You deliver the mail to agents' desks for less than what you made waiting tables in high school. But you made it! You're an agent-in-training! Your office? The mailroom.

You have your own desk, your own client, your own phone, and you even sold a script – for $25,000. Maybe you'd be better off being an assistant for another fifteen years.

You're mid-level and mid-career. You sell two or three movies a year and your best client makes over $500,000 a year. You, however, still rent your apartment and drive a used car.

All right. You're doing it. You have a stable of ten working writers, each selling a couple projects a year. You're not buying a mansion, but you live a nice life. New car, new lawn, and new plastic surgery.

You're at the top. Of the agency. Of the industry. Of the world. Or at least, your bank account makes you think so. That boutique agency with twenty major clients you grew from scratch twenty years ago? You sold it to your biggest competitor eighty million dollars ago.