In Adam’s Words
A Note on the Years Nobody Saw
From the outside, this can look like just another company and just another guy. Someone who had it handed to him, or knew the right people. That is not how it was built.
My mom had me when she was sixteen. There were no business people in my life, and my family has no business background.
What I did have was her. She gave me unconditional love, she was solid my whole life, and she kept our family moving forward. She was the foundation of my courage to make my own decisions. Without her consistency, none of this would have been possible.
Even so, I struggled for a long time. In my early twenties I was evicted in Toronto because we could not pay the rent. We thought we had cracked life insurance. We had not, and I was humbled again and again. By our mid-twenties we had accumulated almost a million dollars in debt. I had proposed, a wedding was coming, and I had to find a way to pay for it. I was pushed past what I thought my limit was. My health was not in a good place, and I was not happy.
We dug our way out. It took a lot of resilience. I spent almost all of my twenties behind friends who stayed in school and found stable jobs. I had a vision, and I stuck with it. Over the last couple of years it has gotten better, significantly.
I share this so no one thinks a hard road means they are doing something wrong. Things that look like they have done well often have a quiet story of struggle behind them, one that lasted far longer than anyone knows.
A lot of progress is invisible. The roots grow underground long before the plant breaks the surface. That growth in the dark is not just valuable, it is necessary: without it, the growth in the light is impossible.
If you are in a hard season right now, it does not mean you are off the path. The progress may be happening where no one can see it yet, and the breakthrough may be closer than it looks.
Adam Mueller
