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Step 9Live as Cheaply as Possible So You Can Take Bigger Risks
Keep your tolerance for risk high by keeping your cost of living low. For us, this meant owning few or no cars and biking everywhere, cooking our own food rather than eating out and occasionally eating from dumpsters, getting furniture and tools for free from Craigslist, making everything else we needed (i.e. much of the content of this website), and, for some of us, living in the shop.
Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne tell one of my favorite stories about starting ReadyMade magazine on 12 credit cards by moving their expenses from one card to another until their revenue picked up. That's guts!
Another awesome trick is to have a spouse or significant other support you. If you live cheaply, one normal salary can easily support two people. Thanks Christy for supporting me by working in a giant bureaucratic pharmaceutical company while I started Squid! Or, if you're working rather than spending time in graduate school, see if you can save an amount equal or greater than you spend until you're ready to lose the day job. Finally, it's worth recognizing that I was 26 when I completed my doctorate and started Squid Labs, and kids were not on the horizon, even though I was married.
Reducing your costs and dependencies certainly helps, but there's also an element of enjoyment in taking risks that is probably hardwired/genetic/whatever. For perspective, I:
- have been swept out into the Pacific on an ebb tide while kitesurfing alone under the Golden Gate Bridge
- lied on my first mortgage because the bank and I had a disagreement about the prudent percentage of total income one should dedicate to a house (that worked out great, but will be saved for another Instructable)
- was the test pilot for the Stoopid Thing
- traveled to countries on the State Department's travel advisory list (cheap airfare, cheap accommodations, locals asking you if there were riots in the town you just arrived from!)
- and, have broken nearly 20 bones as a result of taking risks that didn't turn out so well -- click here for graphic images of my head trauma!
If this laundry list of stupid behavior strikes you as just that, perhaps you should consider a more conservative business. If not, grab some friends and a couple of free loaves of bread, and head out for an adventure...
Shoshana Berger and Grace Hawthorne tell one of my favorite stories about starting ReadyMade magazine on 12 credit cards by moving their expenses from one card to another until their revenue picked up. That's guts!
Another awesome trick is to have a spouse or significant other support you. If you live cheaply, one normal salary can easily support two people. Thanks Christy for supporting me by working in a giant bureaucratic pharmaceutical company while I started Squid! Or, if you're working rather than spending time in graduate school, see if you can save an amount equal or greater than you spend until you're ready to lose the day job. Finally, it's worth recognizing that I was 26 when I completed my doctorate and started Squid Labs, and kids were not on the horizon, even though I was married.
Reducing your costs and dependencies certainly helps, but there's also an element of enjoyment in taking risks that is probably hardwired/genetic/whatever. For perspective, I:
- have been swept out into the Pacific on an ebb tide while kitesurfing alone under the Golden Gate Bridge
- lied on my first mortgage because the bank and I had a disagreement about the prudent percentage of total income one should dedicate to a house (that worked out great, but will be saved for another Instructable)
- was the test pilot for the Stoopid Thing
- traveled to countries on the State Department's travel advisory list (cheap airfare, cheap accommodations, locals asking you if there were riots in the town you just arrived from!)
- and, have broken nearly 20 bones as a result of taking risks that didn't turn out so well -- click here for graphic images of my head trauma!
If this laundry list of stupid behavior strikes you as just that, perhaps you should consider a more conservative business. If not, grab some friends and a couple of free loaves of bread, and head out for an adventure...
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Oct 10, 2008. 8:11 AMOblivitus
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Is all this serious? Wow, you are one crazy guy!
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