Back at the end of 2010, I had my Lexus taken back and was being kicked out of my 2,600 square foot loft. I was spending all my money on Jameson and spending all my time watching movies off a projector on my wall. I reached a point where I had basically given up on life and was ready to go homeless. No more friends. No more business. No more investors. No more money. Free to live and roam free under a bridge for the rest of my life. Oh how joyous that day would have been. Yet it never came.
I called my mom and told her I was going homeless. She called my grandma. My grandma forced me to live with her for like nine months or something until I was able to mentally live on my own again.
You can always call family. They may put a roof over your head and feed you when you have nothing. That is what my grandma did.
You can also go to the DPSS (Department of Social Services) and get food stamps and welfare checks.
You can stay in bed and watch the world pass you by while you stay stuck and frozen in place. I did that before. It is not too bad, until the collectors start calling and taking your stuff.
But would an entrepreneur really do that?
Highly unlikely.
Instead, they would probably do what Nick Malik said. They would:
Get a job, save some money, make friends and look for opportunities to start over. This time, with the lessons learned to make you better.
(Sorry for kind of stealing your answer Nick. I hope you do not mind. P.S Upvote his answer, not mine.)
After I had freeloaded for about 9 months off grandma, in mid 2011, I took a small loan for a few hundred bucks from my friend, moved back to Los Angeles to live on a sofa, found a job and started over. After two or three months, I paid my friend back.
After about six months of partying and experiencing a few tragedies, I started to put my life together. In 2012, I started living below my means and saving as much money as I could. Then in mid 2013, I took it upon myself to try out an opportunity to start over by writing online and created incoming opportunities and made genuine new friends.
Actually, the opportunity of writing on Quora gave me so much momentum, I was able to take close to six months off in between March and August of this year to figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. I used that time to scour through my incoming opportunities, while I was battling the fear and worries of not achieving anything before the age of 30.
Coincidentally, this lapse of time also gave me time to deal with my own lack of self confidence, which I have finally been able to truly overcome, with all the blessings that have come into my life. It also gave me the opportunity to meet face to face with my mentor earlier this year, whom later had invited me to do a podcast on his show.
Now I have money saved, I have genuine friends across the globe, I am able to employ a 16 year old girl to work for me, I wrote a book, got featured in a few publications and have been receiving consulting, branding and content marketing gigs from other businesses. Oh, and my investment manager actually earned me a pretty decent return in the last few weeks.
Not to mention, I now have thousands of inbox messages to filter through with opportunities ranging from piss poor to amazing and everything in between. Sure, there is a little hate and jealousy here and there, but the positivity of the messages I receive and the impact I have made on the lives of others (from what they tell me) is always a rewarding experience.
Yay! I did it! I did something with my life before I was 30! All because I followed Nick Malik’s simple, yet profound advice!
Anyway, it is funny how such simple advice like that works, is it not?
P.S. I’m probably going to release a few other books sometime this year or late next year, in regards to online harassment, branding yourself and how to not get promoted a corporate job. Maybe even a book on how to overcome impostor syndrome as well.
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Originally posted on Quora.