I thought endurance was the answer

Who am I?

Regardless of what I have achieved, for as long as I can remember, I have been haunted by failure.

Is failure who I am? What is success, anyway? Maybe these are questions you have asked yourself as well.

It’s hard to stay positive when so many other areas of my life have left scar tissue. I spent most of my life believing that endurance could outrun failure. I was wrong.

My name is Dan Romeo. I live in San Diego, California, and I am an endurance athlete who has completed eight full Ironman races, along with numerous triathlons and marathons. I spent my career in corporate finance, serving as a CFO within the marketing and advertising industries, before founding my own business, Traveler Coffee Roaster and One Season Brewery.

Ironman Boulder 2014

A sense of failure developed within me early in my adolescent years, stemming from my father. My father was a gambler, and over the years our relationship became strained due to his selfish decisions. I decided years ago that I needed to distance myself from him in order to achieve any sense of meaning in my life. I grew up knowing what my family thought about him, and with that, I was pulled into his toxic habits as a co-conspirator.

Most businesses don’t fail from a lack of effort. Most relationships don’t fail when both parties are actively engaged in nurturing one another. So why is it that we fail more often than we would like in life? Is there a reason for it? Can we learn from it?

In trying to escape what I believed was an inherited failure born from my father’s decisions, I chose relentless effort and endurance as my defense.

I wanted to outrun or out-suffer the inevitable failure that always seemed to be looming on my horizon. I didn’t want to become him. I didn’t want to quit and take the easy road in life. I wanted to tackle any obstacle I was confronted with. I wanted the obstacle to lead the way to a greater sense of purpose.

That plan — to out-suffer what I believed was inevitable — slowly eroded my decision-making, replacing wisdom with endless self-tests meant to prove how badly I wanted success.

That approach ultimately cost me everything. The business I built destroyed my health, strained my relationships, and depleted my finances. When I had nothing left to give physically, a sudden flood destroyed my company — and with it, the identity I had constructed around endurance and control. Stripped of self-worth and any clear path forward, I was forced to confront perseverance as my greatest liability, alongside the unsettling conviction that the loss simply confirmed who I believed myself to be — my father.

This blog is where I examine the cost of endurance, the myths we build around success, and what remains when control is stripped away. If any of that sounds familiar, you’re in the right place.

After two decades in corporate finance and running my own business, I’ve learned that success isn’t always visible. It’s when we fail to look at success beyond a binary sense — yes, it worked; no, it didn’t — that we lose sight of all we have truly accomplished.

With each of life’s failed experiences, we have an opportunity to grow wiser through struggle.

Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus once stated, “No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”

No two situations are ever the same, and what is asked of us to succeed is never black and white. Because both we and our circumstances are in constant motion, the idea of a one-size-fits-all, step-by-step formula for success is an illusion.

This blog is my journey back to that same river — to face my struggles and learn from them. Maybe you, too, will see, as I have, a different river flowing around your ever-changing feet.

During my introspection after the flood, I came to realize that how we maintain composure and endurance during periods of struggle may be our greatest achievement. With that, I hope to share both the struggles and the redemption that emerged from them.

While only some of us have had the experience of running our own business, all of us have known some form of suffering in our lives. The suffering or trauma we encounter helps mold us into who we become. It’s through those experiences — and our responses to them — that we discover our true selves, and from that, true success.

If nothing else, maybe you’ll take a piece of my journey and carry it with you — applying it to your own life, your own challenges, your own adventure. And like me, you too will continue forward once you realize the end is just the beginning.

This is where I keep going — not to outrun failure, but to understand it.

Thank you for being a part of my journey.