Little Design Firm
If you're any good at what you do, you're going to get your share of fabulist dot com-style promises. Keeping your cool is simple if you've got something you like more than money.
For several years, I worked with a startup, which, more than anything else, is really just a process of convincing yourself that all the pain now is worth the rewards in the future. Or else your startup is privately funded, in which case you basically work for a corporation with a policy where employees can give themselves their own job titles, but I digress, and anyway, this was not the case for me.
From my experience dealing with people in both situations, though, I think it is safe to assume that either way, you are surrounded by people thinking about money. I did this. I inadvertently surrounded myself with people who thought and cared a lot more about money than I did.
And you know what? Slowly but surely, I started to care about money. It crept up on me. I started thinking about it. I started using it as motivation for myself and the people on my team.
I turned into exactly what I didn't want to be, and it was because I had nothing else. The hours were crap, the pay was bad, the responsibility was enormous. I had no social life to speak of, and barely any sleep. It was everything it wasn't supposed to be.
So that ended (I won't tell you how). And after a several-month tailspin coming out of the experience, I am glad to say I've finally got something else again: My little design firm, Design Less Better.
