David Choe - Success Case Study

I just listened to an amazing interview on Howard Stern with graffiti artist David Choe, that provided an important life lesson that we could all possibly add to our worldview.

Without going into too much detail, David Choe has been a widely successful artist for many years now, but he is currently in the news because of his relationship to the upcoming Facebook IPO. Back in 2005, when Facebook was first getting off the ground, Choe was asked by Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg to paint several murals throughout the Facebook offices. At the time Choe's rate for completing such a task was $60,000, but Facebook gave him the option of receiving payment in the form of stock options, which Choe accepted. It just so happened that he was recently released from jail at the time of the painting and was in need of cash flow, but he was so impressed by the drive and determination that Sean Parker had that he felt Facebook had the potential to become something big. With the Facebook IPO coming up soon, those stock options that Choe took are now valued at over $250 million, which makes Choe the highest paid artist in history.

Choe went on to discuss how he had made well over $1 million gambling in Las Vegas at the age of 30, but only after being a consistent loser between the ages of 15-30.

From listening to his amazing life story, I took away 2 main points. The first is that sometimes in life you need to take risks and gambles in order to achieve success. The second is that persistence is often what makes the difference between someone that is a success and someone that is a failure.

While I don't think there are many of us that would be able to take such amazing risks that Choe has made in his life, there are many of us that take few or no risks at all. One thing that all self-made millionaires have in common is that they have all taken risks at some point in their lives in order to achieve success. Being risk averse will only take us so far in life, so to get a step ahead we need to take calculated risks when we can.

One of the most important concepts that I learned in business school is that 9 out of 10 businesses fail, but it only takes the 1 success to make you a winner. Choe had lost his life savings several times over his entire life, but he was convinced that he would be successful and his persistence ended up paying off in a huge way. Most people would have given up, and the fact that Choe didn't is what made him a huge success rather than another statistic.

Persistence and taking calculated risks are 2 of the most important keys to success and should not be ignored by anyone looking to get ahead in life. Life can be discouraging at times, but if we follow our dreams we will succeed one day and that taste of success will be much sweeter after working so hard to get there.