When I started my first company, I was too ignorant to be scared.
I quit a stable newspaper job to go into business for myself — with only $5,000 in capital. I started sending out sales letters and making sales calls, trying to get churches to let me handle their marketing. I got a little bit of business, but the market wasn’t as good as I had hoped. It was a struggle.
In that first year, my great aunt — Aunt Bessie — died and left me $10,000. I used that money to buy a typesetting company, thinking that the existing accounts would allow me to become stable while I figured out how to launch a newspaper.
I didn’t have a great plan at any point. I had what I considered plans, but they were nothing like what I’d call a business plan today. I was just operating on faith and shooting from the hip. I was still ignorant but I was learning — and I was having fun.
Do political labels make things clear or just confuse everyone?
Most prizes feel empty, because our real need is for connection
Want to really understand someone? Visit the places that shaped his past
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
When love finally dies, it’s like a fever breaks and the pain is gone