(This incident never happened. Imagine if it had.)
It was a sunny weekend afternoon in southern California – Sunday, July 5, 2020, to be precise about it. I was sitting around, wishing that there was a baseball game to listen to, when all of a sudden a mysterious woman appeared in front of me.
“John, pay attention to me,” the woman said.
I was certainly paying attention to her.
“John, it’s time for you to start your own company.”
“Mysterious woman, you are crazy. I’m not going to just leave my job and start a company on a whim.”
She smiled, but said nothing as I continued.
“First off, a company has to offer something. What am I going to offer – to write blog posts for people? And what else could I offer?”
My brain was frantically ticking off objections to the mysterious woman’s insane idea. “Second off, a company needs customers. Where is an unknown company going to get customers? It’s not like people are just going to walk up to me and ask me to do things for them. So I’ll have to reach out in a sales mode, and I’ve never really done that consistently before.”
“Third off, to really run a company properly, you need to do all sorts of setup things. That’s a lot of work. So if you don’t mind, mysterious woman, I don’t think I’ll start a company at this time.”
She paused for a bit. “I believe that you can figure out how to do all these things.” And then she added, ominously, “You have to.” She then disappeared.
I sat there, thinking that the mysterious woman was completely crazy.
PAUL HARVEY REST OF THE STORY POSTSCRIPT
No, that conversation never happened, but what did happen was even stranger. On Monday, July 6, I received a layoff notice from the company that had employed me for 25 years. Within the first two months of my layoff, three people actually DID approach me about writing blog posts, and doing many other things besides. By necessity (“You have to”), I did perform “all sorts of setup things” to start a company and reach out to potential clients. And yes, people still do approach me.
Perhaps you will approach me also, if Bredemarket’s marketing and writing services can assist you.
But aside from that, the chief lessons that I’ve derived from this whole experience are as follows:
- You never know what is going to happen in the future.
- You never know what you are capable of doing when future events do happen.
Bredemarket 
