Chapter Four - I Was So Damn Ready

CHAPTER FOUR

I Was So Damn Ready

IT WAS EARLY in the year, and I was hyped.

Why wouldn’t I be? I had a new job lined up. I had a ticket out of landscaping. I was this close to abs. The bet with David was going strong. And honestly? I think I won. It’ll probably never be officially settled, but in my opinion, I got there. Jury’s out. Depends what you count as abs.

But yeah, life was on the up and up.

I wasn’t rich. I wasn’t fully happy. But I had a direction. I was waking up with purpose. I was making plans. And for the first time in a while, I wasn’t just surviving. I was building something.

January was good to me. I was in the gym, plotting my breakout. I hadn’t even told the landscaping crew I was leaving yet. I was just holding out. Grinding through cold days and long shifts, counting the weeks until freedom.

Me and Zack were getting excited. The momentum was real. I felt sharp, lean, and alive. I even joked that I was trying to look good for the moms who’d answer the doors when I started selling.

But the script?

The script was still haunting me.

Alta wanted it memorized ASAP. And let me be clear, I tried. I tried to memorize that script. I really did. But my brain said no. Not out of laziness, out of sheer neurological rejection. It was like trying to memorize the tax code, but worse. Not because it was hard, but because it was awful. Robotic. Hollow. Something in my subconscious knew: this wasn’t it.

And by early February, I was done.

Not with Alta, not yet, but with landscaping. I was drained. Between the cold, the physical grind, the low pay, and the weight of everything else, I couldn’t do it anymore.

So one morning, I got up for work like usual. I was supposed to be working with Matt and Justin that day. We were heading 30 minutes north for a brutal job.

I got halfway ready, looked around, and said nope.

I walked up to Justin, looked him in the eye, and said, “Yo, I gotta go. I’m done.”

And that was it. I quit.

I said goodbye to the few guys I actually liked, went home and changed, and went straight to the gym. Sweet, sweet freedom. For the first time in a long time, I could breathe.

I rationalized it easily: I had money saved. I could DoorDash if I had to. I had a couple months until Alta started. I wanted to enjoy the last bit of time I had left in that apartment. It meant something to me, living there. I was attached to it. It was the end of an era and I didn’t want to spend the final days of it scraping snow off curbs and dragging bags of salt across frozen pavement.

So I chilled for a few days.

Then I packed up and drove to Columbus to visit the homies. David, Drew, and Charlie. My guys. That trip filled me up.

From there, I left straight for Florida. I got pulled over a couple times on the drive (not my best work), but I took the scenic route through Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and eventually rolled into Tampa.

And man, I had a blast.

I stopped at the beach, got a tan, and took a deep breath of salt air. It felt like I was hitting reset on everything.

Then I came home.

Zack was waiting. The vibe was high. We were ready. I was ready. It was finally real.

But the script still loomed. I knew I had to learn it. Except I couldn’t. Not because I was lazy, but because my brain physically refused. It wouldn’t stick.

So I came up with a plan.

If I couldn’t memorize the script, I’d just build my own.

I decided to learn sales. Like, actually learn it. I dove deep into research. Stuff like psychology, persuasion, objections, reframing, and I started playing with AI tools. I put together what I called The Sales Framework. A self-guided, AI-powered pitch engine that walked me through live objections, like a digital sales coach.

And it worked.

I tested it on my cousin Dillon (not roommate Dylan, different Dillon), and I accidentally sold him twice. He couldn’t say no. That’s how sharp I was getting.

Zack looked at it and said, “Bro… you could sell this.”

It was that good.

So I called Connor.

I told him about it. Told him how hard I’d been working. How I’d sidestepped the script by actually studying the art of selling.

He didn’t care.

The second I told him I hadn’t memorized the script, he shut down. That was all that mattered to him. Not growth. Not initiative. Not innovation. Just The Script.

That was their god.

But I wasn’t worried. Because the cruise was coming up in late February and I had a new plan. I’d show them what I built. I’d pitch the framework in person. I’d show them what I was really about.

And they’d see it.

They’d have to see it.