Why I Quit My Dream Job The Day I Started

I was 20-years old, living in Paris, when I reported to work at a small but legendary fashion house quaintly situated on the banks of the Seine. It was going to be the start of something big. I liked the art of clothing, my ex-girlfriend's mother had pulled strings to get me the job and I would be launching my career in the City Of Lights. It doesn't get any better than that, or so I thought.

I had left behind a broken family in New York to find more than a job but a new life in Paris. For three months leading up the start date, I was strolling through the city, dating girls from all over the world, learning to drink copious volumes of wine and to experiment with French peasant food. I lived on a tiny budget from summer job savings but I felt like the wealthiest man in western Europe.

Finally, the day I was to report to work came out of nowhere (it was like waking up suddenly sober from a three-month buzz) but I was up for it and made my way down the narrow streets to the firm's old stone building. I had no idea where the trainee position would take me: if I would wind up as a designer or on the business side of things but it was all appealing to me and I was confident that I would find my way.

Within minutes I was ushered into the office of the president and owner (a perk of my ex's connection) who took one cold, hard look at me and asked -- as if the question was biblical in nature:

"Where is your tie?"

Well, I didn't own a tie, didn't want to be caught dead in one and didn't think my wardrobe or lack of it was this old fool's business. But it was. It was his company, I would be working in the fashion business, I was but a know-nothing intern and if he wanted me to wear a tie, he was right And in my youthful rebellion, I was wrong by a mile.

But at that moment I didn't view it quite that way. Hot-headed as I was, I responded without a word. I simply flipped him the bird, whirled around, walked out the door and just strolled for mile after gorgeous mile without direction the way one does in Paris. I felt as liberated as if I just left a GM plant after 45 years of hard service on the assembly line.

It turned out to be a highly enlightening encounter with lifelong consequences. Why? Because in that where's-your-tie-rubber-hits-the-road-moment, I realized I didn't want a dream job. Never. Ever. I wanted something totally different.

Instead of collecting a paycheck from the likely wise and honorable man who ran a successful fashion house, I wanted to build my own business To create my own paycheck. To return to the disaster of a broken life I'd left in New York, face it all head on, come to terms with the fact that I had no family to speak of and just find a way to start a company. I was young but not idealistic: I'd had my nose broken too many times for that. But there were huge issues that I would have to face but that never even entered my mind as I bought a ticket back to the states and began the scrappy process of becoming an entrepreneur without an idea, a backer or business knowledge.

Somehow it all came about and I built that business and sold it and then another and another. In the process, I learned -- or understood from the start -- that no one can teach you anything but skills. Tenacity, drive, creativity, grit, guts, determination, resilience -- all of the hallmarks of lifelong entrepreneurs -- are not on the syllabus at Harvard Business School -- but they are the qualities that drive people who don't (metaphorically) want to be told to "Wear a tie."

The fashion position turned out to be my dream job after all, but only because I didn't accept it.

Our careers are based both on the ability to say yes and no, sometimes simultaneously.