We met without agenda. No romance. No grand design. Just two young people moving through the same circles, talking about music, art, ideas, and the strange hunger you feel in your twenties when you know you’re meant for more but don’t yet know what that means.

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Even then, I noticed something different about Peter. It wasn’t just that he could draw. A lot of people can draw. It was the intensity behind it. The way he talked about building something. The way he carried himself as if the future was already real and he just hadn’t arrived there yet.

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When I signed up for an art class, I asked him to come with me so I wouldn’t feel alone. That’s how I explained it at the time. The truth is more honest in hindsight. I knew who I was inviting. I wasn’t asking just anyone. I wanted to be around that kind of energy. I wanted to see what would happen if someone with that level of talent actually disciplined it.

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He stayed. I eventually left the class. But by then, something had already shifted.

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Not long after, I became his first customer. Leather jackets. Custom artwork. Money I did not have in abundance, spent on something that had no practical return. It wasn’t an investment on paper. It was belief. I paid for art before there were clients, before there were contracts, before there was proof.

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I didn’t see it as risk. I saw it as inevitability.

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Around that same time, I would sit and watch him work through a business plan he’d checked out from the library. Section by section. Structured. Serious. Not a dreamer scribbling fantasies, but someone methodically mapping a future. That was the moment belief turned into trust. Talent alone is volatile. Ambition without structure collapses. But discipline paired with vision? That’s different.

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I didn’t fall in love with an artist.
I committed to a builder.

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Our timeline moved quickly. Friendship became dating. Dating became engagement. Engagement became marriage. It wasn’t reckless. It felt aligned. When you recognize trajectory, hesitation feels unnecessary.

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We didn’t have money. We didn’t have investors. We didn’t have safety nets. What we had was clarity. He would lead with vision. I would build the structure around it. He would move forward. I would make sure the ground held.

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Looking back, I don’t see a romantic story first. I see a decision.

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I saw something early.
I invested early.
And I chose to build alongside it.

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That decision became the foundation of everything that followed.

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