The journey to entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart. It can be a lonely and thankless endeavor, where many sacrifices are made with little reward at first. 19-year-old Luke Brickman understands this better than most.

Growing up in an entrepreneurial family, Brickman has always been around people who were creative and took risks to start their own businesses. This environment equipped him with the skills needed to think outside the box when making decisions for his business ventures, which has helped him forge his own path at such a young age. It was only natural that this talented individual would become an entrepreneur, and so far, he’s done quite well.

Brickman is a sales development representative at Twilio, an American communications company based in San Francisco, California. Twilio “provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.”

At 19, Brickman is the youngest hire in the company’s history, an accomplishment that speaks to his ambitious and hardworking nature. Since he began working at Twilio, Brickman has never missed his quota, establishing himself as one of the company’s top performers. That Brickman accomplished all this without a college degree makes his achievement even more incredible.

Despite being accepted into several colleges, Brickman’s heart was set on entrepreneurship. As a result, he turned his back on college and pursued a career in tech sales. Brickman’s career began at an ed-tech startup where he served as a recruiter and left his mark. Some of his achievements included recruiting notable talent as part of the company’s engineering team. With a proven track record and passion for his career, he did bigger things before applying for a position at Twilio.

As enjoyable as his current role is, Brickman’s dream is to build his own company from the ground up soon. Coming from an entrepreneur background with parents in the startup world, he has experienced how hard the work can be. In his senior year of high school, Brickman almost failed his finals because he’d been so busy helping his parents craft their pitch decks in front of some major investor meetings. In the end, Brickman’s efforts paid off when his parents successfully raised $1.5M.

The high of doing something he loves is what Brickman hopes to enjoy for many years to come. He believes as long as he doesn’t give up on his dreams, he will always find a way to actualize his dreams. Growing up, that was another thing that set him apart from his peers, who couldn’t understand why Brickman was in a hurry to grow up. While they were content with constant partying, he was always busy thinking about the real world.

Now that he has tasted it and seen its limitless opportunities, Brickman is more determined than ever to achieve his dreams. He isn’t afraid to take risks or be different when it comes to following a path that’s not “normal” for someone his age; he’s prepared to break the mold even if that means failing at first. The way he sees it, no one should fear failing, but everyone should fear not trying.

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