“I was winging it for so long that I’d gotten to a point where I felt like it was too late to ask more questions about this job,” she said. “I just thought, I need to move on before they fire me.” Once, she went home to continue working, and her father came home early from work. Jane remembered, “I told him I was sick that day.” So when her business partner left on a monthlong vacation — ironically, at the same time Jane had finally quit her job — Jane began taking photos of their products and uploading them online. “I had felt like that was the only way to scale,” she explained. “So then I was like, ‘Can you please just look at the online store? I really think we should give this a go. Let’s just give it a crack for a few more months,’” Jane said, but her business partner was ultimately done. After a month, she ended up getting a job as a receptionist at a hair-removal clinic. “It was not where I thought I would be at that age with my degree and work experience,” she admitted. “So by default, the only other option was to start another online business.” After those six months, Jane moved out and, as the business began getting more successful, told her parents she was on unpaid leave. “They were happy to see it was doing well, but I think they still liked the idea that I had this job to go back to,” she added. “But when I told them how long I’d been pretending to go to work, they were shocked.” “I look at my friends who just auditioned or tried out for everything in high school. They missed some, but you don’t remember that. You remember the hits, and then that’s how you get ahead.”
