I had to use pretty words to dress up how it feels to fail. I know a few things about it as I’ve had my share of them. It’s a tough pill to swallow. No one grows up saying “I want to be a chronic failure.” Yet this is where we often find ourselves.
When you look at the most successful people be it in business or music or whatever, what they don’t tell you is that for every one of those successful people is hundreds if not thousands who didn’t make it. Does that mean those people will never make it? Not necessarily.
Now, I’m talking from a place of failure experience, not success experience, at least not massive, sustained success. I’ll try not to make this a woe is me list, but I will have to document some of my biggest bombs in order to make a point here.
One of my biggest bombs, was my cell phone store. I had been a manager at a Verizon store for several years and was pretty good at it. I found out they had a franchise program where if you qualified you could get additional grants to start up your store, and as far as franchises go, this was about 50K total to set up and build out, which is really cheap for any kind of franchise business. We had some of our own savings, grants and small business loans to get us started, and for the first year or so things were great.
Though this was around 2008/09 when things were going well. When the big market crash happened and the economy tanked, it was a delay hitting us, but it hit hard. The smart phone boom also killed us. I had to buy smartphones for 500 to 1000 dollars wholesale and sell them around the same amount. Walmart and Best Buy got into the game and were selling brand new Android phones for free with any new plan. Absolutely impossible to compete with that and by summer 2010 I was out of business, out of money and lost everything. We had leveraged our home and other things to keep the store going, and it all went to shit.
I lived in Indiana at the time, near South Bend and the unemployment rate was through the roof at the time, so we moved to Texas where I got a job immediately. Though we divorced months later and other shit happened I won’t go into.
Years later I started writing horror fiction, though I had been doing it for awhile but finally figured out how to self-publish it and after a few books and the help of social media my sales finally started to take off. For years I did convention appearances, and book fairs and sold online and met celebrities.
It was really fun and surreal. Over time though, it got harder. Amazon started Kindle unlimted which is bascially streaming for books. They kept changing how royalties were paid out, and stopped promoting books on their site without paying for ads, paying a LOT for ads mind you. The goalposts kept moving, and I kept writing despite major burnout.
Between burnout, undiagnosed bipolar and bad choices on my part, the whole thing blew up and flamed out. I won’t go into all the details, but I had hurt a lot of people and caused a lot of drama because I didn’t know when to quit or understand boundaries and such. That said it all crashed and burned and took me with it. I didn’t lose my family this time, but it was close. I got into therapy and began really working on myself.
After some time away from social media and everything, the Covid lockdown was still ongoing. I opened an online store selling Tarot decks, occult books and occult jewelry. It was pretty successful and I was mostly enjoying it, but once lockdowns ended, it was like someone flipped a switch. I couldn’t give stuff away. So I pivoted to my art business, which I was still pretty new at art, and made a few sales over a few years, but by then things were crazy expensive for everyone and long time successful artists have been struggling just to get by, let alone a new abstract artist.
Then came the Artsy Brain. It has taken a few different forms on different blogs until I found my way here to Substack. Talking about my artistic brain how my mind works and merging my art with my writing. I have four paying subscribers which I value very much. But I’m not making hundreds of thousands like some gurus on here are.
So, why listen to anything I say? I’ve barely succeeded at anything and always crashed out before I got anywhere. One common thread through all these is early on I had undiagnosed bipolar. I would either self-sabotage or didn’t know how to cope with hardships when they happened, so I just shut down. When my cell phone store finally tanked, I was so burned out running it, I was honestly relieved.
Will I be successful? I like to think so. With every one of those failures I learned something about myself. I learned knowledge about dealing with people and I learned about my own toughness and resilience.
I read a post the other day saying if you’re over 40 and still chasing a dream, its time to grow up and face reality. This struck me as rather cynical and there are a lot of people who succeed after 40. Sometimes it takes that long to understand how to deal with success. Let’s face is, if 28-year-old me would have built a multi-million-dollar company I wouldn’t have a clue how to manage all that let alone all the infrastructure needed. All my past failures, as hurtful and humiliating as they were, laid the groundwork for what I am building now.
Maybe that is overly optimistic, and maybe at 52 I should just hang it up and stick to my day job, but that isn’t how I am wired. I read once to be any kind of creator and have a dream you have to be more than a little delusional to think you can make it. Though I also find people who say this stuff usually gave up on their dreams a long time ago. I found that as a kid growing up. Adults in my home town loved to shit on teenagers’ goals and dreams while they just worked in the local factory.
It takes guts to pursue your dreams, persistence and it helps to be a little off your rocker. Very few people succeed the first time out despite how it may look to people around them. They just see the success. They don’t see the years of driving to shows, sleepless nights or hustling online to get anyone to see your article.
It also takes gratitude. If you have 1 subscriber or 10,000 treat them all like they matter. I know I would be pissed if I was a fan of a small creator to only hear them constantly say no one cares about their work. Like I care, am I no one? Accept all the love and support offered to you, treasure it and nurture it and it will grow. That’s probably my biggest lesson in failure, the second is strangers will be your biggest supporters, while people you grew up with won’t even take you seriously. It hurts, but don’t even waste your time on them. They are not your audience. Be real, be grounded and be grateful and your audience will be drawn to you. Your past failure is the seeds you planted to make this grow.
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