Natalie Prass Quotes

I was writing full time after quitting a job as a high school English teacher, and I hadn't been able to sell anything, and my bank account was down to zero, and all of my friends were like 'What are you doing in the basement, when are you going to get a real job?', and my parents thought I'd completely lost it.

At the end of drama school, I made a contract with myself: I'd try acting for five years. I was 26. I had already spent eight years working in restaurants and gas stations. So I had seen enough small businesses to understand that that's what acting is: a small business.

I was pushing for a career in poetry and of course the received wisdom was that you would never make a living at it.

Of course, you would have to be insane to hope your child grows up to be a playwright or poet. Given the odds, you would have to be quite cavalier about your children's future.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

When I started my first company, I still had a 40-hour a week job. I was working on my company on nights and weekends before I took the plunge and gave up a salary.

When I first thought about leaving the traditional route of a 9-to-5 career to pursue full-time YouTube, it was terrifying - not many people were doing it. The thought was I have to have money saved up, because this very likely might fail. From the start, I had to give it my all for it to work.

Well, I've thought many times when my career was in the toilet, that I was going to have to seriously consider getting another job, I don't know what I'd do.

When did it become a problem to be a small businessman and become successful? The small businessman - like my father, or like me?

Well, yes, as I was a rather bad actor then and I wasn't making enough money, I thought, to make enough money to not make money as an actor, I'd better do some writing.

I worked full time jobs, basically doing manual labor until I could make enough money supporting myself as a musician.

People have left their jobs for the more profitable one of selling apples.

When I was up in college, I had a friend, and he was the only guy who knew I wasn't going to be able to attend school no more because I had a child on the way. I remember we was right at the lunch table. I was like, 'Man, I should start boxing.' I felt like every fighter that's on TV made a lot of money. I was like, 'You gotta make a lot of money.'

We need to see many more people starting businesses and becoming their own boss, but the squeezed middle exists as much within this group as in the population at large as rising costs are hitting small businesses - who after all are consumers too.

My parents probably were delighted when I chose acting, because if there is one job in the world that is less financially reliable than acting, it is art.

In 2008, after holding down a day job for all of six weeks, I gave up on the whole job thing to pursue an online business. At the time, I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, but I figured if I was going to be broke and miserable, I might as well be while working on my own terms.

I started Verite on savings from three years working at Applebee's in Times Square. I was a ridiculously good waitress. I was making more money than my brother, who worked at a start-up.

In Brazil, when you say you're going to be an artist you always get that point of view that this is a crazy career and you might not make it. In my case, it kind of happened.

My father was a small-businessman, and if he didn't get up and go to work, there would be no business.

When I say, 'doin' it, doin' it, doin' it' to a group of small business owners, they immediately respond. They recognize the experience of doing the same things over and over. Keeping the business afloat without ever getting ahead. And it's more than frustrating - it's heartbreaking.

With all the awards I've won, you'd think that I'd at least be able to make a living. It's a really terrible situation.

It's funny to think that when you get done with an acting job, you're considered unemployed. There are definitely times when those checks don't last forever. I went to college at a private school, and I racked up quite a bit of debt. I was very slow to pay them back.

If you're going to start a company, it's not going to be in the millions of dollars, but it's going to be something - for a lot of these kids - out of the trunk of their car, the same way that I did.

I had it in my head when I was in college that I wanted to be a writer, but it took me a long time to commit to being a writer. Up until then, I had worked one dead-end job after another while writing on the side.

I was an artist - I fancied myself an artist - I sold paintings at bars to pay my rent.