Being Humbled in Your Career Is the Best Thing That Can Happen

Let my unexpected career setbacks inspire you.

Photo: Amin Moshrefi/Unsplash

The modern career is full of devastation.

There’s technology that replaces humans, a rate of change that’s hard to keep up with, the death of the one-company-for-life dream, and work-from-home firings that are easy peasy to deliver via Zoom.

Career setbacks are supposed to be an annoyance. What if they’re not?

Quit a job and start a business. Have it fail.

Multiple times in my career I’ve tried to quit a job and start a business. The most spectacular failure is when I launched an online academy with two friends. We made two sales and split the money between the three of us.

I had to teach students how to get into major publications. The pitch deck was terrible (see below).

Screenshot of my presentation. You wouldn’t join with graphics like that, would you?

The money I made barely bought me a few weeks of coffees. The three of us parted ways in awkward silence. I felt like a huge imposter trying to teach anything.