Burn Your Portfolio: Stuff they don’t teach you in design school, but should

100. Floods Happen

The first three of my four self-employment years consisted of me slaving away in my basement. Forty-hour weeks became eighty-hour weeks, and my stress level was through the roof. My wife found and convinced me to hire my first employee, and my mother-in-law found my second employee. It was as if they were bringing home stray puppies for me to adopt.

My basement office was at maximum capacity with three workstations—one in each corner of the room—and a small television in the fourth corner to keep me company late at night. It didn’t take long for us to realize that we needed to find some office space. My conservative nature led me to find some cheap space just down the street from my home. We signed a one-year lease and started ...