I don’t talk about Javo as much as I wish I did. It still hurts, and the “what if” never fully leaves me.
On September 11, 1995, my older brother, head of our family, my mentor, my partner, passed away in a motorcycle accident. He was 19.
My mother was raising three kids alone when we started a business together from our garage in 1992. We sold paper, floppy disks, and toners to businesses around our house. The work grew to printers and hardware upgrades, and by age 13 I was in charge of the IT side of the company.
My brother went to schools and factories to sell batches of computers. Sometimes I had to spend the weekend building 30 computers, spread out on tables across the house. He was an incredible salesman. I still can’t believe he pulled that off as a teenager. In a short time, the company grew enough that we hired all our high school friends. I grew up in a family-and-friends business.
He showed me you could run a business and have fun doing it. Now at 47 years old, I still see him as older than me. He was wiser than me in a lot of ways, and I still look up to him the way I did as a kid, looking for my big brother’s approval.
Love you, Bro.