Balance is B.S.

CHAPTER 10Choose Your Own Adventure: How to make career moves that match your values

I was born into a third-generation mining family. My role models weren't business owners; my dad has had the same job since he was 17. To this day, my mother has never driven a car. She was a 100% stay-at-home mom. But she was very motivational. She told us we could be anything, which was great.

Mining towns are very sporting orientated, very male oriented. Nearly every guy got a job in the mines and nearly every girl got married. I was different; I was artistic. I wanted a challenge, and high school wasn't challenging. It was horrible and I hated every minute of it. I spent a lot of time writing music and drawing. That was my outlet.

My father let me pick one subject at school and he picked the rest. He picked Maths 1, Maths 2, Physics, and Chemistry … I picked Art. I graduated school with a pretty good score, enough to get in to university and study Law. My dad was horrified when I said I was going to study Art. He said art was a hobby, not a business.

College felt like high school: not much of a challenge. So I decided to do a minor in marketing on top of my major in visual art. I graduated early, when I was 19, and moved to Australia's Gold Coast for my first job at a marketing agency.

I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't my scene—all egos and pool tables. I loved the work, though, so I decided to go out on my own and pick clients that I believed in. I was never one of those marketers ...