I'm Neal.
I entered highschool a starry-eyed overachiever, fixated on the world of Psychiatry. Over time, my affinity for academia shifted towards something entirely foreign to me at the time. Business.
Being the first kid in my school with a PayPal account, I bought and sold modified laser pointers to my fellow highschool students for a profit. This was my first taste of entrepreneurship. I loved it.
Six years of business school later, I transformed from a shy science lover to a case competition fiend, a natural public speaker, and someone with the everlasting need to create.
Past.
I got my BBA in early 2018, and the jobs my friends were applying to terrified me. Ill-fitting dress shirts, stuffy cubicles, long commutes, and emails starting with "To whom it may concern"?
Not a chance.
I wanted to work for a company with a mission I cared about, filled with employees as hungry for growth as I was. Naturally, I Googled "The Best Canadian Company of the Year". Enter Shopify.
I had used their platform to sell bootleg Kanye West merch in the past, but never actually fathomed working there. They were known as the Canadian Google, and this was my first job application after college. But it worked. I signed the contract thirty days after graduation.
Present.
At the time of writing, I've been at Shopify for just over two years. I started in customer support, and moved to enterprise support six months in. It was tough, and I found myself running solely on the possibility of future potential at the company.
The job slowly burnt me out, pushing me further away from small businesses and young entrepreneurs- the reason I had started in the first place. I was supporting multi million dollar clients, but felt myself slipping towards my resignation.
Somehow, mere weeks away from the day I promised I'd call it quits, I was offered a job on the marketing team. Running new media, focused on building youth and aspiring entreprneurship.
Future.
I'd be lying if I said the end goal hasn't and won't always be entrepreneurship. Ever since that day in highschool where I sold my first laser pointer, I've been chasing this dream.
I don't quite know how I'll get there, or how long the process will take. But one thing's for sure. To make it, I'll need to run very far, very fast.