Page 44 - The Magic of Tiny Business

Chapter Two  Work with What You’ve Got and Make It Work

Education: A BA in liberal arts with a major in theater from a well-
respected but not Ivy League university.
Friends: Lifelong friends, most living a phone call away.
Family income: My husband was a freelance musician and teacher.
Health insurance: Self-paid.
Skills: Acting and improvisation, sales, retail experience growing up,
writing (I did a few low-pay writing gigs with local newspapers in NYC
at one point).
Equipment: Landline phone, fax machine, Macintosh SE, and a
printer. (This was pre-internet so no email, no Google, not even cell
phones!)
Wealthy parents or in-laws: Nope.
Trust fund: Are you kidding?
Savings: A teensy bit.
Good credit: Yes.
Access to credit: Yes (credit cards).
Business connections: Not really. My father had a small retail store I
grew up in. I had some friends in video editing, which I thought wasn’t
applicable. My friends were all creatives: actors and teachers. I didn’t
think they knew anything more than me.

What Is Enough?

We all have a very complex relationship with money—
having it, not having it, not having enough of it. There’s
never enough.

What I know now that I did not know when I quit
my job is that you can’t let money shape you. Instead, you
need to use money to shape what you want. A close

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