Imagine a sweltering Texas summer day. You’re driving home from work when a seven-year-old boy wearing nothing but a cardboard box with the words Lemonade: $.50 on it waves madly at you from the curb; does he have your attention? Probably. Do you reward the boy’s efforts by buying a glass of lemonade? I’d venture to say yes.

This very scenario was my first entrepreneurial experience. With a friend, I established the business (the lemonade stand), created the product (the lemonade), launched a marketing strategy (the cardboard box), and actively pursued my consumers (my neighbors). I may not have gotten rich, but I did get addicted to the freedom of working for myself.

That seed of entrepreneurialism grew as I grew. In college at Texas Tech University, I began my first website development business. I possessed a skill that I knew companies could use, so I began cold calling. The year was 2000, still before every company had a website, I explained to prospective clients the benefit of establishing a presence on the web—and the importance of that presence accurately representing them. Over the next two years, I designed approximately 25 websites for businesses ranging from screen printing shops to non-profits.

After choosing to leave Texas Tech in 2003, I traveled across the country, trying to understand different cultures and my place among them. Throughout that time, I experienced exquisite freedom from what others I knew were doing: working in an office, constrained to the same routine, day after day. The travel only intensified my entrepreneurial bug, and I understood that it wasn’t being my own boss that I craved; it was simply having the opportunity to create.

Between 2005 and 2009, I launched a number of small businesses, many of them web-based. I also served as senior web specialist at Texas Tech University, teaching courses on web development and graphic design to both students and faculty, and managing some 20 websites at the university. In 2009 after moving to Austin, TX, I founded FourEyedMonkey.com, a web hosting company, and Design Shaman LLC, which provides web development services for small- to medium-sized businesses. In March 2010, I acquired 50% of a company called Agent2Agent LLC, a website for realtors to create property fliers and network with one another.

While my business ventures have varied in scope and industry, they all share a common trait: they challenge me. They force me to return to my seven-year-old self and get creative, to brainstorm what products people can use and how to connect with those same consumers. My goal is to continually test the limits of my own knowledge and experience, so that I can discover what I’m truly capable of—and, I hope, help others do the same.