Aidan
Steinbach

Like paragons of generations past, I am a common man with an uncommon desire to succeed. When adversity pushes me to the floor, I stand back up, not uttering a word about the fall. With leadership in my bones, I demand an unrelenting pursuit of excellence from myself and expect it in others. I believe that discipline is the great equalizer, and doing the right thing is always the right thing.

My Timeline

Inflection Point

Understanding the relevance of this timeline begins with the end of my public school tenure. Pre-2020, my grandmother was plagued with a myriad of health problems. As the new year was rung in, by horrid coincidence, she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer right as COVID reached America. It became instantly clear that her care would spell a managerial impossibility with my schooling. My mother's hand was forced into pursuing a homeschool education. What we initially believed would be an academic regression would ultimately prove to be a life-changing catalyst.

This shift enabled me to isolate and pursue my vocational interest. For perhaps obvious reasons, I was captivated by medicine after watching my grandmother pass away due to the systemic problems associated with the healthcare and insurance industries. Over time, this interest evolved into the business of healthcare, then the physical building and management of hospitals. These industries ignited a passion previously unknown for mathematics, economics, and the sciences. For the first time in my life, I enjoyed my studies.

Initiative

As my interest in business began to burgeon, I enveloped myself in a literary world previously unknown. My best friends became those that Charlie Munger referred to as the "eminent dead". The overarching lesson these men kept harping on was that information without implementation was useless. I took that lesson to heart, starting my first company - Spectre Contracting. Disregarding the notion of starting small, my first job was a comprehensive outdoor remodel. Over four months, I erected over 75 feet of stone wall, tore out a brick patio, built a stone one, and engineered a hardwired lighting system. As neighbors passed by with expressions between trepidatious encouragement and dread of the final product I had those perhaps foolhardy enough to ask for work. These subsequent jobs were nothing in comparison to my first project, but this was the first realization that I enjoyed hard work, especially when the results were tangible.

Momentum

My first recollection of a dream job was to be a commando. My great-grandfather was on one of the first waves into Normandy. Reading his citations for Bronze and Silver Stars was the closest I ever came to idealizing a superhero. A passionate desire to serve at the highest level won me nothing but mocking jeers and bullying from my father and classmates. I remember hearing that I was not strong enough, fast enough, or tough enough. Those feelings of inadequacy spurred me to treat martial arts seriously. This attitude earned me a black belt before I was ten. Later, that same resolute disposition led me to the weight room where I would build the strength that won me a state title in powerlifting.

Around this time, I was admitted into a mentorship program called Apogee. The significance here manifested through the conversations I was able to have with the likes of Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline.com, Leif Babin, co-author of Extreme Ownership, and Andy Frisella of 75 Hard fame. These are to name a few. Through these discourses, my faint flame of entrepreneurial spirit and self-determination had the oxygen to grow into a pulsating fire. A fire that would drive me to start a venture inside the frame of a passion for medicine.

The next six months refined my coach's eye as I helped over a dozen young men from around the globe physically transform. Ultimately, I voluntarily ended this venture as I was previously unaware of its untenability without the exorbitant expenditure of time associated with constant social media activity.

Uprooted

As a native-born Pennsylvanian, I always took pride in the lineage of my state. From the spiritus invictus embodied by William Penn's Quakers that carved a society out of the Delaware Valley to the enterprising values of Benjamin Franklin and Stephen Girard - I found inspiration in the very dirt I stood on. When my grandmother passed away my mother and I found ourselves forced to move back to her family in Tampa. This process was heartbreaking for me. The opportunities and relationships I had spent years cultivating were snatched away instantly. Through this pain, it became my mission to find a way to move my mother and me back to my home state.

Hard Times -

Hard People

Hard Times - Hard People

With near-perfect coincidence, I finished my high school education a year early, as our move to Florida was finalized. Never comfortable with the feeling of stagnation, I began looking for what came next. I found it in the industry of investing in distressed properties. I rolled my entire liquid net worth into a plane ticket and a course 1500 miles away with the aspiration of benefiting society's economic well-being. Arriving a day early, my work ethic sweeping floors, taking out trash, and cleaning dishes earned me job offers from multi-millionaires who ran the principal company. After returning home, I co-founded Palm Capital Associates with a local businessman. In our first month, we made multiple five figures, but the operation quickly ran aground after.

The next nine months were some of the hardest in memory. Through innumerable sleepless nights, near panic attacks over making payroll, and joyless conversations with elderly Americans being evicted to a life of homelessness, we built the company to a quarter of a million dollars in accounts receivable. After a series of strategic errors in capital allocation, I watched my enterprise's prospects come crashing down around me. This was one of the most painful moments of my life.

Meeting Triumph & Disaster

Hard Times - Hard People

Fruitlessly exiting Palm Capital Associates sent me to a very dark place. In the words of Nietzsche, the abyss had begun to stare back. All the expectations surrounding my performance in business had been shattered, and I was trying to reassemble them into some semblance of a rising star. The harder I tried to piecemeal the old together the more enveloped I became in self-pity and doubt. Only when I raised my brow towards the horizon did I see the failures of yesterday do not define us, often the instruction of defeat prepares us for the victories of tomorrow.

I found meaning in the ability to mentor young men in Apogee through a series of twenty-five essays on lessons learned, weekly mentoring calls, and finishing my book on strength and conditioning. A book years in the making, it truncated everything I taught inside my online training programs in the written form. Geared towards young men as their first exposure to weight lifting its goal was never personal enrichment of its author, but rather as my way to give back to the next generation.

In for a Penn In For a Pound

Salvador Dali said that intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings. My mother is perhaps the most intelligent person I know. After defying the odds of her childhood, she went to medical school. Halfway through her degree, she was diagnosed with a rare neurological disorder that required two brain surgeries. The surgeons to which I indirectly owe my life were from the University of Pennsylvania. I remember thinking from a young age that if higher education was ever in the syllabi, UPenn was the only one I would want to attend.

So, while my mother was not able to realize the extent of her ambitions, I intend to do justice to the life I was endowed with by chasing the dragon that has loomed large since I was a child.

In for a Penn in for a Pound.