Page 204 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

boss and colleagues and prepared to go full-time. This was it! She had jumped!
Except … the view on the other side wasn’t all she had expected. The first

week of freedom felt great; the second week she began to wonder, What do I do
all day? “I underestimated the value of having some work that was collaborative
and not self-directed,” she said. Over the next few months, the business earned
less than expected. Orders were still coming in and the situation was far from
desperate, but Tsilli felt trapped, drained of the creativity she had thrived on
while starting up.

“The all-or-nothing paradigm was too much pressure,” she continued. “I’m
running a creative business, but it’s a creativity killer for me to define my whole
income on the need to continuously deploy my creativity.” It was a hard decision
to make, but six months after leaving the design firm, she approached the owners
with a proposal: How about coming back part-time? They said yes and were
happy to have her.

Moving back to the studio three days a week was the right fit. When she had
left six months earlier, she had a lot of responsibility as the lead designer; there
was no way she could stick around in a lesser role without first leaving for a
while. Coming back in under the radar gave her the security of having a certain
amount of fixed income while retaining the freedom of working half-time on her
other projects. Also, Tsilli now worked as a contractor instead of an employee,
and that gave her an unexpected but important sense of still earning all her
income “on her own,” with roughly half coming from the studio and half from
her business.

It was right for her to leave, and it was right to go back. The business is still
profitable, but without the pressure of needing to rely on it exclusively. Tsilli
summarizes it like this: “The feeling I have is that I’m still laying brick after
brick. The different pieces interlock, and over time they may build to critical
mass. But right now I’m in a good place.”

The Choice

Tsilli’s story illustrates the real challenge that befalls almost everyone with the
opportunity to make a major career change and go it alone: finding a way to
build systemization into the business, and deciding what role the business will
play in the rest of their lives. Sooner or later, every successful business owner—
accidental or otherwise—faces a choice: Where are we going with this thing? As