course. Not a program. Just enough support to ask the questions that actually matter. You’ll find the answers to your questions here.
Talk soon and thanks for your attention.
“Let’s regenerate the world - starting with yours.”
Daniel
Regenerative Life & Business Designer
PS: Role shifts are disorienting. You know something needs to change, but you're not always sure what to work on, or in what order. That's where accountability helps - not the cheerleader kind, but someone who holds the right questions in front of you at the right time. If you're not sure what those questions are, or why they matter, stay with us and subscribe.