An amazing example of what creating a successful muse allows. The most impressive and inspiring thing to me from this interview was Melissa’s answer to the question: What do you have coming up next year? This is not your typical 20-something year old’s response:
I plan to find a contract job in London for 6 months or so to learn how to live independently and get to know the city better as someone who lives here rather than a tourist. After that, I would like to learn Italian and perhaps get an outdoors job there during summer. I will probably go back to Australia to work on the next growth stages of the business and after that, possibly move to New York.
Simply awesome. I would love to be able to have a similar answer to an open ended question like this. The full interview is here:
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This month’s 20 questions is a case study in Jet Set Living. This girl is the real deal. Kim and I met Melissa in a random chance meeting outside a club in Mykonos at 7am. She said “I think I follow you guys on Twitter“. What has evolved since then is a fantastic case study of how you can have a muse in place, abandon the deferred living concept and live a life of total excitement.
Background: Melissa was born Melissa O’Young in Australia and lived in Sydney until she was 23. When in Sydney, she got a degree in Commerce (Finance and Marketing). Afterward, she worked in marketing for 2 years at Unilever.
Feeling suffocated following the conventional path of buying a place, accumulating a mortgage and focusing on the next promotion. She opted instead to abandon comfortability and complacency. She quit her job, bought a one-way ticket to London and threw her self out of her comfort zone to see how she would react.
So many questions…….
1. Why does a girl with a perfectly good life in Sydney suddenly quit her job and buy a one way ticket to London?
I wasn’t inspired by anything anymore and every day that went past seemed to be the same. I didn’t want to use my savings to buy a place and accumulate a mortgage, as I knew I would trap myself in Sydney for awhile. You’re only young once and it was the perfect time to do something like this. I have been influenced my whole life by the society that has shaped me and I admit that I was a bit sheltered. So, I thought it would be interesting to see what I’m like without the influence of those taking care of me.
This page rocks. We need to be doing this. What an awesome depiction of the things we could be seeing as we travel for cheap and run a successful business.
IdeaFLITE 