How Visionary Entrepreneurs Quietly Shaped My Wildest Dreams

Jul 7

Written By Michele Edington (formerly Michele Gargiulo)

Some mornings, I wake up and wonder if I’ve imagined the whole thing. As a trauma-survivor, I’m told that’s a common thought. I’m not talking about that night on December 8th that changed my world and brain forever though, I’m talking about the vision…the fire. That slow, sacred work of building something no one else sees yet, but it lives in your head and sucks up all your spare time.

I write…I post. I whisper into the algorithm like it’s a tide that might eventually turn in my direction. I watch with my heart in my hands as Google crushes my traffic after a core update and then slowly grow back up, only to be crushed a few months later again. When my traffic doesn’t stay steady…I keep whispering anyway. The thing is, this isn’t just about a blog, or a game, or a business. It’s about the need to shape the world with my hands, even if it takes years and year to be seen or acknowledged.

That’s why I hold close the people who’ve done it before, the quiet visionaries, the ones who built cathedrals where others saw vacant lots. They may not have had the loudest voices or the fastest climbs, but they did climb.

People like Brian, Seth, Yvon, Whitney, Elon, Zakary.

They remind me that I’m not building for now, I’m building for someday, and for everyone else who has ever felt like their soul had a business plan.

Brian Chesky: Belonging as a Business Model

Brian Chesky rewrote the rules of hospitality. Airbnb was born on a floor, not a boardroom, with air mattresses, cereal boxes, and a belief that strangers could become guests, and guests could become family.

What he built was a strange mesh of tech company and a framework for trust. Airbnb was a place where identity, shelter, and economy blurred into something softer. Hospitality brought back to its real roots, where you welcome someone into your home and show them a good time.

When I think about my own work (my blogs, my random crazy projects, Blockchain Botany) I see echoes of his. I'm trying to create places where people can land, where curiosity is safe, where trauma has a translator, and tech can teach you how to feel more alive.

Chesky showed me that community is a product, emotion is infrastructure, and that belonging can scale, and that it should. He’s the reason why a lot of my thoughts and ideas are on my blog for the world to read at no cost to them. He’s also the inspiration behind the community garden feature of Blockchain Botany.

Seth Godin: Publishing as a Sacred Act

Seth didn’t game the system, he just shows up, every single day, like the sunrise and the tide and the truth.

He writes like it matters, because it genuinely does.

Godin taught me that consistency is a prayer and that publishing isn't just about SEO, it's about signaling to the universe that you're serious.

When no one reads, you write. When no one sees, you post. You shouldn’t be out here performing, otherwise you can go find yourself a nice acting or theater job, no…you're becoming.

His belief in long-term trust over short-term metrics keeps me grounded when my numbers feel like silence. Trust me, those days hit where I feel like if I could just pivot my blog to list-sciles or “the best of” nonsense, I could get some real traction up in here, The thing is though…I write what I love, and what I love finds me because of it. I tell stories that are relevant to my life right now, and I honestly pour my heart and soul into the process because I enjoy it. He reminds me that blogging isn’t a race…it’s a resonance.

I also can’t tell you how much better I got at writing after doing it every day for two years. My skills have sharpened, my mind has found ways to twist and turn and somehow still connect points that look as unrelated as fire and water.

I’d like to think that maybe someday, someone out there will think that my words helped them in some way, even if it was just to hold on a little longer for their miracle to finally come through. Just like his did for me.

Yvon Chouinard: The Rebel with a Purpose

Some people build empires, yet Yvon built resistance.

He made Patagonia a company with a spine and refused fast growth for growth’s sake. He sent catalogs filled with environmental essays instead of sales pitches and told people not to buy his products unless they truly needed them.

When the brand had grown so large it could no longer be only his, he gave it away…to the Earth itself.

That kind of thinking doesn’t come from ego, it comes from deep alignment and honestly believing in what you built in a real way. From standing in a river with a fishing rod in hand and asking the water what the world really needs.

He reminds me that I’m allowed to do this differently, that I really don’t need to follow the exact path as others to get to where I want to be.

I can make Blockchain Botany a haven, not a hustle and I can build systems where growth means more kindness, not more chaos. My work can be spiritual…not because it’s about God, but because it honors what’s sacred to me personally. I want to make a real, true, and measurable difference in the world. Yes, it would be seriously great to make some money in the process as well, but as long as I have what I need in this life, the rest is just icing.

Chouinard made cool gear for the world, but he also made a philosophy you could wear on your back.

I want my work to feel like that too, like slipping into something that finally fits your ethics.

Whitney Wolfe Herd: Turning Wounds into Worlds

Whitney Wolfe Herd was burned publicly, painfully, and in front of the tech world’s harshest lights.

Instead of fading, she started again. Bumble was absolutely another dating app, but it was also an invitation to women to take the first step. A reclamation of space in a world that often demands silence from the very people who need to speak.

Her story sings to my soul because it doesn’t pretend that wounds don’t shape us. They absolutely do. The thing is, some people also lean back and say, “now watch me build something softer with these scars.”

I think about that a lot when I’m working on my blog, pouring myself into articles about trauma, memory, biology, and wonder. The things I survived shaped what I’m creating. Every sleepless night where I go down the rabbit hole of the interwebs and pull out some fun facts or ideas that I write about came from something brutal and bad.

Whitney Wolfe Herd built a table where different rules applied, and she reminds me that I can, too.

My pain and brokenness doesn’t disqualify me from entrepreneurship, it actually qualifies me to build something truly new that the world has never thought of before. Post-trauma I actually excel at finding holes in the market, and I think it’s because my brain doesn’t work the same anymore.

Elon Musk: Thinking Beyond Earth

I don’t agree with everything Elon Musk says or does, I’m not a fanatic, but I can’t ignore the pull of his scale.

Even if his motives are messy (I’m not sure they are, but it seems like the world wants to believe the worst in him all the time), his mind dares to reach past gravity. He’s a man who wakes up and asks: what if we lived on Mars? What if a car could outrun the limited resources we have on this planet? What if we reimagined energy itself?

His dreams don’t shrink to fit the present, instead he expands the future to fit his dreams.

And in a strange, feral way, I relate. Some nights after a particularly bad PTSD episode where my mind is swirling and my body is shaking, I stare at the stars and feel tethered to them, like I was meant to build something that breathes in that direction.

That’s why Blockchain Botany isn’t just a game to me, my blog posts and books aren’t just words. Everything that I’m working on is a bridge. There’s that connection between ecology and economy, between Mars soil and Earth’s sorrow. There’s something wonderful about having soil under your perfectly manicured fingernails as the urgent pulse of crypto systems dances through your mind.

Musk reminds me that it’s okay to be laughed at, to be misunderstood, to talk too big and aim too far.

Someone has to make the impossible feel like a blueprint, and he was the man for that job. In a quieter, more grounded way, with my bruised nervous system and broken brain, I’m doing just that.

Zak Edington: The One Who Builds Beside Me

Some people dream alone, but I never have to.

My wonderful husband Zak builds beside me, not in the shadows of my visions, but with his own fierce light. He moves through the world with a kind of thunder that turns heads wherever he goes.

He’s powerful, yes (his strength is obvious at 250lbs and 8% body fat) but it’s the strength beneath it that astonishes me. The discipline he oozes, the patience he learned himself, and the hunger to grow without ever losing himself. He didn’t marry a quiet life, he married a mission. Every day he shows up not just for me, but for everything we’re building…side by side, breath by breath.

When I doubt myself, he reminds me why I started. When the noise of the world gets too loud, he becomes the silence I need to remember who I am.

He isn’t afraid of starting late or of failing fast. He knows that greatness rarely wears a crown in its early chapters as he grinds away at YouTube or TikTok, trying to gain more followers, subscribers, and build his own business and corner of the fitness world. He knows the stage will find him eventually, that the right lights, the right script, and the moment that was always his will eventually find its way to him.

He’s been training as a bodybuilder for over a decade…a dream that takes guts, grit, and the willingness to be seen and struck and still stand tall. I watch him do it, I watch him throw his whole soul into the gym, into becoming something unforgettable. He inspires me. The way he pushes his body past its limits is superhuman, but also because of the way he keeps believing in something bigger.
In himself, and in us.

Zak teaches me how to stay rooted while reaching toward the wild. He holds space for my stars while chasing his own. And when I picture the future (not just the revenue or the reach, but the rhythm of a life fully lived) it’s him I see walking beside me.

We’re trying to build businesses, our legacy. We’re building art that breathes, something holy out of muscle and motion and meaning.

In a world that praises lone geniuses and solo empires, I get to tell a different story: I didn’t do it alone. I haven’t since the first day he stepped up to take care of me and never left my side since.

A Lightning Gallery of Other Visionaries

There are others, flickering at the edges of the storm…quiet giants with sparks in their hands.

Sara Blakely, who turned a single pair of scissors and a refusal to accept discomfort into a billion-dollar shapeshifter. She created Spanx and sliced open the rules about what’s possible for women who start with nothing but belief.

Ava DuVernay, who tells stories the world tried to bury. She makes film a form of justice. Her camera doesn't just capture images, it reanimates grief, dignity, and joy. Watching her direct feels like watching someone unearth a civilization with gentleness. Nick Shirley deserves a shout out here as well. As someone who went around exposing the systems that have been preyed upon for too long, his movement into independent journalism changed the world as we know it.

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, built an entire universe around a simple idea: people, when trusted, will share what they know. He gave knowledge away for free in a world that puts price tags on wisdom.

Melanie Perkins, created Canva out of a desire to make design accessible to anyone. She made creation democratic, so a thirteen-year-old in Nepal could build a brand, just as easily as a CEO in New York.

Jack Dorsey, complex and contradictory, is out there always listening for the pulse beneath the noise. Whether Twitter or Block, he builds things like someone trying to wiretap the future.

Each of them stirs something in me.

They’re all proof that you can build from pain, grit, kindness, silence, and from fire.

To the one reading this: the one scribbling ideas in margins, sketching dreams on receipts, writing posts no one reads, and wondering if any of it matters…it does.

Even when no one sees you yet and the algorithm doesn’t favor you. When your art goes unnoticed, your inbox is empty, and the only applause is the echo in your own mind…know that you’re building a world. Someday, someone will find that world and will walk through your garden, read your words and feel seen.

Keep creating and keep trusting the invisible scaffolding that holds up this dream. It’s real, even if no one else can see it yet. The stars don’t stop burning just because it’s daytime, and neither should you.