Barista Networks Into Design

Andrew Wilkinson shares how he transitioned from being a barista to starting his web design career after meeting two successful web designers at his coffee shop.

"I was working making coffees every day and there were these two guys that would come in every single day. They'd roll in looking like they just got out of bed at 10 in the morning, probably like 5 years older than me, so like 24-25. They would come in and sit on their laptops all day drinking espresso after espresso.

One day I asked them, 'What do you guys do? Don't you have jobs?' They said, 'Oh, we're web designers. We just walk into random businesses, ask them if they have a website, and then say we'll make one for $500.'

That day I decided I didn't want to make the espresso, I wanted to be drinking the espresso. I wanted to be these guys. So I bought a book on web design and a couple days later I walked into a place and sold the guy a website. Within a couple weeks, I'd quit my job.

My first client was a pulled pork barbecue joint called Pig. I got $500 and some free pulled pork sandwiches - basically got unlimited sandwiches for a while. I went from making a small amount of money for something I hated to making a large amount of money for something I would have done anyway because designing websites was fun."