For me it was being in the right place and right time on a few occasions...I just sort of stumbled onto a good path early on, and things evolved from there. After getting my feet wet with a typical receiver, and an above average pair of a Mariah LS-2 speakers, I built a Hafler kit, started an audio club, met Bobby Palkovich and Ken Stevens, had a few pairs of Merlin speakers, several good amps, went to several CES shows with those gentleman, then started building speakers on my own.
By 1989 I was designing the speakers I still use today, which was around the same time my uncle gave me his Dynakit 70. An audio buddy of mine refreshed the Dyna, and I bought a Lazarus tube preamp to complement it. Another factory wired Dyna 70 with only one working channel followed, and I used the two Dyna 70s as single channel monoblocks for years. That setup became the heart and soul of my current system.
Life and family needs prevented me from spending much time on the system while raising our kids, but by 2018 I started looking into refreshing the whole system. VTA mods went into both amps, the Lazarus got refreshed, the speakers got fresh ferrofluid, new copper inputs, and a powered subwoofer got added. By 2020 the amps were done and back in the system, everything had new tubes, I was back into vinyl, and pretty much fully back into audio as a hobby.
The same basic system continued to evolve, and get some refinements. A modified a Hagerman Bugle phono stage got added, then I added a DAC to my old CD player. I modified the power supplies to both new additions. More mods and tube rolling to the amps followed, a new bi-amp configuration with active crossover, along with some opamp mods to the DAC bring me to 2025 as a very happy and grateful listener.