The seven years nobody saw
So I started over at 30. Broke and alone. That’s the part I said out loud.
Here’s the part I didn’t.
When the marriage ended in 2010, my mom called. She offered to help. Money, a place to land, whatever I needed. And I said no.
Not because I’m tough. Because something in me knew that if someone bailed me out of this, I’d never actually learn how to swim. This was my problem to solve. I had built the situation. I was going to be the one to climb out of it.
I want to be honest about what that decision cost. It cost me about seven years.
Seven years of being alone. Not lonely in the dramatic sense. Just alone. Coming home to a quiet apartment. Making my own plans for the weekend and then not making any. Learning how to sit with myself when there was no one else in the room to perform for.
I had spent my whole life up to that point being the guy who had it figured out. The engineer. The one with the answers. And here I was, in my early thirties, with nothing figured out at all.
Those seven years taught me three things I still use every single day.
The first one is that I’m more durable than I think. When you strip away the marriage, the money, and the story you tell about yourself, you find out what’s actually left. What was left in me was a guy who would get up the next morning and go to work. Every time. I didn’t always feel strong. I just kept moving. I learned that consistency is its own kind of strength, and it does not require you to feel anything in particular.
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The second one is that I had to like my own company before I could offer it to anyone else. For years I had outsourced how I felt to whoever was nearby. If they were happy, I was fine. If they weren’t, I wasn’t. Being alone forced me to build my own foundation instead of borrowing one. By the time I was ready to be a husband again, I came in whole. Not looking for someone to fix me. That changed everything about the marriage I have now.
The third one is the one that runs straight through my business. I learned that I’d rather take the hard road and own the outcome than take the easy road and owe somebody the story. My mom’s help would have been a kindness. But it would have also been a thread I’d carry forever. A small voice that said you didn’t really do it yourself. I couldn’t live with that voice. I still can’t.
That’s not pride. Pride would have been refusing help and then pretending the climb was easy. It wasn’t easy. There were months I counted dollars. There were nights the quiet got loud.
But I learned the difference between being humbled and being broken. Humbled is when life takes something from you and you let it teach you. Broken is when you let it take you too. I got humbled. I refused to get broken.
When people ask me how I underwrite risk the way I do, this is the real answer. I’m not afraid of a deal going sideways because I’ve already been all the way down once and built my way back with my own two hands. I know what the bottom feels like. I know I survive it. That’s not theory for me. It’s a memory.
The husband I am, the father I am, the way I run Blue Eyed Capital. All of it got forged in those seven years when no one was watching and no one was coming to save me.
I tell my kids a version of this without the heavy parts. Some things you have to do yourself. Not because help is bad, but because the doing is what makes you.
I’d do those seven years again. I just wouldn’t want to.
—Jon