The Cottage - Episode 2: Quit Your Day Job

Every cottage gear founder had a moment when they walked away from a conventional career. In "Quit Your Day Job," we hear four of those stories. Whitney "Allgood" LaRuffa spent 17 years as a commodity broker before his body and mind told him he wasn't going to survive another year in that chair. Luke "Bus" Piersall bounced from Hawaii film sets to Hollywood to South American tour guiding to commercial photography before getting fired on the day he thought he was being promoted to VP; he then gambled everything on Trail Goods Company. Brice Sokolowski quit a lucrative IT consulting career because he could see 30 miserable years stretching out ahead of him, and started doodling backpack ventilation systems on a whiteboard while struggling to pay his credit card bill. And Sarah "Mellow" Berkeley, an art professor who hiked the Long Trail with a six-pound sleeping bag from the 90s, got hooked on thru-hiking despite a miserable first experience and built Symbiosis Gear to make packs that actually fit women's bodies. None of them had a plan that made financial sense. All of them followed the thing they couldn't stop thinking about.