One year ago today – May 1st 2011 – I officially walked away from my previous career and made the leap into entrepreneurship.  These last 365 days have been some of the most exciting, rewarding and scary times of my life.  Back then, I was sitting at a desk in a fitness facility at the Boeing Company, working as a physiologist.  Today, I sit here as the CEO of a tech company making waves in the mobile payments space, talking to investors and multi-billion dollar companies.  Oh, how things can change in a year…

Some experiences of the past year:

• Quit my full-time job and gave up a steady paycheck
• Had no idea how I was going to pay my bills…
• Watched the gig I thought I was transitioning to disappear
• Launched this blog and started reaching people around the world
• Started contributing the BusinessInsider.com
• Was basically a free agent over the summer, just focusing on writing on here
• Had no idea how I was going to pay my bills…
• Was one-day away from taking a COO role at a startup in New York, when…
• My soon to be co-founder reached out to me through a random email in August
• I sat down and over coffee determined we should start a company
• We formed Seconds in early September
• We released our beta product late fall, early winter
• At first, we focused on text messaging between customers and local merchants
• At the beginning of January we started gaining attention and media
• Ran out of money
• Had no idea how I was going to pay my bills…
• Through February and March we kept expanding our vision and writing about it
• We made the change to focus on mobile payments driven through text messages
• We now field inquiries and interest from around the world and look to expand Seconds
• I now write guest posts on the most popular tech blogs around
• and people now look at me as a though leader and actually listen to what I have to say

So much more happened over the course of the last year but I will stop there.  I want to make something very clear: your life is what you make of it.  I have completely transformed my life in the last 365 days and I sit here today in awe of what I have been able to do.  We are (close) to being finalists in national recognition for being one of the top innovative companies of 2012.  I could’t have dreamed of this just one short year ago.  This transition has not been easy – actually the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life – but it’s not impossible.

You can do anything you set your mind to, never forget that.