"I have a flat tyre. Lunch will be late," I said, sweating under my helmet. My Stromer had six deep cuts in the rear tyre. The rubber tore from heat and speed. My wife gathered my bags within minutes so I could focus on the repair. Two hours to fix. Two days without the bike. We all have plans. They change fast. The disruption lingers longer.
The five teak saplings my first intern planted are dead. The internship ended abruptly, pulled off course by various factors. I paused. What looked finished became the start of something else. I called it Mulai. I had talked about tracking work with clarity. Now I had to tend to it. Here is where the plans stand, three months in: the tool is alive. I started May telling friends I would grow to a team of four and build thirty-six prototypes in eighteen months, one every two weeks, starting July. Since the end of April, I have spent three months building one prototype alone, selling the idea to anyone who would listen. I was not ready to rush another hire. An incredible partner helped me find the right candidate, and the next hire starts Monday, on readier ground. I will not chase the number or the team size. I will build the next prototype, then the next, tracked honestly in Mulai, with room to keep tuning the soil and partnering with others.
Vidai moves slower. I have been searching for a small business to buy for years, and now I am giving it full attention. The conversations happen in German, face to face, one owner, one banker, one broker at a time. These deals are sensitive and they take time. There is a real advantage in buying a business that already has clients and money coming in. You are not starting from seed. The roots are already in the ground. This is patience work, but it is grounded work.
A job is not my preference. But I will consider a role that challenges me to be more entrepreneurial than I have been before, that means some equity, not just pay. The right fit is not about what I have already done. It is about what it teaches me toward Mulai or Vidai, or what it asks of me that I have not yet had to give. I prefer leaving hierarchy and rent seeking behind, instead chasing measured risk-taking into the next chapter. But I am not pursuing this actively. I welcome the right conversation.
A line from Nile Jarvis, in the Netflix series The Beast in Me, stuck with me this week: "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." I have not been telling God my plans. I have been telling myself. One prototype every two weeks, since July 1. Except the first one never agreed to stay a prototype. It became the way I work with people, one gig, one reflection, one person at a time, and I am still standing inside it.
I still ride the Stromer every day. Six deep cuts in a tyre do not take away the love of fresh air on your face as you zip through town. They just mean you plan the repair too, and you get back on. Five dead saplings does not mean you stop planting. One internship that did not work out does not mean you stop hiring. One prototype that refuses to finish does not mean you are behind. Sometimes it means the ground took. Plan, plant, and show up again. Not because the plan survives. Because you do.