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Betting On Yourself

Written by: James Chan

Article Overview: You have to take a chance, in order to have a chance--a story from the life of Martha Hughes.

Betting On Yourself

One thing I~{!/~}ve learned from talking to many different self-employed people and entrepreneurs is that the wisdom they expound is contradictory.

~{!0~}Keep your costs low, don~{!/~}t expand too quickly or take on long-term commitments whose implications you can~{!/~}t foresee,~{!1~} goes one line of advice. (This one sounds a lot like me.)

~{!0~}Seize the moment and opportunity,~{!1~} says the counter-argument. ~{!0~}If you pay attention to your fears and insecurities, you~{!/~}ll always be small. Make a bold move to become what you want to be.~{!1~}

Experienced independents will give you all sorts of advice, and though much of it is contradictory, none of it is wrong, at least for the people giving the advice. Other people, following the same advice, would very likely fail~{!*~}especially if the advice is deeply at odds with their sense of themselves and the way they do things.

I~{!/~}m afraid there~{!/~}s no way to know how many entrepreneurs succeed because they are conservative, how many succeed because they are bold, or how many fail for the same reasons. I think that it~{!/~}s good for careful people to be reminded that risk is often rewarded, and for those who follow their gut instincts to realize that systematic analysis can often lead to immensely profitable insight. But if you~{!/~}re not psychologically prepared, it~{!/~}s not wise to leap rashly into the unknown. You~{!/~}ll probably have a nasty fall. And when people who are addicted to adventure try to practice caution, they risk boring themselves to death.

~{!0~}Be yourself~{!1~} is probably the most useless piece of advice anyone can give. But if you are going into business for yourself, you had better know something about your strengths, and particularly your blind spots and your tolerance of risk.

Oddly, it was somebody I~{!/~}ve known for years who made me aware of the very different styles of self-employment. Martha Hughes is a published writer of fiction, but she is also that rarest of animals, a liberal arts entrepreneur. She runs workshops to help people learn to write.

Everyone~{!/~}s career, indeed everyone~{!/~}s life, is something that is made up as we go along. I~{!/~}m very aware of that. But as you can see from my previous tales, I tend to understand my story as a series of discoveries I have made and decisions I have taken, usually as a result of introspection. Martha, by contrast, jumps right in. Like a free jazz musician or an action painter, she believes that the learning comes only in the act of doing.

Martha~{!/~}s personal myth does not, therefore, involve internal struggles or promises made to God, but rather a succession of things she did without worrying too much about them. The key story she tells to explain her attitude concerns a trip she made to Europe after graduating from college. Her parents had always fantasized about travel, she says, but they never quite managed to go. Martha was determined to go, and to stay for a long time.

The day before she was to leave, her father asked her if she had enough money. She replied that she had $35. Shocked, he wrote her a check to make sure she wouldn~{!/~}t be impoverished the moment she landed. ~{!0~}But I would have gone if he hadn~{!/~}t given me the money,~{!1~} she says. And during the two years she traveled, she claims she became immune to the fear of not having enough money.

~{!0~}I could be completely out of money and didn~{!/~}t die,~{!1~} she says. ~{!0~}I knew that something would always happen to save me.~{!1~} This lesson has stayed with her all her life. ~{!0~}If you have an education, you don~{!/~}t stop breathing because you don~{!/~}t have money. I have no fundamental anxiety about money.~{!1~}
Thus, a few years later when she had a job she loved but a boss she hated, she didn~{!/~}t hesitate to walk away from the good salary without any prospect of other income.

Martha~{!/~}s current business came about when, as part of a fellowship she had won, she was assigned to be a tutor at a summer school for aspiring writers. She decided that she could do better than this well-established program. So two months later, in 1991, she founded her company, Peripatetic Writing Workshop, and advertised for students. Six enrolled.

She rented an old Victorian house on an island in upstate New York. She was conference organizer, teacher, fiction tutor, seminar leader, trucker, cook, publicist and janitor all in one. (Trying to save money, she bought food and supplies in Mississippi and carried them north in a pickup truck that broke down, spilling toilet paper all over the interstate. It was a disaster then, but a good story now.)

Students were satisfied with this one-woman show, and word of mouth was good. She has continued her business, expanded, and brought in a partner and faculty members to help it grow. She has recently ventured overseas with conferences in Ireland, and she expects to continue to go global.

~{!0~}If you have passion, and you look too closely at the danger, you~{!/~}ll never get to the passion,~{!1~} Martha insists. ~{!0~}Adventure means something to me. Winning means something to me. Curiosity means something to me. Being bored is the worst thing to me.~{!1~}

~{!0~}In order to be an entrepreneur, you have to be a gambler,~{!1~} she advises. Martha obviously doesn~{!/~}t worry the way I do. So this advice works for her.

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Article Tags: all sorts, animals, blind spots, bold move, caution, different styles, fears, gut instincts, independents, insight, martha hughes, nasty fall, odds, piece of advice, risk, self employment, systematic analysis, term commitments, tolerance, wisdom



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