Work-life balance for founders doesn't look like work-life balance for everyone else. Starting a company isn't a nine-to-six job - or a nine-to-nine job, or a nine-to-midnight job.
I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world. I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it. A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.
I come from a very normal day job, a very normal upbringing, so I had six or seven years working in an office nine to five in human resources. I had the normal life and kind of thought maybe this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life but still had that passion and that yearning for music.
It was a matter of not living lavishly but enjoying what you had, growing things with your hands, working hard, but not being tied to a nine-to-five job, and generally feeling that there's more to life than money.
I give 110% while I am working. I know I do, because I have been doing this since I was nine. This is a way of life for me. So whether it be successful or not is not in my hands. I still do my job, the best I can.
I read 'The Hobbit' only when I was an adult. I had a lot of friends, teenagers, who discovered reading through 'The Hobbit,' but it wasn't something that I discovered until later in life.
My job, my whole life, I've always had that kind of doubter, people have always doubted me. And I don't know how I would succeed without it. So I welcome it, and it gives me a challenge, and I will see if I can live up to my challenge.
I had to overcome challenge after challenge in order to take my life from nothing to living my dreams.
I always had that get-up-and-go to work for myself - I never wanted a nine-to-five job.
As a running back, it takes five offensive linemen, a tight end, a fullback and possibly two wide receivers, in order to make my job successful.
When you makes movies, you usually make good money. But it is also a very tough job. Once you enter the public's eye, you have to be aware that you give up a huge part of your own life. And it is never a job from nine to five.
The guy who says, 'I love the challenge of managing,' is one step from being out of a job. I don't welcome any challenge. I'd rather have nine guys named Robinson.
We played ten packed-out shows at the Kremlin in just seven days and only discovered later that everyone in the crowd for the first three nights was a politician. They had all come from the nine Soviet time zones just to see us.
Every time I've had to do journalistic investigations, I've cursed, but later I discovered that it had helped me enormously with writing fiction. It's the one thing that can save me from becoming an academic writer.
I'm the non-executive chairman of nine or so major companies, and on the nine companies, it's a little trying because you jump from one industry to another, as the case might be. But one had the reasonable knowledge of those nine activities, and it's been an exciting job.
Even when my parents were together, they both had to travel and work, and it wasn't like they had nine-to-five jobs. In that way, it wasn't a normal family life.