Gary Vaynerchuk‘s story is pretty well known: he took over the family-run liquor store in New Jersey, which was making a few million dollars a year. Over a 7-year-period, he transformed the mom-and-pop store into a company that made over $50M a year.
Then, he says, “I turned 30, freaked out, and decided I wanted to do something else. I saw [Rocketboom], doing all that stuff, and I thought, ‘I could do that shit.’ That’s what I decided I wanted to do. I became 1 percent not happy selling wine, and that’s when I changed my life. ”
So he started WineLibraryTV, which launched the Gary Vaynerchuk brand we know today.
Around the same time Gary’s establishing WineLibraryTV, Nick Santora and his wife are packing their bags for a weeklong vacation. He’s been practicing law for six years, and desperately needs a break from this job he detests. As they’re loading their bags into the car, he stops. He turns to his wife.
“If instead of going on vacation for a week, what if we stayed home, and I wrote that screenplay I always wanted to write?”
She says yes.
After they unpacked, he bought books on how to properly format a screenplay. Then he wrote all week.
That script got him his agent, Ari Greenberg.
Since then, he’s written two novels, one comic book, and on a variety of TV shows (LAW & ORDER, BREAKOUT KINGS, THE GUARDIAN, THE SOPRANOS, LIE TO ME, and BEAUTY AND THE GEEK.)
Why Is Nick So Prolific?
Fear.
“The reason I write all the time is fear,” Santora says. “I felt what it was like to be in a job that I hated for six years… Now that I’m able to write, I feel that I’ve been given a reprieve by the governor. They had me strapped in; they had the needles to my forearm; and they were beginning to press down on the plunger. And then the governor called and said you don’t have to be a lawyer anymore. You can go write.” source
Last week I met a woman at a house party in Silver Lake, who’d been looking for work as an assistant editor. She told me she went far down the executive track: agency, broadcast network, assistant to a respected SVP (at least, according to Deadline.)
“But I realized, I didn’t want to go down that path. I saw my Boss’s life. I saw exactly how unhappy she was. I didn’t want that for myself.
“I always liked editing,” she said. “So I went back to do that.”
Will You Change Everything?
That desire to make the hairpin career turn can come at any moment. It might spring up on you like those “Save the Children” fundraising hipsters lurking in Trader Joe’s parking lots.
Or it might have been tickling away at you for years, waiting for the right moment of inspiration to manifest itself into action.
You don’t need a pre-existing business to pursue it. Or even a wonderfully understanding spouse who’ll give up their vacation so you can write a screenplay.
However, hairpin turns are easiest when you’re light. When it’s just you and your ambition and your desire to create something in this world, unencumbered by the baggage we’re told marks a successful life:
- A mortgage
- A nice car
- Expensive clothes
- A lifestyle that prioritizes perception over value
- And consumer debt
Not all baggage is bad. If we determine what’s really important to us, then we make it fit in our lives.
But when we’re presented with an opportunity to change everything, will we be able to take it?
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Photo Credit: Steven Christenson
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