I'm seven years old, sitting on the floor with a screwdriver I'm not supposed to have.
In front of me is my remote control car. Disassembled. Completely apart. Gears, wires, battery compartment, all scattered across the floor.
My mom's going to kill me if I can't put this back together.
But I need to see how it works.
I spend the next two hours carefully placing each piece back exactly where it came from. When I'm done, I flip the switch. The car moves. Relief floods through me.
I didn't break it. I learned how it worked. And I got away with it.
That's my first memory of being an experimenter.
I've been running experiments my whole life.
Not the science fair kind. The life kind.
Try something. See what happens. Learn from it. Move on.
Some people call this "f*cking around and finding out." I call it the only real way to learn anything.
The results aren't always favorable. Actually, most of the time they're not. But that's not the point.
The point is you keep going. You analyze what happened, take the lesson if there is one, and run the next experiment.
When I was in college, I read "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie.
Then I immediately started experimenting on my friends.
Testing the principles. Seeing what worked. Adjusting based on responses.
There was a girl in my class I wanted to be friends with. I applied everything from that book. It worked. We got close.
Too close.
I got attached in a way that broke the first rule of experimenting: don't fall in love with your experiments.
I couldn't let her go even when I needed to, for reasons that made sense but didn't feel fair. I made up my mind to move on a million times. Each time, I changed it back.
It still hurts when I think about it.
Here's what I learned the hard way:
Treat experiments like throwing shit at a wall.
If it sticks, explore more. If it doesn't, either leave it or pick it up and throw again.
Don't get attached while you're testing. Especially with people.
The moment you get emotionally invested in an experiment working out a specific way, you've stopped experimenting. You've started hoping. And hope makes terrible data.
I kept experimenting anyway.
I tried dropshipping, trading, design, coding, marketing. Most failed. Some taught me skills I use every day now.
The thing about being a serial experimenter is you do more than most people. Which means you win more. You also fail more. A lot more.
But every failure teaches you something. And in a world where everyone's chasing the next big thing based on what some guru told them to chase, you're actually figuring out what you love doing.
Not what you're supposed to love. What you actually love.
Your priorities sort themselves out because you've tested them. You know what you like and what you don't because you've tried both.
That clarity is worth more than most people realize.
If you started experimenting early like I did, or even earlier, you're already ahead.
If you make it a habit, you'll stay ahead.
But here's the rule: don't say you don't like something if you haven't tried it yet.
Your opinion without experience is just noise. Try it first. Then judge.
And if you can find a mentor who lives and breathes experimentation? Even better. You can skip mistakes they've already made and save years.
Just make sure they're actually similar to you. Copy and paste similar. Otherwise you'll end up doing all their experiments anyway, just to figure out if you actually like it, which defeats the entire purpose.
Even with a mentor, run your own experiments on the side. Test what they tell you. See if you actually like it. Your path isn't their path.
I'm still that seven year old with the screwdriver in some ways.
Still taking things apart to see how they work. Still putting them back together. Still occasionally breaking things I care about because I got too attached to the experiment instead of the process.
But I keep going.
Because the alternative is living someone else's life. Following someone else's plan. Chasing things I've never tested to see if I actually want them.
And I'd rather f*ck around and find out than spend my whole life wondering what could have been.
So here's my advice: throw more shit at the wall.
Most of it won't stick. That's fine.
The stuff that does will be yours. Actually yours.
And that makes all the failed experiments worth it.