I met Michael on my first day at the furniture workshop. It was one of those places you could walk past without noticing — tucked between a noisy mechanic's shop and a small food stand that always smelled of fried plantain. The sign above the door was faded, the kind of paint that had been sunburned for years, but the place had a reputation for good craftsmanship.
I was twenty-four, broke, and desperate for steady work. A cousin had told me the owner, Mr. Bello, was looking for someone who could "learn fast and keep quiet." I didn't know much about furniture beyond the fact that people paid a lot for it if it looked nice, but I figured it was better than sitting at home sending out CVs that no one replied to.
When I walked in, the first thing I noticed was the smell — a mix of wood shavings, varnish, and something burnt. I later learned that the burnt smell came from the old saws, which sometimes sparked when the wiring acted up.
The second thing I noticed was Michael.
He was bent over a half-finished table, sanding the edges with slow, precise strokes. There was a calmness in the way he worked, almost like he wasn't just smoothing wood but shaping something important.
"You're new?" he asked without looking up.
"Yeah," I said. "James."
"Michael," he replied, giving the table one last sweep before wiping his hands on a cloth. "Don't worry, this place will teach you patience — whether you like it or not."
We became friends quickly. Not the kind of friends who talk all day, but the kind who share quiet moments, the occasional joke, and unspoken understanding. During breaks, the other guys would gather around the back of the workshop to smoke or argue about football. Michael would sit by himself with that same battered notebook, writing.
One day, curiosity got the better of me.
"What's in the notebook?" I asked.
"My future business," he said simply.
It sounded absurd. Here we were, earning less than enough to fix a decent meal every night, and he was talking about "his future business" as if it was already real.
Over the next few weeks, I noticed things about him. He never just followed instructions blindly. If Mr. Bello told him to make a chair a certain way, Michael would still take a moment to figure out why it was done that way. Sometimes he would even suggest improvements, though most of the time Mr. Bello would just wave him off.
I once asked him why he bothered thinking so much about work that wasn't his own.
"Because I'm not here to be a carpenter forever," he said. "I'm here to learn how the business works — and how to do it better."
That was the first time I realized Michael was looking beyond the workshop walls. The rest of us saw a job, but He saw a classroom.
One rainy afternoon, the power went out. We couldn't use the machines, so everyone just sat around, waiting for the rain to stop. Michael pulled out his notebook, and I asked if I could see it.
It wasn't just a notebook. It was a blueprint.
He had pages filled with sketches of furniture designs, notes on pricing, lists of suppliers, and even rough calculations of how much profit a small workshop could make in a month. On one page, he had written in bold letters:
"Don't just sell products. Build a brand. People pay for trust, not wood."
That line stuck with me. I'd never thought about business that way. To me, a chair was a chair. But Michael was already thinking about customer loyalty, reputation, and value beyond the product.
Looking back, that day was the real beginning of my education. I didn't know it then, but I had just met the person who would change the way I thought about work, money, and success.
Michael wasn't richer than the rest of us. He didn't have powerful connections or family money. But he had something far more dangerous which is clarity. He knew where he was going, and every day in that dusty workshop was just one step toward that destination.
And me? At that point, I was just trying to survive until payday.
What I didn't know was that the gap between survival and strategy is the same gap that keeps most people chained to their work forever.