52 Cups of Coffee: Inspiring and insightful stories for navigating life’s uncertainties (11 page)

Sam Rosen

Lovely Bake Shop in Chicago, Illinois

Regular coffee

There is more than one way to approach life.

Cup 20 came with a riddle:

If I handed you a pen and asked, “what is this?” you would say, “a pen.” If I asked what you did with the pen, you would say, “write.” And you would be correct because that’s what it is, and that’s what it does.

But what if I handed the same pen to a
dog? She wouldn’t use it to write; she would use it as a chew toy. Is she wrong? No, from a dog’s perspective, a pen is more useful as a toy than a writing tool.

Hand the pen to an absent-minded college student
, and it could become a bookmark. An engineer might see it as a combination of parts: a plastic casing that holds a tube of ink with a dispensing mechanism. You get the picture.

The
pen doesn’t have to be a pen—it can be whatever you make it.

* * *

The above story was a concept Sam Rosen presented to me after we’d been volleying stories back and forth for 45 minutes inside an adorable café. I was in Chicago visiting a friend who introduced me to Sam. The snow outside was blowing fiercely, but Sam’s relaxed demeanor and creative perspective made for easy and enjoyable conversation. I told him a little about myself, and he chronicled the Bohemian steps he had taken that had led to his current role as a founding partner at One Design Company.

At some point in the conversation, he stopped and said there were two ideas
by which he lived. The first was a quote by former Major League Baseball player and general manager Branch Rickey:
Luck is the residue of design.

The second, the pen-parable, was a Buddhist principle about perspective and value; a reminder that there
was more than one right way to approach any situation.

Sam ha
d an interesting approach to life, especially school. One of the first things he said to me was that he knew early on he was good at computers—not necessarily the best, but certainly good enough to turn it into a career. The value a traditional education didn’t mean much to Sam, he had self-taught skills and knew what he wanted to do with his life. Arbitrary learning didn’t seem worth the effort.

That perspective
explained the 2.1 GPA on his high-school diploma. In fact, during his last week of high school, he had had to beg one of his teachers to give him a passing grade so he could graduate.

However, i
t’s not that he wasn’t capable of getting good grades. Sam had decided he wanted to go to the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena—a leader in art and design education. Unsurprisingly, he didn’t get accepted, but he did receive a handwritten rejection letter saying they liked him, but with a 2.1 GPA, they weren’t sure he could handle the rigorous academics of the school.

The value of school had now changed for Sam; it became his passport to Pasadena. He spent a semester at
Colombia College in Chicago, finished with a strong GPA, and transferred to the Art Center.

He left after a year.

His year at the rigorous school reminded him that, from his perspective, college was just a place where you spent a lot of money so someone could force you to do work and then criticize it when you finished. Sam had been starting projects his whole life; he didn’t need to pay someone for that, so he dropped out.

At that point in time, he found work with a web-design firm. The owner, who charged $150 an hour for each project, would contract work to Sam, who worked for $50 an hour. Sam looked at the situation and real
ized something: if this guy could make $150 an hour and Sam was doing most of the work, there was no way Sam couldn’t do the same, or better. So he decided to start a web-design firm.

He figured if his idea failed
; he could always go back to working for someone else.

* * *

After six years, it looked like Sam wouldn’t need to apply for jobs anytime soon. One Design had seen double-digit growth for the past five years, grown to a dozen employees and established a client list that includes Groupon, Xerox, and New York Magazine.

Sam
’s approach doesn’t work for everyone—in fact; it doesn’t work for a lot of people. But Sam is successful because he is both passionate about what he is doing and willing to spend hours developing his skills. Whether knowingly or not, Sam took an honest assessment of himself—his likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses—and discovered the path that works best for him. With a supportive family and the courage to take calculated risks, he made his approach work.

* * *

Of course, I’m not advocating a lax approach to school or dropping out of college; I’m pointing out the value of finding what works best for you. Just like there is more than one way to look at a pen, there is more than one way to approach life, school, careers, etc. You have to pick one, and then exert the effort needed to make it work.

That
’s been a recurring lesson over first 20 Cups. But what is different about Cup 20 is this: Instead of helping me find my approach, Sam reminded me to respect the choices others make. Everybody’s approach is different, and just because they don’t do things your way doesn’t mean they are doing them the wrong way.

I
don’t want people judging my life’s ambitions, so I shouldn’t judge theirs. It’s easy to discount the kid who barely survived high school and left college early. But one day, that kid could be your boss.

Torya Blanchard

Good Girls Go To Paris Crepes in Detroit, Michigan

Small house coffee

You only get one life—make the most of it.

Torya Blanchard was caught shoplifting a few weeks before a trip to Paris for her 16th birthday. When she got home, her mother’s furious words were simple, “Only good girls go to Paris!”

Her mother, who had a change of heart and let Torya go on the trip,
doesn’t remember the scolding, but it was something Torya would never forget. Fifteen years after that trip to Paris, when Torya decided to open a crepe shop in Downtown Detroit, she knew exactly what to name it—Good Girls Go to Paris Crepes.

* * *

A few months prior to Cup 21, I was at a conference in Detroit, when I overheard a few snippets of a conversation happening next to me, something about a can’t-miss crepe shop. When I got back to East Lansing, I did some research and discovered Good Girls and its owner, Torya Blanchard, the “Francophile, fashionista and fearless crepe-maker.” With a description like that, I knew I needed to talk to her.

So there I was, sitting in the small shop, with its boldly painted red walls lined with French film posters and a large menu of crepe options that made my mouth water. The wo
man at the counter told me Torya was on her way, and offered me a cup of coffee. I found a table where I could watch the employees making the crepes, which brought back great memories of my two trips to Paris.

When Torya walked in, her big smile and loud “hello” shook me out of my trip down memory lane. I stood up to introduce myself, reaching to shake her hand. She ignored my gesture, instead giving me a big hug—talking continuously as she grabbed herself a cup of coffee and pulled up a chair at my table.

I didn’t know what to expect from the meeting, but I was sure of one thing: it was going to be fun. Torya had a personality that filled the room. It wasn’t just her big smile and booming voice, it was also her Ray Ban glasses and hair with a mind of its own. She had a quirky demeanor that mixed a cool composure with contagious enthusiasm that made swapping stories even more entertaining.

* * *

Torya had been working on an engineering degree at Michigan Tech when she decided it was too boring for her tastes. She’d run into a woman at a Study Abroad Fair who told her about an opportunity to work in Paris as an au pair. Torya had loved the idea—a two-year adventure in Paris would give her time to figure out a new direction for life. So she booked her ticket, packed her bags, and took off across the ocean. By the time her trip had ended, she knew what she wanted to do. She transferred to Wayne State University, earned a degree in French and started teaching at a Detroit high school.

Torya enjoyed teaching French. She lined her
classroom walls with French film posters and told stories about French culture. She loved getting to know the students, and although the administrative tasks might have been draining at times, she had no plans to leave her job.

Until a seemingly insignificant thing happened.

Torya had left work on a Thursday afternoon to catch a spinning class, but when she got to the gym, the class was empty. She had come on the wrong day. The mix-up bothered her, and she thought, “Really, Torya? Your life is so busy and complex; you can’t get to a spinning class on the right day? This is what your life has come to?”

The moment made her notice something she hadn
’t noticed before. She wasn’t as happy with life as she knew she could be. She decided to get on a bike anyways and do some thinking—take an inventory of her life. She asked herself a basic question:
What do I love to do?

She knew she loved people, and loved French culture, but how could she combine the two?
A restaurant? The only thing she knew how to cook was crepes…but her crepes were
good
, and she loved making them.

That
’s when it clicked—right there on a bike in an empty exercise room, Torya realized what she needed to do. She would leave her teaching job of five years and open a crepe shop.

A few days later, she walked past an empty storefront where a hotdog stand had recently shut down. It was just a small 48-square-foot shop, but to Torya
, it was perfect. Her friends and family thought she was crazy, but she didn’t care. It was what she now calls her “Fight Club moment”—the instant she decided to go all-in, to risk everything to make the dream a reality. She called the number on the for-sale sign, cashed in her 401k, and got to work.

It
took months of planning, long hours, and a lot of elbow grease before the day she had been anxiously awaiting arrived: the day she opened the doors for her first customers.

Between the delicious crepes, Torya
’s welcoming personality and the support of a tight-knit group of Detroit entrepreneurs, word about Good Girls spread, and her business took off. Within a few months, Good Girls had outgrown the small store-space and upgraded to a larger location.

Torya had traded in the security of a comfortable 9-to-5 life as a teacher, for a job that required late nights, early mor
nings, and all the mental and physical energy she had, but she wouldn’t trade it for the world. Even after the most hectic and exhausting day at the store, she still wakes up the next day excited to go back and do it all again.

* * *

I asked Torya how she had dealt with the inevitable stress of the decision to start Good Girls. She said it had been stressful, but that wasn’t going to stop her—the crepe store was something she had to do. “When I get older,” she said candidly, “I want to look back and say I did everything I wanted to do.”

It
is such a simple statement, but a profound reminder that we only live once—we have one shot to make life everything we want it to be. It’s an idea that can often be forgotten as we get caught up in the to-do lists of day-to-day life. Torya doesn’t forget it. She tries to squeeze the most out of every moment of her life. The result is a girl who is full of life and has a contagious spirit.

When I left Good Girls, my mind was racing with thoughts:
What do I love? What do I want out of life? Am I happy with where I am?

I couldn
’t answer all the questions sparked by the conversation with Torya, but Cup 21 made me realize these were questions I had to keep asking until I discovered a dream that was worth risking everything to make happen. That moment might be tomorrow; it might be when I’m 30. Whenever it happens, I will think about Torya’s “Fight Club moment” and the courage and determination she had to get the most out of life.

Because if I
’ve only got one shot at life, why wouldn’t I do everything possible so that I too can someday look back at my life and say, “I did everything I wanted to do”?