Lose Yourself

There’s a line in Eminem’s Lose Yourself that people usually hear as bravado:
You only get one shot. Do not miss your chance to blow.

But when I hear it, I don’t think about confidence.
I think about fear.

I think about being nineteen years old and realizing, very suddenly, that there was no graceful way back to shore.

I had left college. Against my parents’ advice. Against the safe path. I agreed to help a friend of my father’s start the U.S. arm of a Swedish company. I was supposed to be the West Coast salesperson. My résumé at the time? A few months selling Cutco knives. A bit of time selling SCUBA gear in a dive shop. I knew the basics of sales, but that was about it.

It was 1986. My father came with me to Las Vegas and paid for my registration at Comdex, the computer industry conference. At the time it was very small.  Only split between the convention center and the Sands. Early days. There I was, wandering the booths, trying to explain what “we” did to heads of marketing with decades of experience, people who had forgotten more than I knew.

It was terrifying.

I was trying to sound like an expert in something I had zero academic or practical experience executing. But I had already walked out on the plank. Turning back wasn’t an option. If this failed, it wouldn’t just fail quietly. It would prove my parents right, that this path would never lead anywhere except a life of disappointment.

It had to work.
Had. To. Work.

The First Month

That first month taught me two things.

First, I realized I actually enjoyed the work.

Second, I realized that if I was going to survive, I had to outwork my ignorance.

My father’s best friend had a small office in a detached garage at his house. After a couple of months, it became obvious: this was a numbers game. I was reasonably articulate. I wasn’t afraid of rejection,,,yet. So I leaned in.

Hard.

I started waking up at 3:00 a.m. I’d arrive at his house about forty minutes later. By 7:00 a.m. Pacific, I was on the phone with Midwest companies. Cold calling. Over and over.

I also realized I needed better leads. So I went to the local library and found a book called the Standard Directory of Advertisers. It listed agencies and advertisers. It was a gold mine. I decided to focus on tech companies.

Within two months, I signed my first client.

But reality has a way of catching up. The service worked in Europe, where exporting across borders mattered. In the U.S., it didn’t translate. The grind dragged on for over a year until it was clear: I wasn’t going to get the West Coast rolling.

It was a brutal lesson.

My parents looked at me, quietly pleased that it was failing.

The First Real “Aha”

So I took a job selling group rooms for a hotel company.

I was twenty-one. No college degree. Little experience. A risky hire.

Once again, I leaned into the phone.

It worked.

People love to say, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.”
That’s fantasy.

Success is a grind. It’s a battle. Every day you put on your armor and go to war. After enough years, that armor gets a patina. A dull finish that says you’ve lost more than you’ve won.

But here’s the truth: you don’t need to win all of them. You don’t even need to win half. Like a venture capitalist, you just need a few wins and the resilience to keep going through the losses.

So if it isn’t “love,” what actually drives success?

What Actually Drives It

For me, it’s three things.

The first is an unrelenting desire to learn.

Yes, the guy who dropped out of college believes learning is critical. I’ve been obsessed with learning my entire life. Forty years in, that hasn’t changed. Today, I’m focused on understanding agentic AI and exploring pathways toward AGI. It fascinates me. It gets me up at 4:00 a.m. The same way learning always has.

The second driver is a willingness to take risk.

When I look back, some of the bets Cora and I have made are objectively insane. Trying to buy a business unit  from the second-largest global advertising holding company in the world.  A unit that was more than fifty times larger than tiny agency…and convincing a bank to finance the entire deal. Moving from advertising to oyster farming. None of it was intuitive.

But I’ve never been afraid of failure.

Because the world is illusory. Everything is perception.

My mother understood that better than anyone. She and her parents had a full, beautiful life in Lithuania before World War II. Then, in an instant, the Soviet army rolled in. They fled with the clothes on their backs. Everything else was gone. Five years as refugees. Eventually Ellis Island. A green card. A new life from nothing.

What kept them going wasn’t certainty. It was belief, in each other and in themselves.

So I live as if everything I have could disappear tomorrow. Every risk feels like betting with house money. I do the analysis. I calculate the downside. But I believe completely in Cora, in my family, and in myself.

We fight. We learn. We iterate. We never give up.

No Golden Ticket

A friend recently asked me if a business project I’m working on is my “golden ticket.”

I laughed.

There is no golden ticket.

Success is rented. And the rent is due every day.

Or as Churchill put it: “Success is never final. Failure is never fatal.”

The key is simple:

First, focus on the most valuable task in front of you. Right here. Right now.
Second, be present. Nail this moment.

The past is done. The future only changes if you execute in the present.

And finally, surround yourself with people who make you better.

Ambition is personal. What you want is unique to you. I’ve always been drawn to people smarter and more capable than I am. I want to think like them. Work like them. Learn from them. That’s my ambition: be the best me I possibly can.

If you’re the most successful person in your circle, you need new friends.

Here’s the irony: the people you admire often see something in you that you can’t see yourself. I recently spent a day with a friend who won a Division I national championship, played professionally, and now runs a massive company. The next day he thanked me for mentoring him.

We rarely recognize our own edge.

The more you know, the less confident you become. The less you know, the louder your certainty. That’s the Dunning–Kruger effect in real life.

I’m a marketing guy at my core. It confuses me daily. It humbles me constantly. Yet 99% of the world thinks marketing is easy.

How little they know.

Lose Yourself

So when I think about Lose Yourself, I don’t hear bravado.

I hear a moment when retreat wasn’t an option.
When you commit fully, not because you’re fearless, but because turning back would cost you something far greater.

Sometimes the only way forward is to lose yourself completely in the work.

And keep going.