words of advice

Andrew Kessler, 30, business owner

I sat in my cubicle at age 27, and realized I had 40 more years of the same situation occurring every day until I could retire. 40 more years of allergy inducing padded walls and fluorescent bulbs casting off headache inducing green light. 40 more years of ever expanding office ass and scavenging for second hand meeting food to make the time go by.

And I realized I didn't want to waste my life like this.

A couple weeks later the chance to start a coffee company appeared out of nowhere. 

Chances are all around you. You just have to keep your eyes open for them. Most people keep their head down and hope to make it through the day. And while all of us fall into a rut at times, real changes in your life will occur when you're willing to throw off the security blanket you've wrapped around yourself.

The same goes for luck. Luck takes a lot of hard work. Most times you have to make your own. Sometimes the cosmos aligns in just the right way that allows you to have everything you want in the world without lifting a finger (see Hilton, Paris). Lets be honest though, we never respect a person who hasn't suffered in some way for their success. Luck comes from seeing the small chances that appear from time to time, and by being willing to grab for them when you see it.

Try to learn from other people's failures so you don't have to.

Never trust a person who says they've never failed. They're either full of shit or don't try hard enough.

Stop asking for approval and start doing. it's easier to apologize than it is to get someone to say yes.

Your reputation is all you have. Whether it's your credit report, handshake, or word, you'll be hard pressed to get it back once it's gone.

If you're ever depressed, NEVER play "August and Everything After" from Counting Crows.

Lastly, People love gossip. People also love giving advice. Take both with a grain of salt. The people giving it are just as lost as you are. 

Andrew Kessler is a founding partner of The Freaky Bean Coffee Company.

James C., 23, coach and law student

When I was a freshman at the University of New Hampshire, the business school brought in a series of successful entrepreneurs to speak to (and hopefully inspire) the new students. One speaker, Patricia Gallup, CEO of PC Connection (personal computer/accessories direct marketer mega-giant), said something that stuck with me over the years. Gallup revealed that PC Connection was not her first business, and that she had in fact driven several other start-ups into the ground. She said that she learned a lot from these failures, knowledge that she would use to found and run PC Connection, but that still doesn’t change the fact that for several years failure is all that she experienced.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I could give a shit about starting a business now—and back then, too.  That sort of thing just isn’t my bag. What never left me, though, was the air of confidence that followed Gallup around. She wasn’t some charming snake-oil salesman, nor was she particularly charismatic in any way. But she was bold; this much became apparent only a few sentences into her introduction. She conceptualized failure in a way that I had never seen before, as a necessary step to inevitable success. There were no excuses made for the failures, no blame on circumstances or other individuals: they were what they were, and she was comfortable with that.

About a year ago, my father and I were having a discussion about my future plans. He is very open about what he perceives to be his own shortcomings, and insists that I learn from his mistakes. In his opinion, the chief mistake of his life has been his timidity: he was never bold enough to take major risks, to put himself out there, before the judging eyes of others, on less than stable ground. According to my father (who is, in my opinion, a genius), he learned Gallup’s lesson too late in life: very successful people are very bold people, and the timid rarely get what they want.

Gallup’s confidence seemed to stem from a deep-seated belief that she would get what she wanted, no matter what. Was this overconfidence? Yeah, probably. But in the end, who cares? Look at where that’s gotten her. Now, imagine where timidity would have gotten her given her repeated disappointments. Right.

But getting over timidity is a bitch. In my opinion, confidence like Gallup’s only comes when you’ve failed so much that the common sting associated with failure just isn’t there anymore, or that it’s at least sufficiently dulled. When you can handle failure, you won’t focus on it, and you’ll look past it to (what you are sure will be) your eventual success. And yes, this sort of self-assuredness will draw out the cynics, the wet blankets, those who live to remind others that disaster and ruin are but a few short steps away. These people—all of whom are timid themselves—are bullies, cowards who stifle those who threaten to leave their frightened ranks.

Fuck them. What have cowards ever done?

James C. is a wrestling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach in Chicago. He will be beginning law school this fall.