Free Do Cool Sh*t by Miki Agrawal Page B

drinks made locally. I wanted my pizza boxes to be made locally. I wanted to be an advocate for local farmers and businesses. I wanted it to be like that gem of a place I saw in the South of France where they milked their own cows and made their own cheese in their backyard. Although, given the price of real estate in Manhattan, maybe I’d nix the cow part.
    This kind of pizza safe haven didn’t exist anywhere in New York City at the time. I did my research. There were hundreds of pizza shops on every corner but nothing like the one that I was imagining. But I knew nothing about the restaurant business. I knew nothing about starting a business at all. Luckily, I had some extra time to learn more since I was still working as a freelance producer. In between shoots, I was able to further explore this new project.
    There were three different routes I could take to get to my goal.
    The first was the philanthropic route. I could become an advocate for local farms and local businesses and help them get off the ground and perhaps also see what they are up to and how they started their businesses.
    The second was the intrapreneurial route. This meant that I could try and get a job with an existing pizza company or a restaurant group and try to show them why creating a healthy pizza side to their business would be an interesting opportunity. I could explain to them that Whole Foods was on the rise and that even Walmart was embracing organic produce (which was a clear sign that all of America was headed that way) and that their company needed to do the same. I could basically be an entrepreneur within an existing organization. I could come up with ideas and help the company put my ideas in motion.
    The third approach was the entrepreneurial route. This meant that I would just go for it on my own. I would create the entire concept, come up with the systems, the recipes, find the location, hire people, do everything on my own. With no experience, no money, and still with student loan debt, this would be by far the hardest and least safe route to take.
    I spent the next week thinking over my three options. I mulled and mulled.
    Ultimately, I decided that the philanthropic route was far too safe. I thought about both of my parents, who sacrificed their stable lives in their home countries and took the chance to move to Montreal, Canada, from India and Japan in the 1970s with no family support and just each other. Their own mother tongues were different from each other’s and still they went for it. They took the chance again and moved to the United States from Montreal, when they were fifty years old so that we (their three girls) could get our green cards before turning twenty-one years old (just in case we wanted to stay in the States). For my parents to start over at fifty in a new country again was bold! And the sacrifice was beautiful. I made up my mind. My samurai blood was telling me not to go this safe route. I knew I would eventually be philanthropic but in different ways.
    When I thought about the intrapreneurial approach, blood immediately began to rush to my head. I could hear a middle manager immediately saying something like, “No, that’s not going to work,” just so they don’t have to deal with something else to do that might put more work on their desk or require more of their precious time. It brought back memories from my banking days. The thought of working for a company again was simply not something I was prepared to do.
    So that left me with entrepreneurship. I was going to go for it. Lone-wolf style.
    Holy shnikies.
    My heart began to race (in a good way). It was the same feeling I had right before our soccer team walked in single file onto Cornell’s Berman Field with the Top Gun theme song blaring on the loudspeakers right before every league game.
    Battle was about to begin.
Do Cool Shit Takeaway
There are three ways to help you find an opportunity to engage your skills and passion: I call it PIE