On an afternoon in October 2007, I was driving down Prairie Avenue to Hyde Creek Recreation Centre in Port Coquitlam, thinking about my workout routine for the day at the gym, when my Motorola cell phone rang.

“Hi Marcus, I’m calling from Human Resources at World Wrestling Entertainment. The ‘Dot Com Team’ is interested in speaking with you about a position.”

I immediately pulled over.

Not a casual drift to the curb—a right turn onto Regina Street, and a full stop, parked beside the soccer field at Minnekhada Middle School. Suddenly, I wasn’t heading to the gym anymore. I was sitting in my car, staring at my old middle school, talking to WWE.

The fourteen-year-old who’d started uploading wallpapers to wrestling forums—who’d spent lunch hours in the library at Terry Fox Secondary, updating TNAwrestling.com instead of eating with friends—had caught the attention of wrestling’s biggest company.

This was it. The validation that three and a half years of working for t-shirts and DVDs had been worth it.

But sitting there on Regina Street, something in my gut knew what my brain hadn’t figured out yet: I wasn’t building a career. I was building something bigger.

I turned them down.

The Path That Wasn’t Mine

After declining WWE, I enrolled at BCIT in the Marketing Management and Communications program—following my parents’ advice. It was the first time I’d taken a turn in my endeavours that wasn’t really my own charted path.

Four months. That’s all it lasted.

I knew it wasn’t for me. The classroom felt like a detour from what I was meant to be building. In early 2009, I tried again with night courses in Broadcast Journalism at BCIT. I did well there, but once again, I was that student working on another project on my computer during class.

I wasn’t building for TNA this time. Now I was building BuyRIC—something for me and my father, Kris, harkening back to our drywall wireframe in Kitimat, back in 2005.

The 2008 Validation

What I couldn’t foresee was that within months the 2008 financial crisis would gut hiring budgets everywhere—WWE included. When the bubble burst, the institutions were left holding trillions of dollars of worthless mortgages. The ripple effects reached every industry.

The global financial sector saw over 150,000 jobs culled when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. WWE, like many companies operating on thinner margins, had to make cuts. Recent hires—especially those without established tenure—were vulnerable.

This economic downturn was a reality I only learned in hindsight, but it affirmed my decision in a profound way. Had I taken that ‘dream job,’ I would have been the new kid from Canada in a company facing unprecedented economic pressure.

The Corporate Reality I Dodged

Years later, I’d learn that WWE’s corporate culture was far from ideal. Former employees described an environment where speaking up wasn’t encouraged and senior executives were essentially untouchable. It was a stark contrast to the collaborative mentorship I’d experienced at TNA with Travis Abraham and Lee South.

The Pattern Finally Emerged

Looking back, that moment parked on Regina Street was the first time I chose building over employment. I didn’t have language for it then. I just knew that something about trading my freedom for a salary—even a dream salary—felt like selling myself short.

By 2010, I gave BCIT one more shot with the New Media Design and Development program. I completed a year, but for the second year, I told my professor and head dean that I was leaving to start The Pinnacle List website—an idea that both my dad and I came up with, focused on our passion—luxury real estate—as the Vancouver real estate market was simply not ready for what we envisioned BuyRIC to be at the time. And this time, the departure felt right.

And so the pattern became clear:

• Declined WWE to go to BCIT in 2008
• Quit BCIT to start BuyRIC in 2009
• Returned to BCIT in 2010, left again to launch The Pinnacle List in 2011

Each step away from the traditional path was a step toward building something that would afford me the ability to live anywhere I want in the world. Fourteen years later, The Pinnacle List continues to thrive—proof that choosing the uncertain path paid off.

What ‘No’ Really Means

That phone call taught me something crucial about opportunity cost—not the economics textbook version, but the real one:

Every ‘yes’ is a ‘no’ to something else.

Yes to WWE meant no to whatever I might build myself. Yes to security meant no to possibility. Yes to their dream meant no to discovering my own.

The Employment Illusion

Here’s what I couldn’t articulate at eighteen, but know deeply now:

When you take a job, you’re trading unlimited potential for limited certainty.

You exchange the possibility of building something that scales infinitely for the guarantee of a paycheque that scales predictably. You swap the risk of failure for the certainty of someone else’s success.

WWE would have taught me to be a better employee. The path I chose taught me to become an employer.

The Compound Effect of Courage

That single “no” created space for a cascade of “yes” moments:

• Yes to building BuyRIC with my dad
• Yes to launching The Pinnacle List
• Yes to creating TRAVOH
• Yes to founding Solespire Media
• Yes to building a life between continents

Each yes was possible because I said no to the safe path that afternoon on Regina Street. To my grandmothers, saying yes to WWE would have been the honourable choice—a “real job” with “real pay.” The irony? They never understood that my unpaid position at TNA was precisely what opened the WWE door in the first place.

Your Parking Spot Moment

So, maybe you’re facing your own WWE crossroads moment. The dream job that requires compromise. The perfect position that feels somehow imperfect. The opportunity everyone says you’d be crazy to refuse.

Before you say yes, ask yourself:

• Am I taking this because it’s my dream, or because it looks like success to others?
• What am I saying no to by saying yes to this?
• Is this building toward my future, or just decorating my present?
• Would eighteen-year-old me be proud, or just impressed?

Sometimes you need to pull over—literally or figuratively—and really think about where you’re heading versus where you’re being invited to go.

The Real Lesson

Turning down WWE wasn’t about rejecting opportunity. It was about recognising that the biggest opportunity was the one I’d create myself.

That eighteen-year-old parked beside his old middle school? He was listening to a whisper that said “not this, something more.”

I never made it to the Hyde Creek Rec Centre that day. Instead, I sat in my car for a while, looking at that soccer field, processing what had just happened. Growing up playing hockey, I learned about being part of a team, about playing your position. But this moment? This was about stepping off the ice entirely and building my own rink.

Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is disappoint everyone who thinks they know what’s best for you—including the version of yourself who once thought a job was the destination.

The real destination is building something that makes job offers irrelevant.

And that journey starts with knowing when to pull over, take a breath, and choose the harder path.

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What dream job are you holding onto that might be holding you back from building something bigger?