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NICHOLAS BOOTHMAN
all, but sometimes things just don't work out. You've got the aspiring musicians who can't seem to catch a break, the wannabe artists whose paintings end up in the bargain bin, and the entrepreneurs whose startups crash and burn faster than a soufflé in the oven.
In my own life, just about everything I’ve accomplished started out like some crazy idea from a fairy tale. Some worked: singing in a band at fourteen; becoming a fashion photographer at twenty-one; blurting out, "I know this sounds crazy, but I love you," to my second wife less than ten minutes after meeting her fifty-one years ago; becoming a keynote speaker at forty-seven; and a published author at forty-nine.
Others were doomed to failure: applying to be a fighter pilot at seventeen; opening a disco at twenty. I wrote a musical at forty-three and tried to franchise glamour shots for pets three years later. All were crazy, fun ideas, but separated by one glaring fact: the ones that worked were done for the right reasons—a glowing vision with passion and purpose. The others seemed like a great idea at the time but were done for all the wrong reasons—to make easy money or to just have fun.
I spent the first half of my adult life as a fashion photographer with studios on three continents. From very early on, it fascinated me that wherever I went, there was always one group of people whose lives blossomed easily and another group for whom life was always a struggle. It had nothing to do with looks or talent. What was going on here? I made up my mind to find out.
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