Mary Schiller, an expat entrepreneur in Paris, shares why she didn't quit despite years of struggling to earn income. She argues that setbacks are signals to change strategy, not abandon the dream, and that one more offer to a client might be the breakthrough.
Hello, bonjour, it's Mary coming to you from the park that's in my old neighborhood in central Paris. It's very hot where I'm sitting, so this will probably be a short video, but I came into central Paris for the first time since the Olympics started, and they're done now, at least the regular Olympics. The Paralympics are starting soon. But it's, I believe it's April, excuse me, August 24th, 2024 today. I wanted to stop here in this park that I love so much and share what is really a simple message, I think, which is don't give up. I think we live in a culture now where people give up way too early. If something doesn't work out the way that they want it to, like immediately, they seem to just quit and chuck it, you know. And I can tell you that I would not be sitting here on this bench in this park in central Paris if I had quit every time things got challenging. I mean, moving over here was a challenge in and of itself. Figuring out how to earn an income was a challenge and has continued to be a challenge in some ways, especially over the last couple of years for me, although that is shifting now, which I'm very excited about. But you know, you can't just quit your dreams. You can't. And I wish I could impress upon people that even when it looks like things aren't going— sorry, it's windy here— the way that you want them to go, that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to quit. It just means that you need to make an adjustment. You need to find another way, because there's always a way. Always. You know, we've run up against difficulties being expats here in France, but we always find a way through. And sometimes that's meant trying a different route, sometimes it's meant hiring someone to help us with something, to navigate something in the French system, or whatever it is. You just find a way. And so if there is something that you really want, I don't want you to quit. I want you to keep going. I want you to find a way. Keep taking whatever steps you see in front of you and don't stop, because if you do, one day you're going to look back and say, why didn't I just keep going? The other piece of this is that we never know where we are in this process. We don't have that kind of perspective, so things might look bleak to us at a certain point, but we may be one step away from having whatever it is that we are working toward. So that's another reason to keep going. It would have been very easy for me to quit my business over the last couple of years. Several times I thought about it, but I was like, no, this means something to me. I want to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing next. So I'm just going to keep putting myself out there, making offers, working with the people who want to work with me. Earning the money that I can. I'm just going to keep going, and now I have landed on something that is incredible. So you just never know where you are. Keep going, don't give up. That's my message for you today.
