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There’s a new venture lighting up the entrepreneurial spirit in my house: My 8-year-old son started a rock shop.

Not a metaphor. A literal rock shop.

He and his friends have been collecting rocks at school, stashing them in a bush (the official inventory storage location), and strategizing pricing like tiny Wolf of Wall Street protégés.

One rock is already valued at a whopping $4. That’s right—big money moves, baby!

But here’s the part that really made me melt…

Me: That sounds awesome, buddy! I can’t wait to hear all of your ideas.

My son: Yeah, it’s all great, but I keep asking them how we’re going to tell people because it’s not like kids bring money to school just because.

THAT is the kid of an entrepreneur. 🥰

A child after my own heart (literally).

I mean, sure, he has a few operational hiccups to iron out—minor things, like the entire payment system—but don’t we all? Details, schmeetails. He’ll get there.

Sunday morning, while I shuffled around doing all the domestics, he built an entire pop-up shop at home, complete with a POS system (that’s what’s on the top).

He even set up a sales counter and a special display for that premium $4 rock.

The pride radiating off this child was enough to power a small city.

I could’ve cried.

Ok fine—I did cry, but in a cool, low-key way, not in a my-baby-is-growing-up way.

FINE. That’s a lie, too. It was partly that + partly how goddamn creative he is.

I see so much of 8yr. old me in my rock shop CEO-in-the-making.

I remember what it felt like to have ideas.

To think big and weird and out-of-the-box before I even knew what a box was.

Before, the world introduced me to its favorite pastime—shoving people back into boxes and slapping a shipping label on them that says: "This is the way things are done." 🤬

And I wish—so hard it hurts—that someone had seen my entrepreneurial spirit, my wacky ideas, and my fire, and said, “YES. That. Keep doing THAT!”

Instead, the only path presented to me was the one that didn’t even make sense for the baby boomers, who clung to it like a life raft:

Go to college → Get a job → Retire someday, hopefully, maybe, if you’re lucky, and don’t die first.

I wish someone sat me down and said,

But, nope.

Instead, I got:

✅ "That’s not realistic."
​✅ "You’ll never make money doing that."
​✅ "You need to focus on something practical."

Ahhhh, yes. The mystical, magical slow death of… practicality.

You know what’s super practical?

Selling my soul for a steady paycheck + a 401k match while my passion, spirit, and will to care withers away in hostage situations meetings that could have been emails… or absolutely nothing at all.

But even through the decades of dream crushing, college-pleasing, and corporate gatekeeping, the fire never actually went out.

Even when the world tried to drown it in “shoulds” and “musts” and “have to haves,” it kept flickering. Quietly. Waiting.

And when I finally got my hands on a metaphorical flamethrower, I fanned the hell out of it.

Which is why I refuse to let my son—or anyone with that same fire—be told that they’re "dreaming too big" or "thinking too differently."

That’s been one of the biggest driving forces behind Brandishing YOU—creating a space where that fire doesn’t just survive; it thrives.

A place where we don’t have to explain ourselves, justify our wild ideas, or apologize for wanting something beyond the crusty old business playbook that hasn’t made sense in decades.

Because we’re not here to build a business that drains us, chains us, or turns us into burnt-out capitalism chew toys. We are here to build fun, feel-good businesses that support fun, feel-good lives.

But we cannot—canNOT—do this alone.

Just like my son needs his friends to back his rock empire (even if their current business model involves storing inventory in a bush), we need people who get it.

Who see us.

Who pull up a barstool next to us and say,

“Damn, I felt that in my tax-deductible soul. Do you want to burn shit down together, or just start a commune?”

So here’s to the $4 rock shop ideas we’ve been building since grade school.

To the wild, unconventional, totally-not-how-it’s-done way of doing business.

And to fanning the flames for each other—because if we don’t, who will?

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What my son is building with his rock shop? That’s the energy behind Brandishing You.

A scrappy, brilliant little safe place where solopreneurs who think differently can figure this out together. Not in a “here’s a formula” way, but in a “let’s take everything we’ve been told is impossible and make it inevitable” way—one fearless experiment at a time.

No gatekeeping, no expectations, no business in a box BS—just the right people, the right conversations, and a whole lotta fire.

Come plot, scheme, and build some fun, feel-good, and success AF with us.

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To fanning the flames instead of smothering them with practicality,

Dre ‘Would Absolutely Store Inventory in a Bush’ Beltrami