Before I started Crypto Dispensers, I was driving from the suburbs into Chicago to clean apartments and check in guests. I had started Five Star Vacation Rentals to manage and operate apartments on Airbnb. The business gave me work to do, money to earn, and plenty of time in the car. It was during those drives that I began learning a lesson I still carry with me: if I wanted to build something of my own, I needed to learn how to keep some of what I earned.
By then, I had chosen to leave law school to become an entrepreneur. I wanted to build a business of my own, and Five Star Vacation Rentals was the work in front of me. That decision gave the money I was earning a particular meaning. I had changed the direction of my life. I wanted to make something of it.
The business involved managing and operating apartments on Airbnb. I would drive from the suburbs into Chicago to clean them and check in guests. An apartment had to be ready when someone arrived. Whatever I had promised in the listing had to be there when they walked through the door.
Eventually, I became an Airbnb Superhost. I was proud of that because I knew the work behind it. Every stay depended on someone following through, and I took that responsibility seriously. I wanted a guest to feel that choosing one of my apartments had been a good decision.
At the same time, I was thinking about what all that work would leave me with. I did not want to spend the money as quickly as I made it and look back with nothing saved. I knew what had gone into earning it. The drives, the cleanings, and the attention each guest required were hours of my life.
There were expenses to meet, of course. But I wanted some of what remained to accumulate. I wanted to be able to point to something and know that my effort had given me more room to make my next decision.
As a first-generation American, I believed in the possibility of building a life through my own work. Leaving law school was a choice I had made for that life. Now I had to make the daily decisions that would give the choice substance. Learning to save became one of them.
The drive from the suburbs into the city became part of my education. I started listening to Napoleon Hill's The Law of Success and Think and Grow Rich. I was on my way to do the ordinary work of running a business, listening to ideas about how to become better at it.
That setting made the books feel practical to me. I could hear an idea in the car and spend the rest of the day thinking about how it applied to my own choices. I had a business in front of me. I had responsibilities waiting when I arrived. I had somewhere to put what I was learning.
The idea that stayed with me most was the habit of saving. Hill discusses it in The Law of Success, and I began to understand why it belonged in a book about achievement. Wanting to do something and having the money to begin doing it are two different situations.
I had spent plenty of time thinking about earning. That comes naturally when you are trying to build a business. You want more bookings. You want the operation to improve. You want your work to produce a better result. Saving asked a different question: how much of that result would still be available to me later?
I did not come away from those books believing that thinking about success would do the work for me. I still had to get to the apartment and prepare it for the next guest. What changed was the way I thought about the money that work could leave behind.
The part of saving that interested me was the ability to act. I wanted to be able to invest in myself when I had an idea. I also wanted to be in a position to support someone else's idea if I believed in the person and understood what they were trying to build.
An idea often begins before there is a company or a customer. It may require time to learn, something to buy, or a small first attempt. Even a modest amount of money can help someone take that first step. Without any savings, the conversation can end before the work begins.
That was how I began to understand saving as part of becoming an entrepreneur. I was making room for work I had not yet had the chance to do. I did not need to know exactly what the next business would be to understand that being prepared would matter.
There was a responsibility in that idea, too. Having money available would not make every opportunity a good one. I would still have to ask questions and make careful decisions. But I wanted those decisions to be based on the merits of an idea, with enough room to consider it seriously.
I was already willing to work for something I believed in. Saving was another way to show that commitment. It meant allowing some of today's earnings to remain available for a future I cared about, even when I could have found a reason to spend them now.
Understanding the idea was easier than changing my behavior. I could put money in a savings account and feel that I had done the right thing. But I could also move it back to checking almost as easily.
That convenience became a problem for me. The money was called savings, but there was very little standing between it and everyday spending. If I decided I wanted to use it, a transfer made it available again. The label on the account did not make the decision any harder.
I started to see that I needed more than a place to deposit money. I needed a way to take my own intention seriously after the moment in which I made it. I wanted the decision to save to last longer than the next reason I found to undo it.
It would have been easy to keep telling myself to be more disciplined. What helped was recognizing the specific part I was struggling with. I was too able to change my mind without giving it much thought. I needed to put a little more distance between earning money and spending the portion I meant to keep.
That realization was useful well beyond saving. When something repeatedly goes wrong in a business, good intentions are rarely enough to fix it. You have to look at how it is happening. In this case, I was looking at my own behavior and trying to make a better decision easier to maintain.
I began buying gold and silver in small amounts. I would take some of what I earned and put it into something I could hold, something that required more effort to turn back into spending money.
If I wanted to use those savings, I first had to sell what I had bought. A transfer between two accounts had taken very little thought. Selling gold or silver was a separate decision that I had to carry out. Often, that extra step was enough to keep me from doing it.
That is what I mean by friction: the effort between wanting to do something and actually doing it. I had added friction to spending my savings. It gave me time to reconsider a purchase and remember why I had put the money aside.
I wanted that pause. I had worked for those savings, and I wanted them to survive a passing desire to spend. Making them harder to reach helped me keep the commitment I had made when I bought the gold or silver in the first place.
Holding it made the connection to my work clear. I could look at a small amount and think about the business that had earned it. I had left law school to become an entrepreneur. Here was something I was beginning to keep from that decision, beyond the experience itself.
Gold and silver could change in value, and selling them involved costs and practical considerations. My point is about the habit they helped me establish. The extra effort kept me from casually turning savings back into spending money.
Years later, while building Crypto Dispensers, I would spend time thinking about how to remove unnecessary steps from a customer's experience. My first useful lesson about friction had come from deliberately adding it to my own.
There is a line in Napoleon Hill's The Law of Success that captures how I think about those years: “If you cannot do great things yourself, remember that you may do small things in a great way.”
I could apply that idea to the apartment I was about to clean. I could apply it to the next guest I checked in. And I could apply it to a small amount of money that did not yet look like much.
I had ambitions beyond the business I was running, but the quality of that business was already my responsibility. I did not have to wait for a larger company to take the work seriously. A guest deserved a clean apartment and a reliable check-in regardless of what I hoped to build later.
Saving worked the same way. I did not need a large amount before I could begin treating my earnings with care. I could start with what I could reasonably keep and follow through the next time I had the opportunity.
The amounts mattered because I had earned them. Each one represented work I had already done. Keeping a portion meant that some of that work would still be available to help me later.
Over time, I had something to show for the habit. I was gaining experience running a company while also keeping part of what it earned. That mattered to someone who had chosen to step away from law school and build a different future.
It also gave me a practical reason to believe in myself. I could see that I was following through on decisions I had made. Belief became easier to sustain when my own actions gave me evidence for it.
I know that necessary expenses can leave very little room to save. My circumstances allowed me to begin, and I wanted to make good use of that opportunity. The amount was small enough to start with. The care I gave it was something I could choose.
I did not know during those drives that I would eventually build Crypto Dispensers. I was trying to run Five Star Vacation Rentals well and make the most of the money it allowed me to earn. But saving changed the questions I asked about money.
Buying gold and silver made me more interested in what I owned, how I held it, and what it took to use it. Those questions later became part of my interest in Bitcoin. My curiosity grew out of something personal: I had worked for my savings and wanted to understand my choices.
The lesson about friction stayed with me, too. In my own saving, an extra step had served a purpose. Having to sell something before I could spend the money helped me leave it alone. I was using a little inconvenience to protect a decision I cared about.
Building Crypto Dispensers required me to look at the same idea from the customer's side. Someone trying to complete a purchase needs to understand what to do. If the instructions are confusing or the next step is difficult to find, the product gives that person another problem to solve.
Improving the product meant reducing that unnecessary effort. The work was to make the instructions clearer and the steps easier to follow, while keeping the checks the transaction required. A person should be able to understand the process well enough to make a decision and carry it through.
The connection became clear to me over time. With my savings, I wanted a pause before spending. With a customer using Crypto Dispensers, I wanted a clear path through the purchase they had chosen to make. In each case, I had to understand what the person was trying to accomplish and whether a particular step helped.
That is a useful question for a founder: what is this step doing for the person who has to take it? Sometimes an extra step protects a decision. Sometimes it makes a straightforward task harder than it needs to be. You have to pay attention to the difference.
I first learned that by watching my own behavior with money. I could move savings back to checking too easily, so I gave myself a reason to stop and think. Later, building a product required the same attention to the small details that shape what people actually do.
Five Star Vacation Rentals gave me the chance to learn this while the stakes were still personal and concrete. I had chosen entrepreneurship. I was earning money through a service I provided. I wanted to keep enough of it to be ready when another idea deserved a serious attempt.
As a husband and father, I think about what my children will understand about the life I have worked to build. I want them to know about the decision to leave law school. I also want them to know what came after it: the drives into Chicago, the apartments I cleaned, and the small amounts I began to save.
A decision can sound bold when it is told years later. Living with it takes much more ordinary work. I had to prepare the apartment for the next guest. I had to keep learning. And I had to decide how much of the money I earned would still be there when I needed it for something that mattered.
Hill's idea about doing small things well belongs in that part of the story. I could take care of the guest in front of me. I could learn something on the drive. I could keep a little more of what I earned. Each was a reasonable thing to do that day, even before I understood where the years ahead would lead.
I hope my children learn to give their own beginnings that kind of attention. An early business deserves care. A small amount of savings deserves respect. An idea deserves preparation if you believe it is worth pursuing.
When I look back, I see how much began with wanting my work to leave something behind. I made my savings harder to spend so I could keep building them. Later, I worked to make a product easier to use so other people could act on their own decisions about money.
That connection started with a founder driving into the city to clean an apartment, listening to a book, and deciding that some of what he earned was going to stay with him. I am grateful I took that small decision seriously.
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