The Art of the Fumble

It's okay to not know what the hell you are doing.

If you’re looking for a blog with a 12-month content calendar, a hyper-optimized “niche,” and a unified brand voice... you’re in the wrong place.

I’ve spent the last couple months trying to figure out exactly what Illiquid Assets is supposed to be. Is it a brewery operations manual? A macro-economics deep dive? A finance guy’s diary?

The answer is: Yes.

I used to worry that not having a “lane” was a bug. But looking back at my career, I’ve realized it’s actually the feature. My entire professional life has been a series of pivots, humbled egos, and “one foot out the door” moments that somehow landed me exactly where I need to be.

The Small Pond Fallacy

I was raised in East Jordan, Michigan. In a graduating class of 83 kids, if you can solve for X, they tell you you’re an engineer. I believed them. Then I got to Grand Valley State and realized that every other high school in Michigan had sent their own “Math and Science Guy”. Or more likely, 20 of them.

When the guys in the front row are doing differential loops around you in Calculus, you have two choices: stay and drown, or pivot. I pivoted. I liked the outdoors. I liked science. I moved to Natural Resources Management.

I liked the classes, but I didn’t want to work for the government—which was lucky, because the state was on a hiring freeze anyway. I was moving forward, but I had no idea where the destination was.

The 100-Hour Grind

While finishing my degree at GVSU, I found I really liked the “science of the surface” while working at The Meadows golf course. I decided to double down. I finished my Bachelor’s while simultaneously grinding through a two-year Turfgrass Management program at Penn State.

I became an Assistant Superintendent at Cedar Chase. If you want to know what “illiquid” feels like, try working 100+ hours a week in the summer for terrible pay, chasing a “dream” course of your own. It’s the kind of job that works when you’re young and hungry, but I could eventually see that the path didn’t lead where I wanted to go. But, it taught me how to grind in a way that would serve me very well later as a business owner.

The Eight-Year Wait

I moved to athletic turf at a local high school, thinking I’d found the “forever” spot where I’d eventually take over. I spent eight years waiting for the man in charge to retire. He had one foot out the door for nearly a decade... but he never actually stepped through it.

Lesson learned: You can’t build your future on someone else’s timeline. Seeing the writing on the wall, I went back to my environmental science roots and joined the Ottawa County Department of Public Health.

The Pivot and the Hedge

I excelled in public health, but the “fumble” continued—I started the brewery while I was there. One foot in the office, one foot in the mash tun.

Then 2020 happened. COVID hit, the world locked down, and suddenly my “liquid” business (the brewery) felt very fragile. I didn’t know if we were going to make it, and I wanted options if I was forced to do something else. That’s when I began working on my MBA.

Today, the MBA is done, and I still have one foot in that finance/economic lane and one foot in the brewery. I think I’m just built to fumble my way through things until I find what works.

The Advice from “Mount Rushmore”

As I was fumbling through the launch of this blog, I reached out to my personal “Mount Rushmore” of finance bloggers—guys who started as voices on the internet and have since become friends, Ben Carlson (of A Wealth of Common Sense), Michael Batnick (of The Irrelevant Investor), and Josh Brown (of The Reformed Broker).

**Give me a second to pick up those names I just dropped.

Ben’s take on what this should look like definitely resonated with me:

“...documenting what it’s like to be a small business owner and what it’s like to run a brewery would be really fun to learn about. I think the real-life stories and examples resonate with people.”

That’s the mandate. This blog isn’t about being a “guru.” It’s about being a practitioner.

The Case for Sucking at Something

If there is a takeaway message in all this career-hopping and blog-fumbling, it’s this: Try things you’ve never done.

If you’re fortunate enough to be in a place in your life where you’ve already checked off a lot of the things you have to do, and you haven’t tried anything new in a while... try something. Try something you might actually suck at.

Like writing a blog.

You never know what you might find when you’re willing to be a beginner again. For me, it’s a way to organize my own thoughts and stretch my wings on bigger issues than the ones directly in front of me. It’s about being authentic, even when it’s unpolished.

What’s Next?

So, look for a mix. Some days it’s economics. Some days it’s brewery updates. And, coming soon, I’m going to start a mini-series on the absolute chaos of opening the brewery. People have told me I should write a book on it; for now, you’re getting the “Director’s Cut” right here.

Thanks for coming along while I find my voice. It might be a fumble, but those are usually the plays where the most interesting things happen.

Micro Brews, Macro Views

Dave