Sometimes, the most rewarding things to do also make little sense on paper. They would be the complete opposite of a smart decision. Two examples come to mind:

1. When graphic novelist Gene Luen Yang started writing comic books, Marvel Comics had just declared bankruptcy. “People were predicting that it was just gonna blink out of existence. With it, they were expecting the entire American comic book industry to collapse. If Marvel Comics gets taken out, 60–70% of comic book stores would get taken out with it. They relied so heavily on Marvel product,” he told me.

So, Gene wrote and drew, and kept his day job teaching computer science and served as director of information services at an Oakland high school. In the evenings, he drew comics in black and white—which would be less expensive to print—and signed with First Second to publish American Born Chinese. 

Disney acquired Marvel, the comic book market didn’t die. The new business model would use comics as a testing ground for movie ideas. American Born Chinese just debuted as a TV series on Disney+. 

2. Just before Covid-19, Ryan and Samantha Holiday started up their own bookstore with their life savings. Other successful authors advised them against doing it, and they moved forward anyway. Ryan wrote, “What’s the point of success if you can’t use it to do stuff that’s cool? Turning money into more money is not the only aim in life. What is the point of being successful if all you do is reinvest that money into shit you don’t really care about?”

It’s funny, I wrote one of Ryan’s questions down, and I constantly return to it, “Are you fighting for a piece of a shrinking dying industry or are you getting something whose value will hold up over time?” 

An industry’s market size shouldn’t be an excuse for you not to do it. Like Ryan does, you’ll find a way to make it make sense; or something inexplicably good could happen like it did to Gene, only if you get in position to allow it to.