My Reality Check Bounced! - Jason Ryan Dorsey [4]
Tiffany, like you, was standing at a real-world crossroad. She was going to either let her reality check keep bouncing or cash in on her courage. She made the right choice and so can you.
HOW DO I KNOW ALL THIS?
Because I’ve been there, done that. I’ve dedicated the last nine years of my life to listening to and helping people who feel frustrated, beaten down, uninspired, trapped, and lost. To accomplish this I’ve traveled over a million miles and talked with more than five hundred thousand people about what makes life worth living.
My quest has taken me from quiet ranches in Kansas to bustling ports in Maine to crowded cities in Egypt, Finland, and Spain. I’ve been hired to advise some of the wealthiest twentysomethings in the world. I’ve freely helped thousands more scratching by in abject poverty. I’ve built a thriving career teaching ordinary people how to break free and live extraordinary lives.
In the process, I’ve learned all of us have room to grow. Rich kids in the suburbs taught me that we all have insecurities we must address. Children I’ve met who survived genocide taught me that there is no limit to human resilience. Twentysomethings who graduated from Ivy League colleges and then moved in with their moms showed me that potential alone does not guarantee success. Most of all, I’ve learned that making your life the way you want it starts with jumping in with both feet.
At eighteen years old, I risked everything I had to follow my gut by leaving college as a junior to write a book. This was the scariest—and in my parents’ view at the time dumbest—decision I’ve ever made. I had worked hard to start college earlier than normal and had great job offers awaiting my graduation. By withdrawing from school I was trading my path to Wall Street riches for the unknown hardships of living with meaning. I had no idea what I was getting into, only what I was leaving behind.
I left college because I felt the path that I was on—the standard go to college, get a good job, get married, make babies, and so on—was no longer inspiring. The one passion I had was helping people who, like me, came from challenging backgrounds. I thought writing a practical book teaching young people how to get a head start on the real world could make a difference.
I wrote that book in my college dorm room at age eighteen. Writing the book took me three weeks—it’s amazing how fast you can type when your future is riding on it. Then I borrowed money from everyone I knew and paid to publish the book myself. This was the only way I could think to get the book in to the hands of the young people who I thought could most benefit from it.
Having spent all my borrowed money on publishing the book, I wound up spending the next year sleeping on the floor of a friend’s garage apartment. Every day I went around my city telling anyone who would listen what I was up to. That entire year I lived on about $4 per day (I can cook ramen noodles thirty-eight ways). Before turning nineteen, I managed to ring up over $50,000 in debt thanks to loans, credit cards, and business lines of credit. My friends were impressed, and my parents were terrified.
Progress that first year was excruciatingly slow. Sometimes I felt as if I were going in circles, and other times I felt as if I were repeatedly hitting my head on a concrete wall. So many nights I went to sleep on the cheap beige carpet depressed and frustrated. My big break came when I was invited to speak to a group of students and teachers about my book. In this one speech to forty people, my message found an audience. They told other people who told other people, which led to more speeches and more books.
Over 1,550 schools and colleges eventually adopted my first book, Graduate to Your Perfect Job, as required reading. That launched me into keynoting conferences for everyone from corporate executives and wealthy entrepreneurs to community events for gang leaders, college students, and single parents. In three years, I went from sleeping on a garage floor to meeting the president of the United