Timely advice on the entrepreneurial spirit and taking a big risk to pursue a dream.
“I think that it’s an incredibly scary thing to do, but I’ve never heard anyone tell the story that they took that step and then regretted it… It’s always a good thing even if you spend the next two or three years of your life completely destitute and eating cup-a-noodles. It’s still more gratifying than whatever job you were dissatisfied enough to have left. And in my case, I just sat there getting so stressed out at work everyday over these meaningless, meaningless projects and creative decisions that ultimately meant nothing, and it’s all such crap. It’s very rare you get the chance in that industry or most industries to work on something that you’re actually excited about. And so, I think that one piece of advice would be to figure out what made you excited about getting into the field you’re in and then figuring out the parts of it that you’re no longer excited about and figure out how to just separate the two and what new thing could it be that… I don’t know because every case is so specific and unique, but I assume a large part of your audience works in tech and it’s just a golden age for breaking off and making your own thing, you know, of solving your own problems, scratching your own itch and all those cliches. It’s a golden age for doing that, and, I think that in terms of starting small, a very important thing to do is just remember that it’s okay to start small. Yes, we’re all inspired by the big ones. We’re all inspired by the Apples… We’re inspired by the big success stories but you hear it over and over again. Every one of these success stories came from something that started really small. So, if you’re looking to grow yourself into something big, I would say, start out, make little projects that interest you, and then if you’re proud of them, figure out ways that people can see them. There’s just such an efficient way of getting things in front of people now, that if you actually do make something kind of cool, people are going to see it. And then the next time around, it might work out that they want more of that same kind of thing from you and there might be a little bit of money in it for you. And then, before you know it, you’ve entirely left that part of your life that you came from. For the first year that I broke off of my job, I was still doing freelance projects from time to time to pay the bills, to still working on commercials for other people. And then, as soon as it became clear that it was time to turn down one of these projects, I felt like a completely new man. It meant all the freedom in the world to me. So, there are hundreds and thousands of these types of stories of people that have been motivated to break off and do what they wanted to do and figure out a way to share it so they could support themselves. Just do it, man.
The Pipeline #22: Adam Lisagor – 5by5
Now excuse me while I figure out what gets me really excited and what itch I should scratch first.