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by sarde 4848 days ago
Oh wow, your first two sentences were so misleading. "I have been a dreamer all my life." I thought you meant DREAMER, as in undocumented immigrant. "It took me until last year to figure this out." You didn't know you were an illegal immigrant until last year? :P

Your post is pretty melodramatic, but I just want to reiterate that 30 is not too late at all. Plenty of people never come to the realization that you do way past their 30s and turn too late to others for help. I'm glad you realize that you can't accomplish things in a vacuum. (I'm 23, and I still am working on getting my Bachelor's, though most of my friends are in grad school by now. I don't feel like I'm less of a person because I didn't follow the "set schedule" of life, and you shouldn't either)

That being said, another good point that I'm sure has been made already is not to focus too much on being the absolute best in whatever field you try. So you could program for a million years and never be as good as so-and-so. So what?

No one usually starts out and suddenly she's a programming whiz. We all started somewhere, and just because you got stuck at pointers in C++ doesn't mean that you should just give up. No one has just breezed through all programming problems or concepts in the world like they're no big deal. Stop comparing yourself to an imaginary image of perfection and start doing things like the real person that you are.

My advice is to do one thing first: read. Learn! You seem like you have the drive to do a business, but perhaps not much of an idea of what kind of business. So read, or watch MOOC videos if that's how you learn best--really build a solid knowledge base of what it takes to run a business, what sorts of business ideas you'd be interested in, etc.

I think after dreaming and before doing, you should prepare, and that's a step that I feel might be lacking in others' steps-to-success plans for entrepreneurship.

After you've prepared, just (fking) do it. Don't be afraid to fail; failing is how we learn. Don't listen to naysayers who only believe that people can accomplish acts of genius or good in their youth--human history isn't built on the accomplishments of young prodigies alone. Instead, believe in yourself, because no one else will.

And as for luck, create your own!