College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/18/AR2006011801434_pf.html

by peter123 • 17 years ago

194 75 17 years ago

mitchellh• 17 years ago

I really dislike these posts, which are all the same "Person who skips college retires at 24" or "College really needed? This man makes 400,000 a year!"

Of course college doesn't guarantee that you'll come out making $100k a year or more, but also NOT going to college is the same.

As happy as I am for this person, I hope no one gets the wrong idea from these posts and just drops out. Having an idea is one thing, putting it together and having it be a success is another. If anything, I would say the YouTube and Facebook guys had it right, they made the product during college, released it during college, succeeded during college, and subsequently left college. Thats the way to do it IF ANY.

And for some people, school just isn't there thing. Anyways I'm rambling, I think my point has been made.

brandnewlow7• 17 years ago

The title of this link misreads the story a bit to re-cast it for Hackers. Yes, the guy's a dropout, yes the guy works two days a week, but I think his approach to how he positioned himself as THE pre-school birthday party magician is what's most interesting.

That and all the wonderful, wonderful writing. The adventure in Atlantic City is a highlight.

chris11• 17 years ago

Yeah I really agree. it seems like most of these posts are saying anyone can make 100k+ working a couple days a week just by finding the right job. Sure, it's possible. But people do it by finding a niche, and marketing themselves very well. And there isn't usually room in these niches for many people to make that kind of money. These posts usually remind me of those late night tv infomercials telling that I can make millions, I just need to spend a few hundred to learn how to do it.

I think that people can make that kind of money with little work, but they don't do it by following a defined career path.

NyxWulf• 17 years ago

It's interesting because there seems to be this ethos among the hacker/tech startup community that if you want to be successful you either need to be young, a college drop out, or an ivy league grad.

The Kauffman foundation did a study on entrepreneurship though and found that this idea is totally off base. (http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&sho...)

This article is fascinating - and well worth a read. If you are looking for a quick summary: More education directly correlates with better performance in your startup, and most founders are much older and have greater work experience than people would think.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

Wow are you ever missing the point of this story.

tjmc2• 17 years ago

You're assuming he read it

brandnewlow7• 17 years ago

This is a somewhat old article.

It's also very, very long.

It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years ago.

Here's the gist (from memory):

1. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids.

2. Guy has good sense of humor.

3. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living.

4. Guy targets the richest community of clients for his service.

5. Guy figures out what people are charging for pre-school birthday party magic shows and charges DOUBLE their price.

6. Guy markets his shows by hanging out around shopping malls where parents and kids wandered by, having fake conversations on his cell phone about non-existent work.

7. Guy works 10 birthday parties a weekend, charging $200 for a 30-minute magic show.

8. Parents feel guilty about dropping $200 on a 30-minute preschool magic show, but the kids ADORE the guy's funny act and tricks that blow up in his face. He's got a gift.

There's a great subplot about the magicians deep, dark secret, in fact it's what prompted the Washington Post reporter to shadow the guy for a few months. Parents were wondering why the magician kept showing up unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes, and why his gear was so beat up if he was making so much money.

I'll leave the surprises to those curious enough to read the whole thing.

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Thanks for the summary. This useless fluff piece lost me after the first page.

brandnewlow7• 17 years ago

How can you render judgment if you didn't read past page one?

peregrine2• 17 years ago

'This useless fluff piece'

I think your getting the wrong idea. A picture of a cat with a caption on it is a usesless fluff piece, a blog post of a video with someone talking about code is a fluff piece.

This isn't an article about start ups or code; but this article I'd argue will give you more as a human, as a entrepreneur, as a family member, as a citizen then any article you'd get from d2h or 37signals.

This article helps you use your brain in ways that people with engineering degrees have a hard time grasping sometimes. Sure you understand the deep intricacies of x programming language or you've got a really cool app, but it doesn't mean you understand people.

Almost every theory of intelligences says that there is more then one way to be a genius, be it in math, art, people, sports anything. And almost all theories will agree that people who are extremely smart in one area and never apply the brain outside of their specialty can be practically retarded in the other parts.

I've been thinking a whole bunch about this lately, as I go to an Engineering School and the sentiment is that Art Majors and Athletes and English majors are idiots cause they most likely won't be making money when they graduate.

I've been trying to make an argument that even they will agree to and understand, but to ask people to change their mind is like asking a rock to be more like sand.

mynameishere• 17 years ago

What's with the downmod party? I've read 100s of feature articles and this one was pretty dull, especially at the beginning. It does get better towards the end, but there's just nothing great about this guy, or his life, or his life-in-words. He seems really pathetic to me. Makes decent money playing a clown, and then throws it away in Atlantic City on gambling (and probably hookers and blow).

Eh. Except for the "clown" part, how is he different from a million other losers?

decode• 17 years ago

The author of the article also won the Pulitzer for writing this brilliant piece about skill, art, and modern life:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04...

mikeryan• 17 years ago

I've read it before, but this is too is worth a second look.

visitor4rmindia• 17 years ago

Thank you - that was interesting and beautiful.

biohacker42• 17 years ago

... their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.

Damn, I guess that answers the question: Would he still play music if he had been born to an illiterate family in a desolate rural part of a third world country? Yep, he still would.

comster• 17 years ago

my first impression too was WTF? the entire first page tells you almost nothing. Seeing that there were 5+ pages, no thanks....

dsil• 17 years ago

In this case, the first of 5 pages is nowhere near 20% of the story.

tremendo• 17 years ago

Thank you for the last couple of paragraphs of your summary that provided the motivation to actually read the article. To others here quick to dismiss it out-of-hand as just a fluff piece, it's anything but.

brandnewlow7• 17 years ago

No problemo. I remember reading it at work when it came out, thinking...what the heck IS this thing?

It came to me originally from the mailing list of Warren Ellis, a cranky, foul-mouthed British comic book writer who hates and despises everything he sees, hears, and reads. That morning he sent an e-mail out to the 12,000 people on his mailing list saying: "Here's something that isn't terrible. In fact, it might be the best thing you read all year."

That's the sort of endorsement that encourages you to keep at it.

http://www.warrenellis.com

PaulMorgan2• 17 years ago

I'm curious where this guy is now after three years. Is he still doing this gig or have his flaws caught up with him?

PaulMorgan2• 17 years ago

Answered my own question. He's still in business:

http://www.thegreatzucchini.com/index.html

brandnewlow7• 17 years ago

What's interesting about his page is that it doesn't even show his face on the front, just dozens of happy, delighted pre-schoolers.

The man knows what he's really selling to parents.

akikuchi• 17 years ago

I actually enjoy many of the posts about the creative (or at least somewhat non-traditional) things people do as solo entrepreneurs. After reading the entire article though, I do find it funny how this tagline was used to position the article for the HN community. The article is actually much more of a character study than a discussion of a business, and it takes a significant change in content after the first thousand words.

dasil0032• 17 years ago

Brilliant article, brilliant HN positioning, brilliant page partitioning. Best thing I've read on HN this year.

jibiki• 17 years ago

The way the article totally changes course on the last page is brilliant. This might be the only news article I've seen that used the hypertext format that well.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

"You could just have a party where you all played pin the tail on the donkey or musical chairs or something. But that is just not done in this part of D.C. If you did that, you would be talked about."

That's a microcosm of what I didn't like about DC. The culture is very status oriented and judgmental.

chops2• 17 years ago

That comment totally struck me while reading the article. I thought, "Wow, what an awful and fake little world that must be."

God forbid you be "talked about!"

shard3• 17 years ago

I think that humans in general are very status oriented and judgmental. Hacker culture is the same, we just focus on a different set of status indicators and pass judgment on a different set of criteria. Other cultures' values and judgments look unpleasant and silly to us, just as ours look unpleasant and silly to them.

jacoblyles2• 17 years ago

You have a point. Maybe I just didn't like the city because it didn't share my values.

squidbot• 17 years ago

3 years ago suburbanites were swimming in money and had nothing better to do with it. I doubt this guy is still pulling in a full weekend of @$300 shows.

Retric• 17 years ago

Some DC suburbs are still under 3% unemployment. Government consulting in one form or another is vary stable work when you can get it.

EX: I work for a multi-billion dollar company that grew over 10% last year while being vary profitable. Many people I work with have a combined family income over 250k/year, young children, and little free time.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

Flagged. Come on, really?

gabrielroth• 17 years ago

Yeah, really.

Alex39172• 17 years ago

Whatever, it's still a bad headline regardless of the quality of the article itself.

critic• 17 years ago

The fact that you were downmodded tells me that the bozos are now the majority of HN. Time for a new digg clone?

tjmc2• 17 years ago

Ok - it's a story about a clown. But does that mean it only satisfies the intellectual curiosity of bozos?

I'll take this article over another tawdry analysis of the financial crisis any day.

SwellJoe• 17 years ago

This is actually one of the better articles I've seen on HN lately. And, I've been a bozo here for quite some time.

spoiledtechie• 17 years ago

Brilliant article. Prob one of the best things I have read all year long.

WOW! Should make a movie about it.

jlees• 17 years ago

I'm already visualising Tom Hanks in the feature role. What a vivid story. We just need a happy ending, no? :)

apstuff• 17 years ago

When I read this article all I could think about was Raffi singing 'Banana Phone.' Now I can't get it out of my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-LbvFPLpeo&feature=playe...

there• 17 years ago

is "college dropout" really anything special these days?

quizbiz• 17 years ago

society tells me that if I want to make anything out of my life, college is the place to go. One poster in my High School flaunts that I will make one million dollars more in my lifetime if I go to college.

justlearning• 17 years ago

The title was misleading in the sense that the article in itself is much more than about creativity. I thought it had more to do with emotions, psychology and effects. After reading the whole article, I am in awe of how he knows kids so well! I feel sorry that creative professor mother + phd math father did only so much for their son, putting their own pursuits first instead. But I guess that is how today's world is and will be.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

You can read it like that, or you can read it as a story about a guy who could be leading a completely charmed life, except for the fact that the personality traits that give him instantaneous connections with 4 year olds also make it hard for him to lead a normal life --- the same way genetic mutations can make us more attractive and more susceptible to specific diseases, or the same way that David Foster Wallace's brain could ricochet through a thousand ideas in a couple pages, but also get so tangled up and hopeless that he was compelled to kill himself. As in, a story about how things that seem simple --- let's write an ebook, how to make $100,000 a year with a 2 hour work week! --- are actually really complex, because we're humans and not 300 word business model posts on Hacker News.

Is what I think you could think of it, is all.

shard3• 17 years ago

I don't quite see it as their parents putting their own pursuits first. Rather, he is so different from them in the way he thinks that they just don't relate to each other. Imagine a field that you have no interest in, or maybe even feel repulsion for, maybe it's NASCAR racing, or piano tuning, or salsa dancing, or the two argument starters: politics and religion. Now imagine your child has the kind of personality that will make him a master in that field. How do you relate to his thoughts and interests?

erlanger• 17 years ago

I remember when this came out in the Post mag a couple years ago here. I still don't get why they had to take a nice light-hearted story and dig up all of that dirt about the guy's gambling problem...it seemed sensationalist and completely irrelevant.

shard3• 17 years ago

It makes the person three-dimensional, as opposed to a light hearted human-interest story. A story about a clown that 4-year-olds love, I will forget in an hour. A story about a clown who gave up adulthood because of his past, that I will remember for many years.

tptacek5• 17 years ago

I like how careful he is with the tone he's writing. For instance, the story about the people across the hall; he doesn't let it blow up in your face, and he doesn't just let the air out of it either; he reels it in like a fisherman, letting a key detail out early, but still landing it with a climax.

Thanks for posting this. I had no idea about this guy, now I'm trying to track down everything he's written.

ciupicri2• 17 years ago

He and Seinfeld :-)

tptacek5• 17 years ago

And of course, this is the same writer who just got the "leaving babies to die in the car" story published, which just made the rounds:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02...

There's definitely a rhythm and a way of developing characters in common with all the stuff I've read from him so far.

Or how about this:

THE BEST-INFORMED PERSON I EVER KNEW was a friend of my grandfather's back in the Bronx, where I grew up. Every morning of every day of his life, this elderly man -- his name, as I recall, was Boris -- would dress impeccably in a suit and waistcoat and shuffle to the public library, where more than a dozen of the day's local and out-of-town newspapers were threaded through bamboo poles and hung from racks. One by one, Boris would read them all, front to back; at dusk, he would walk home alone. This daily pilgrimage was conducted with ecclesiastic solemnity, a quiet, dignified homage to the majesty of knowledge. Even as a little boy, in that intuitive if primitive way that children comprehend important things, I understood the fundamental truth that Boris was, in some clear but compelling way, a douche bag.

This guy is a genius.

blueben• 17 years ago

We rarely see a case of attention deficit disorder as obvious as this.

gnaritas• 17 years ago

Excellent article and excellent writing. Anyone complaining about this being too long has some ADD issues of their own; they should especially make the effort to read this as a warning what happens when such tendencies are allowed to take over their life.

peter123• 17 years ago

here's the Great Zucchini in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVjB4f_nBvQ&fmt=18

look_lookatme• 17 years ago

That is amazing.

mkuhn• 17 years ago

One of the best written stories I have ever read. Intriguing, funny and sad!

ananthrk• 17 years ago

Pretty moving story wonderfully written!!

omnivore• 17 years ago

Great article. He did his homework, targeted his audience and finally sees a payoff. But it took him 10 years of working in a nursery school and babysitting and party hosting at DZ for him to manage to get there. But good on him for recognizing that he had a gift and that he could make a living doing it.

plinkplonk• 17 years ago

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02...

another article by the same writer. A very sad one this time, but great writing.

College dropout makes $100,000 a year, with a two-day workweek

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