It’s always been hard for me to find a community of peers.

I know that comes from many of the same things I’ve long considered superpowers and unfair advantages.

My dad is from Pakistan and my mom is from the Philippines. I can’t find solid census data, but the best I’ve seen estimates there are anywhere from a few thousand to a million people in the world who are mixed Pakistani-Filipino (or “Pakipino,” as a high school friend once called it). If that’s true, that means I represent somewhere between 0.0009999% and 0.1% of the global population.

I grew up geographically close to my dad’s side of the family and am the second youngest of all my cousins, my brother being the youngest. Some of my cousins are my parents’ age, so I was always “the mature kid.” To this day, I’m still most comfortable around people slightly older than me.

That wasn’t a problem in school, since everyone’s grouped by age anyway. But as I got older, the gap widened.

My wife and I got married at 24 when most of our friends were single. We had our first daughter at 27 and our second at 29; our late-twenties friends weren’t even thinking about kids yet. Now we have teenagers while most friends our age are still changing diapers.

The same thing happened professionally. I got my first design job at 20. I was a design director at 27 when most of my peers were in their thirties and forties. I started my own company at 28 and racked up a decade of entrepreneurship before 40. I never talked about my age publicly until I turned 40 because I saw how differently people treated me once they knew.

Age cuts both ways. While I’ve often felt ahead, I’ve just as often felt behind.

I feel late to the personal brand and content game. Like it or not, follower counts create tribes. I’ve been on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other platforms for almost two decades, but I only started treating them as assets recently. People who started when I did have exponentially more followers… not my tribe. People with my follower count are younger and/or newer to the game… not my tribe either.

Financially, I’m good but not yet where I want to be. People with my years of experience talk about 7-figure stock portfolios and 8-figure exits. People with my net worth are 25. Of course, I know logically that I don’t know this for a fact without looking through people’s bank accounts and P&L’s, but sometimes perception is reality. I’m pretty good at keeping that at bay, but, when it seeps in, it hits hard. It bruises my ego, and my self-esteem follows.

I’ve joined coaching programs and communities that seemed targeted at people like me. But most of them focus on mindset and consistency; the right advice for most and the opposite of what I’m looking for.

I’m in rare air personality-wise too. INTJ’s are 2.5% of the population. Aquarius are 6%. Enneagram 5’s are 7%.

These things make me who I am, and I love them. I fight hard for independence and autonomy and still long to be part of the group. Story of my life.

“Stand out,” they say.

“Be yourself,” they say.

“Entrepreneurship is lonely,” they say.

Where are experienced, ambitious entrepreneurs who need support and help getting to—and staying in—the 2-comma club?

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