Thought provoking quotes
It’s a privilege to write about interesting paths and success stories on this blog. However, I also hope to share stories about navigating failure and coming out on the other side.
On that note, this weekend I came across a piece from Grammy nominated artist, J.P. Saxe, who announced that he would be cancelling his upcoming tour. Rather than hiding behind vague explanations, Saxe chose to own it and share that he hadn’t sold enough tickets to make the tour viable. He wrote an incredibly honest piece about navigating the experience for Variety, which I think is worth reading. Sharing a few quotes below:
“Oddly enough, it was more embarrassing before I shared it. Once it was out there, it started to feel weirdly empowering. The honesty cracked something open.”
“I’m scared I’m only ever as successful as I’m perceived to be. That to feel successful, I need to look successful — to my peers, my friends back home, my family, their families… But how much of that is just… lying?
I hate lying. It gives me anxiety.
I also hate trying to “craft an identity.”
I’d rather just say too much, share too much, be too much — and hope that somewhere in the mess of it, something more honest takes shape than anything I could’ve constructed on purpose.
Applause for success is great. But there is something more interesting about being applauded for honesty in failure. It’s not as good for my ego — but maybe it’s better for my growth.”
“To borrow an allegory from my lifestyle in 2014…
Very few artists want to be sleeping in their car eating ramen, but every artist wants to say they used to sleep in their car eating ramen. So if I really believe (which I do) that I’m going to sell out arenas someday… then I also have to believe in how much better it’ll feel when I get there — knowing I can tell the story about that one time, in the fall of 2025, when despite the support of a few thousand beautiful strangers on the internet… I had to cancel my whole tour.”
Revisiting a past interview
On the subject of navigating failure while refusing to give on yourself, I wanted to revisit an interview from earlier this year with entrepreneur and writer Alex Michael called “When the Worst Case Scenario is Not Synonymous with the Worst Life.”
Background on Alex’s story: After several years of navigating a career pivot and working to find work he was uniquely suited for, Alex took a big swing and acquired an e-commerce business named Wallaroo in 2022 using an SBA loan. Initially, things were off to the races. Amidst Alex’s efforts to spur growth, the business surpassed $1 million in revenue during his first year of ownership. However, crisis struck in mid-2023 when Amazon unexpectedly lost one-third of his best selling inventory. Having to order more inventory ahead of schedule, being out of stock during critical moments, and the algorithmic punishment that ensued for going out of stock led to a perfect storm of events that forced Alex to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the business.
Alex made it to the other side of the bankruptcy case. He continues to own and operate Wallaroo, write, and oversee guest booking and partnerships for for David Perell’s podcast How I Write.
Here’s what Alex had to say about navigating the experience:
“There are moments when everything goes wrong, and you go into scarcity mode and revert back to a previous version of yourself. It’s the feeling of, ‘Oh, God! Everything's screwed. Nothing I've learned is relevant anymore.’ I don't think that will ever fully go away. The benefit of getting older is that you know yourself more, have more experiences, and diversify your life so that you can recognize that knee-jerk, fear response when it happens. Once I let that feeling settle and saw it for what it was, I realized that I had lots of collateral and evidence supporting the idea that I was someone who can make things happen because that's what I'd done. I had all this stuff to point to in my life, not necessarily from the perspective of ‘I’m so great’ but more from the perspective that I'm capable. I realized that I wasn’t completely screwed. That gave me a sense of trust in the future.”
Question for you
What if the worst case scenario isn’t the worst thing for you?