Page 222 - The $100 Startup_ Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love

that call, I had this enormous feeling of relief and excitement wash over me,
and I just absolutely knew it was going to work.

The funny thing was that the client ended up being an unbelievable jerk
and pulled out of his book deal over repeated problems with the publisher.
He didn’t like a mock cover that they put together and their preference that
he actually follow the proposal we had sent them for the content, so rather
than trying to work anything out, he just decided the publisher “didn’t get
it” and pulled out. Then a little while later he had his assistant send me a
termination letter without so much as a conversation, even though I had
managed to generate a decent offer for what was a brutally difficult book to
sell.

It didn’t matter, though. I still had that first moment on the phone and
never looked back. I’ve since been on my own and selling books for more
than ten years.

Kyle Hepp
Independent Photographer
Santiago, Chile

My husband and I were traveling around Europe after I had been hit by a
car. We were going to travel and then go back to Chile to shoot weddings
until the bookings stopped coming in and then go back to having “normal”
jobs. We had been CouchSurfing to try and save money, but after a month
and a half on the road I was sick of it. So we decided to splurge in Italy. We
checked into an amazing room at the Meridien, and I decided to pay an
ungodly amount to use the Internet for ten minutes. And that was when I
saw the email. It would be our second U.S. wedding and our first wedding
where I had quoted more than simply travel costs. The bride had decided to
hire us, and she was going with our biggest package, over $5,000.

I freaked out. I called my mom and then I called my dad, screaming—
stupidly using the hotel phone, which ended up costing another hundred
bucks. I should’ve paid for another ten minutes of the internet and used
Skype. I wasn’t freaking out because of the money, though. It was because
for a bride to pay that amount of money to photographers who don’t even
live in her country requires a huge leap of faith. And that was when I
realized that if there was one bride willing to hire us and fly us in, there
were probably more. And I started to think that if we could work both in
Chile and outside of Chile, we could make this work. So we did.