Page 217 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

them just thinking of me as another broke artist.”
The second best thing that ever happened to John was losing his last day job

as a graphic designer during the dot-com crash of 2000. The loss of the job led to
the loss of everything else—his income, his girlfriend, his apartment, and even a
piece of his thumb in an accident incurred while he was moving out of the
apartment. While he was working the day job (seven days a week in 1999, seven
days total in 2000), he also was working as much as ten hours a day on his art
business.

After both of these experiences—losing the building and losing the day job—
John was depressed and thought hard about what to do next. His friends advised
him to suck it up and find work wherever he could, but in rural Michigan those
days, John knew that there wasn’t much work to be found. It was now or never,
so he stuck with his goal and continued making progress.

The best thing that ever happened to John, as he tells the story, was a late-
night disagreement with a crazed cab driver, who pulled him into the back room
of a diner and held a gun to his head for a full ten minutes, screaming and
threatening to pull the trigger. John finally escaped and walked out into another
cold Michigan night, sweating, trembling, and glad to be alive. “I get it!” John
yelled at the sky as he hobbled away. “I’m just so lucky!”

“You don’t really worry about the small things after that,” John says now.
“Everything takes on a whole other level of meaning.”

Unwanted Advice and Unneeded Permission

Much of this book contains various forms of advice, but don’t confuse advice for
permission. You don’t need anyone to give you permission to pursue a dream. If
you’ve been waiting to begin your own $100 startup (or anything else), stop
waiting and begin. Charlie Pabst, a Seattle-based designer who left the corporate
world to go it alone, said that the best thing he did was learn to ignore advice,
even from friends who meant well. “My business and the life I lead now would
never have happened had I not been obnoxiously stubborn to my own will,” he
said. “The fact is that the majority of people don’t own their own businesses.
And a certain percentage of that majority will not be happy or supportive about
your exiting the nine-to-five world.”

While usually well-meaning, unsolicited advice from people who think they
know better can be unnecessary and distracting. Here’s how Chelly Vitry, the