Bread and Butter vs The Big Project
Posted by Giovanni Intini | Filed under Business, Italy
A month or so ago I had the luck of being able to talk with Marco Palombi, one of the few Italian enterpreneurs that have succeded.
It was a pleasant and inspiring experience, mostly because I discovered that he encountered the same problems we all do, but was able to overcome them. What hit me like a rock though, was the fact that he didn’t earn a single cent for five years. That’s an important fact that shows success doesn’t come with zero effort. You have to believe so much in what you do that you’re willing to risk five years of your life to reach the goal you set for yourself.
Unfortunately strong beliefs are not all that’s needed. You have to find a way to sustain yourself while you work on your big projects, and I have to resort to bread and butter jobs to earn what I need to go on with my life.
I think there are many people among you that are in the same situation and struggle daily trying to balance those jobs with what you really would like to do. Sometimes b&b jobs are well paid, sometimes they’re interesting too, but they are no substitute for the rush of energy you get when you work on your own projects.
In the South of Italy this situation exacerbates, because b&b projects aren’t well paid here, and you have to work more for less money, and that’s not an ideal situation.
Sometimes I think I would be better just dropping unpaid projects, my own brainchildren, and getting some sleep at night, but there’s something in the back of my head that tells me I would not be happy doing that, and time after time I keep listening to that voice.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s the voice of freedom, the freedom of doing what we really like to do, creating cool technologies.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:01 pm
It’s a good article that confirm the idea that we must continue working hard to reach what we really want.
Don’t be scared of anything!
Leonardo
March 23rd, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Few weeks ago I reorganized my blogroll creating the “Blogs for Real” category. Here I was going to collect all those blogs who are really personal. You can find different types of blogs news or marketing oriented but blogs for real are all those you can find deep blogger’s soul insights in. tempe.st blog is in this category.
The Reading “Bread and Butter vs Big Project” post of tempe.st brought to my mind the first rule of good writing: “let the river of your consciousness to roll”.
I’m a consultant that means I daily fight to bootstrap my “solo” company. Yes when I win the bid I’m on the fore on the “team working” stage but when the spot is turned off you have few friends to rely on, your family and some good blogging buddies.
Entrepreneurs must have a unique vision in their own mind, that’s the key of their success and the reason they are alone in the early stage. They have to be “fault tolerant” and able to stand up again and jump ahead the crowd following their thin red line. Finding on their way friends that are loosing sleep, believing that their dreams will be real things not only money, richness or fame but real things never seen or used before, well guys, finding this people is the first, precious resource for your company.
For this kind of nuggets The blogosphere in the richer mine human beings could have ever dug.
April 11th, 2007 at 7:23 pm
[...] I have been criticizing the lack of capital in Italy since I began blogging on tempe.st, but capital isn’t the only resource we lack. There’s also a shortage of good heads. The hundreds of talented coders are working around the clock and have to say no to interesting ideas all the time, and obviously can’t find the energies to work on their big projects. [...]
January 24th, 2008 at 6:00 am
if you stop following your hearth, you stop dreaming. and if you stop dreaming, you start dying.