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'Quit Your Day Job Is Garbage Advice' (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: While Daymond John was building his clothing line FUBU, which would evolve into a $6 billion brand, the entrepreneur was living on the tips he made waiting tables at Red Lobster. "I was working at Red Lobster for five years as a waiter as I was running this business," the Shark Tank star said at the iConic conference in New York City on Wednesday. At first "it was 40 hours at Red Lobster and six hours at FUBU. Then it was 30 hours at Red Lobster and 20 hours at FUBU, because money started to come in." Even after FUBU started to take off, John continued waiting tables. He wouldn't do things any differently if he could, he told the audience on Wednesday: "Don't quit your day job. [...] Let's say I was making an average of $40,000 a year," he continued. "After five years, that's $200,000 of salary. I would have had to sell $1 million more worth of FUBU product to bring home the $200,000, but I didn't have to do that. I just had to sacrifice time."

15 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Good advice if you work at Red Lobster by mykepredko · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anywhere else... not so much.

    A few points why bringing up a start up at Red Lobster works over basically any other kind of job:
    1. You can pick your hours and change them on a moment's notice.
    2. It's not brain heavy work. You can keep the start up as your primary focus.
    3. You don't have to worry about your employer accusing you of using their resources (and IP) to start a business.

    It actually makes a lot of sense to get a job working at Starbucks/Red Lobster/serving food anywhere when doing a start up to ensure that the rent isn't something you're worried about and you can put that extra focus on the startup.

    1. Re:Good advice if you work at Red Lobster by EvilSS · · Score: 4, Informative

      1. You can pick your hours and change them on a moment's notice.

      I'm guessing you never worked in food service if you are saying this. While it's true these types of jobs offer some scheduling flexibility, they certainly don't let you pick your own hours or change them at a moment's notice. At most restaurants shifts are usually scheduled a week or so out and if you don't like it you better find someone to trade shifts with or you are most likely SOL.

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    2. Re:Good advice if you work at Red Lobster by farble1670 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But if your day job is coding, you can work on your startup code at your day job. Even if your boss walks by, he is just going to see a screen full of code, and assume you are working hard. I did this for six months, and then right before I quit I got a glowing performance review and a raise. They never realized what was actually going on.

      So basically you were stealing from your employer for 6 months. Bravo!

      Maybe your mommy never taught you this, but rule as to whether an action is moral is not whether you can get away with it.

  2. "I just had to sacrifice time." by Immerman · · Score: 3, Funny

    Because everyone knows money is far more valuable than time...

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  3. Suvivor Bias by FFOMelchior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most billionaires probably have garbage advice, once you separate out the survivor bias. That said, this tidbit makes more sense than most.

    1. Re:Suvivor Bias by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Never listen to advice from billionaires. They hate competition.

  4. it's not IF you quit your day job it's WHEN by green1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary says you shouldn't quit your day job, but obviously he did because he doesn't still wait tables at Red Lobster. It's about WHEN you quit your day job.

    This will be a fairly personal decision, but a bunch of factors come in to play. first of all, if you can't survive on the money your startup is providing, then obviously you need to keep your day job. And once you can make more money running your own company than spending that same time at your day job, it's a no-brainer to quit to focus on your startup. The real challenge is the in-between states, and that's going to depend on your opinion of your existing job. Is it something you enjoy? and does it provide you the flexibility to work on the other project that you're passionate about? in that case stick around. Is it something you despise? Do you absolutely detest going to work each morning? is it interfering with your passions? In that case it may be worth taking a pay cut to work on your startup.

  5. also, Never follow your passion.... by slew · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Never follow your passion, but always bring it with you. -- Mike Rowe

    https://www.prageru.com/sites/...

    There are only two things I can tell you today that come with absolutely no agenda. The first is “Congratulations.” The second is “Good luck.” Everything else is what I like to call, “The Dirty Truth,” which is just another way of saying, “It’s my opinion.”

    And in my opinion, you have all been given some terrible advice, and that advice, is this:

    Follow your passion.

    Every time I watch the Oscars, I cringe when some famous movie star—trophy in hand—starts to deconstruct the secret of their success. It’s always the same thing: “Don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t have what it takes, kid!”; and the ever popular, “Never give up on your dreams!”

    Look, I understand the importance of persistence, and the value of encouragement, but who tells a stranger to never give up on their dreams, without even knowing what it is they’re dreaming? How can Lady Gaga possibly know where your passion will lead you?

    Have these people never seen American Idol?

    Year after year, thousands of aspiring American Idols show up with great expectations, only to learn that they don’t possess the skills they thought they did. What’s really amazing though, is not their lack of talent—the world is full of people who can’t sing. It’s their genuine shock at being rejected—the incredible realization that their passion and their ability had nothing to
    do with each other.

    Look, if we’re talking about your hobby, by all means let your passion lead you. But when it comes to making a living, it’s easy to forget the dirty truth: just because you’re passionate about something doesn’t mean you won’t suck at it.

    And just because you’ve earned a degree in your chosen field, doesn’t mean you’re gonna find your “dream job.”

    Dream Jobs are usually just that—dreams. But their imaginary existence just might keep you from exploring careers that offer a legitimate chance to perform meaningful work and develop a genuine passion for the job you already have. Because here’s another Dirty Truth: your happiness on the job has very little to do with the work itself.

    On Dirty Jobs, I remember a very successful septic tank cleaner, a multi-millionaire, who told me the secret to his success:

    “I looked around to see where everyone else was headed,” he said, “And then I went the opposite way. Then I got good at my work. Then I began to prosper. And then one day, I realized I was passionate about other people’s crap.”

    I’ve heard that same basic story from welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, HVAC professionals, hundreds of other skilled tradesmen who followed opportunity—not passion— and prospered as a result.

    Consider the reality of the current job market.Right now, millions of people with degrees and diplomas are out there competing for a relatively narrow set of opportunities that polite society calls “good careers.” Meanwhile, employers are struggling to fill nearly 5.8 million jobs that nobody’s trained to do. This is the skills gap, it’s real, and its cause is actually very simple: when people follow their passion, they miss out on all kinds of opportunities they didn’t even know existed.

    When I was 16, I wanted to follow in my grandfather’s footsteps. He was a skilled tradesman who could build a house without a blueprint. That was my passion, and I followed it for years. I took all the shop classes at school, I did all I could to absorb the knowledge and skill that came so easily to my granddad.

    Unfortunately, the ha

  6. I wrote my first novel while working 60/week by netsavior · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was working as a software developer on a very demanding project, pulling 60+ hours a week most weeks while I wrote my first novel.

    It was a long process, and it was very hard, and yes I had no free time between my money job and my passionate speculative job.
    As time went on I finally finished the book, and sold thousands of copies.

    I am proud to say that today I make 6 figures a year...





    ...as a software developer, because that's my real job and nearly every novelist who ever lived didn't make a living at it, and it is important to have realistic dreams.

  7. Bullshit advice by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Like any from anyone who "made it big". And it's not even that they try to deceive and mislead you because they don't want you to succeed.

    Any time one of those self-made billionaires tells you how he made it and what to do, you're essentially listening to someone who won the jackpot in the life lottery telling you the numbers he played. At the same time, you could ask a thousand people who didn't make it who will tell you exactly the same, but they just didn't have the luck to be at that right place at the right time that this guy was.

    That what he did worked for him at that time when he did it is obvious. Just like playing those numbers on that day worked for the lottery player. You will not reliably repeat this by doing the same, for this too many variables changed in the game. Even if there was no FUBU today, opening a chain like this today would fail simply because the market changed and there is no longer the amount of young people with expendable money, just to name one factor that makes or breaks this business.

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  8. Re:millennials? by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I am not sure what is with this Millennial hate? Is it only because Generation X was just a boring name. I mean Generation X for a short time was the slacker generation, but that stopped fairly quickly. The Baby Boomers in my book are still the worse. Living off the benefits of winning WWII, where they grew up in housing funded by state government, and with state of the art infrastructure, parents who with the GI Bill had college education. All this stuff allowed them to get drugged up during their late teens and early 20's and still get into Dads business as a professional to pick up his business, learning the ropes and having dad retire at an early age. Then to call yourself a success if you didn't drive the company to the ground, and keeping your job well past the age you should retire, not training the newer generation the ropes. Living in a time period of long term economic growth.
    Now they are retiring, and the kids are trying to fill the void, however Boomers will not let them get a foot hold, cutting their salary so they cannot make a living, and then when they say it is unfair, they will just say you kids don't know about hard work.

    For the most part Millennials are very hard workers, they found a way to survive in a period of economic stress, with a hostile to them work force.

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  9. That's great if you can work 70-80 hours a week by rsilvergun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Most can't, and then get told they're a failure as a human being when they can't. The worst thing is lots of them believe it. That's where the race to the bottom starts.

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    1. Re:That's great if you can work 70-80 hours a week by erice · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why wouldn't you be a failure of a human being if you couldn't work 70-80 hours a week? Realistically, unless you have other responsibilities, you should be able to easily work 100 hours a week. That's not even 16 hours every day!

      The missing qualifiers are "while doing quality work" and "having quality of life".

      Most people don't even manage 40 hours per week of quality work. If working 70 hrs/week means your work quality suffers then your startup is almost certainly doomed. If your day job catches on to your declining work quality, you may lose that too.

      Sacrifice quality of life for too long and you get burnout, which also degrades quality of work.

  10. Re: millennials? by Khyber · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The ,main reason people don't/can't move is the actual cost of moving.

    The average cost is about $5,500.

    How many broke motherfuckers you know that have that much in the bank they can just drain so they can pack up and move?

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  11. Arnold Schwarzenegger use to give bad advise by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Informative

    to his competitors. When he was competing the competitions were pretty friendly and it didn't occur to anyone he'd lie to them. He gave them a routine that was massive overwork. They tried to stick to it and of course burned themselves out.

    What's the old saying? Never ask a man how he made his first million. Odds are if someone didn't inherit it or win the lottery they did something awful to get it.

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