Adventures in Success 🥇
There has never been anyone just like you, and never will be
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I.
Lynn Goldsmith has had what modern business columnists would term a “portfolio career.” Born in Detroit in 1948, Wikipedia notes she is (note present tense) “an American recording artist, a film director, a celebrity portrait photographer, and one of the first female rock and roll photographers.” Her work has been featured on over 100 album covers for the likes of Paul Simon, Miles Davis, Dr Dre and INXS. Her photographs can be found in collections at The Smithsonian and the MOMA. She was, for a short while, the co-manager of Grand Funk Railroad, and became the youngest woman ever accepted into the Directors Guild of America. She spent decades capturing the life and times of musical icons: Bruce Springsteen’s canonization in the hearts of blue-collared America; the infamous stadium tours of The Rolling Stones; the ascent of Michael Jackson from boy band singer to global icon.
She has had, by any definition, a successful career. And not just in one area. Island Records—the Jamaican-born label home to artists such as Grace Jones, Nick Drake, U2, Pulp and Amy Winehouse—released an album from Goldsmith under her pseudonym Will Powers. “Dancing for Mental Health” is almost 40 years old, a calculation I can easily make as it was released in 1983, days before my birthday. She referred to the album as a “comedy self-help dance record,” and enlisted the help of musicians including Sting, Niles Davis and Carly Simon to collaborate on the project.
The album’s opening—and, honestly, only decent—track is “Adventures in Success,” a wonky 95 BPM number that has since become a staple record in leftfield disco scenes. Atop of a groove that would coax even the staunchest wallflower to the dancefloor, Goldsmith’s vocoder-lowered voice offers “three laws so success” in a blueprint Baz Luhrmann would eventually copy and paste for his 1999 hit "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)”.
“You are an important person, a rare individual
A unique creature
There has never been anyone just like you
And never will be
You have talents and abilities no one else has
In some ways, you're superior to any other living person |
The power to do anything you can imagine is within you
When you discover your real self
By practicing a few simple laws of success.”
Goldsmith released this album as a parody of the self-help scene she was surrounded by in entertainment circles at the time. She pitched her voice lower in an attempt to present herself as genderless, reminding us that success resides from within, repeating ad infinitum: “It’s you, only you. Make it habit, make it happen.”
II.
Comparison is the thief of joy. I spent at least a decade measuring my success against that of others, comparing my career trajectory to those more successful than me. I’d work backwards via their LinkedIn experience, creating their career timeline, and measuring it against my own; a professional cover version of that unique flavour of sadness that comes from judging your own life against the carefully curated photos of others on Instagram.
For the longest time, my definition of success was clear: get a job at Google. Sometime around the turn of the Millenium—when Google started to clearly become a better way to find things on the internet than Ask Jeeves or Altavista1, and stories started to surface about the type of work, and kind of working environment, their employees were enjoying—I knew I wanted to work there. I spent time at various different jobs, never intentionally heading towards the Googleplex, but always having it as a north star, a dream scenario, should things go my way. I came tantalisingly close in 2010 when I started working for a digital agency that had them as a client. Then towards the end of 2011—after 6 months of interviews and being asked as many "how many windows in New York" questions as I’d been led to believe—I got an offer. Contract signed. Box ticked.
I was Heath Ledgers Joker, the dog that finally caught the car. I’d gotten what I was chasing after. Now what? With that long-held goal achieved, there was a void where drive had once been, a fuel tank marked “ambition” running empty just as it was pulling into the driveway. Something had to take its place. It became filled with a definition of success that wasn’t my own. I got sucked up into caring about things I once hadn’t: internal visibility, promotions, performance scores, industry awards; corporate junk food, filling my sense of success but ultimately unnourishing, eternally unfulfilling. I took the yardstick of what a large company had decreed as success and made it my own. It took a while, but I was cured of this ailment after working with a fantastic coach in 2017. He helped me redefine what success could look like for me, putting me on the path I find myself forging still, and curing my unhealthy LinkedIn habit at the same time.
III.
I know why you’re here. You signed up for the fatherhood hot takes. You want to know what Musk’s 10(!) kids think about daddy tweeting through the dying days of a media powerhouse. Or how Republican fathers, and their reaction to changing abortion rights in the US, have provided Democrats hope of retaining the senate.
There are any number of takes I could be writing every week, and if I was more ruthless about chasing subscribers I might do it with regularity. But it’s something I’ve intentionally avoided, rarely touching Twitter’s main character, leaving that to better, funnier and more online writers than I. But this week I am going to attempt to cover a current event, and I’ll do so by first apologizing (sic) in advance to the roughly 1/3 of you who find yourselves in the US of A. Because I’m going to talk about (American) football.
Tom Brady is widely regarded as the best quarterback of all time. He has played in the Super Bowl ten times, and is the only player to hold seven Super Bowl championship rings—the fugliest piece of jewellery since Rose’s blue-heart necklace got dropped into the resting place of the Titanic. Brady was the central character in the Deflatgate saga (one of the all-time greatest -gate scandal names, imo, although you can make your own decision here) after being found guilty of ordering the intentional deflation of his team’s footballs, making them easier to catch and throw, giving the New England Patroits an unfair advantage on the field. If you know nothing about Tom Brady, or American football, you probably know this: he is recently divorced from Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen—the woman Vogue once termed “the Brazilian bombshell” and Rolling Stone crowned “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”2 in 2000—with whom he has two children.
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Brady is, once again, successful by any measure you could imagine. In his field, or more accurately on his field, no player has received more acclaim. Last September, on an episode of his podcast, he hinted at a potential retirement:
“I think my wife has held down the house for a long time now, and I think there’s things that she wants to accomplish. She hasn’t worked as much in the last 10, 12 years, just raising our family and committing to a life in Boston, and then moving to Florida […] It's what relationships are all about. It's not always what I want. It's what we want as a family. And I'm gonna spend a lot of time with them and figure out in the future what's next.”
For a woman born and raised in the south of Brazil, Boston winters must have been tough, so when Brady announced his retirement in February pundits weren’t surprised. What did shock them—and Gisele—was when he announced his “unretirement” and desire to return to professional football 40 days later. Not long after, in an interview with Elle magazine, Bündchen shared her fears for a husband continuing with “a very violent sport” and her hope for him “to be more present.”
“I’ve done my part, which is to be there for [Tom]. I moved to Boston, and I focused on creating a cocoon and a loving environment for my children to grow up in and to be there supporting him and his dreams. Seeing my children succeed and become the beautiful little humans that they are, seeing him succeed, and being fulfilled in his career—it makes me happy. At this point in my life, I feel like I’ve done a good job on that. I have a huge list of things that I have to do, that I want to do. At 42, I feel more connected with my purpose. I feel very fulfilled in that way, as a mother and as a wife. And now it’s going to be my turn.”
The writing was on the wall. Bündchen filed for divorce in October, telling the world “my priority has always been, and will continue to be, our children.” There are only two people who know what goes on inside a marriage, and even their stories will diverge wildly; I’m not going to assume I know what happened here. What I will say is that I’ve worked with many people, almost always men, who spent their career giving endless reasons for prioritising work to the detriment of all else: they were “doing it for my family,” or for any number of folks in orbit of their ego; choosing what they personally wanted, their pride in the driver’s seat, pointing the finger elsewhere.
Cue Brady, talking on his podcast after his decision:
“I want to give it a shot — I owed it to my teammates and our great coaches and our whole organization […] I want to get out there and I want to have a great season for everybody because there are a lot of people who have supported me along the way […] I’m sure everyone sitting in this room, sitting at home, just wakes up every day doing the best they could do for their families and their career, and I’m no different.”
The perfect wife, the dream family, retiring as the most successful ever to do it. And then to give it all up, and head back to work again. Was it worth it? There’s only one person who will know the truth, and it may not become apparent to him for a while.
IV.
I have friends and peers who have achieved incredible success in their life. Some became “the youngest ever person to [x],” others launched successful businesses of all kinds and colours, a few experiencing that meteoric career rise that comes from the perfect combination of determination, inherent talent, likability and a sprinkle of good luck. In years gone by I’d look at their careers and wonder why mine hadn’t quite hit those heights—a career-based remake of Sliding Doors playing in my mind, yours truly starring in the role of future snake oil saleswoman, pusher of ineffective pills and vagina-scented candle manufacturer Gwyneth Paltrow.
Today, I wouldn’t trade my lot with anyone else. When you take a step off the traditional career path, onto a trail less travelled, it’s hard to identify those you wish to follow. But I have a few people who have forged a path I might seek to emulate. It feels very different now: I’m looking on and taking notes, rather than eyeing what they have with the jealousy I once experienced; mentally calculating what age they’d become a VP, or published their first book.
Today, four and a bit years after leaving Google, I’ve become comfortable with my life as a “slashie.” This term was originally a derogatory way to refer to folks in the creative industries who hadn’t found the required success required to work only in their chosen field: busboy/actor; waitress/actress; cleaner/scriptwriter; singer/secretary. In recent years it’s become a collective term for those who find themselves spread across concurrent multiple careers; multi-hyphenates of the type trailblazed by Lynn Goldsmith decades ago.
Success isn’t a dirty word. Its definition is in the eye of the beholder. As much as I turned my back on one interpretation of success—keeping the dream job, striving for another promotion, working towards a performance-related bonus—I haven’t given it up completely. My criterion is no longer tied to a salary bracket, or a job title to make others seeth with envy. But as a close friend helpfully reminded me this week, I still crave it. At the top of every newsletter is a number that’s been steadily going up for the last two years, and behind that number are many others—comment numbers, open rates, ARR, conversion percentages—there for the taking, hundreds of metrics that can be used to judge a sense of achievement.
Your level of ambition is irrevocably connected to your definition of success. And no one rationale is more right, or more noble, than any another. You might be driven by the need to provide for your family and your future. You might seek to drive a positive impact in the world through what you do. Yours might be anything. But the question is simple: Is your metric of success your own? Or have you inherited it from someone, or somewhere, else?
V.
For the majority of my 20s, you could find me every Saturday night in the same place: behind the decks in a bar called Common, located in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. Between the hours of 9 pm-2 am, we presented Best Foot Forward, five hours of great music, a buddy and I playing 3 records back-to-back whilst drinking our own weight in Hoegaarden. My definition of success was very different back then: could we fill the place? Could we convince some of our favourite DJs to come up from London to play? We did well, and had many memorable nights. I hung up my headphones when I moved to London in 2009, finding myself in a city where DJs outnumbered venues by a ratio of at least 2:1. I didn’t stop completely: still throwing the odd small party; occasionally DJing at a friend’s NYE shindig; developing a reputation for helping out / taking over3 at weddings where I felt the music wasn't up to scratch. When I became a dad, that life seemed further away than ever, a chapter of my life closed forever.
In a little under three hours’ time I’ll be DJing again here in Barcelona. I originally wrote “behind a set of decks” in that last sentence, but the world has changed since this old dude was playing records in it. I’m playing the early shift, which translates to 11 pm-12.30 am here. I was told I could play vinyl, but I’d have to bring my own turntables—hard no—so I’ve spent a fair chunk of time over the last month downloading my own record collection from Soulseek, surprised to find it still functioning just as it did decades ago. (I’m pretty sure it’s not illegal to download the music you already own, especially when most of my records aren’t available to buy or stream digitally. If I’m mistaken I’m sure one of you will email to let me know.)
What does success look like for me tonight? 90 minutes of decent music, not messing up too many times, and hopefully seeing a bunch of friends on the dancefloor. Today, my definition of success is ever-evolving, but some elements would remain consistent: a stream of interesting, well-paid work; hitting an annual income target (a must for any self-employed person, let me tell you); a regular exercise routine and staying within a preferred weight window; a succession of sub-three hour days of Screen Time; sailing through bathtime and bedtime without major incidents; seeing those I love achieving success by whatever means they measure it. And to continue doing fun, creative endeavours that keep life interesting.
I’m feeling nervous about something for the first time in a long time. A lot has changed, and the fact I’ll be walking into a venue carrying a USB stick instead of two huge bags of records will reflect that. This essay isn’t intended as last-minute promo, a final attempt to get bums on seats or, more accurately, feet on the dance floor. It’s way too late for that, especially knowing the difficulty of securing last-minute sitters on a Friday night. But I offer it instead as a snapshot into where my head is at, how I’m exploring what success means to me today, and remarking on the peculiar nature of it circling back to what it was 15 years ago, a time before kids. Will Will Powers, and her Adventures in Success, be making an appearance tonight?
There’s one way to find out.
“Describe the inner person you'd like to be
Let your mind run wild
Assume you can be anything that you desire
The fact is, you will become the person you honestly describe
You can't avoid it”
— ”Adventures in Success”, Will Powers
One final thought
My intention this week was to bring you to a place where I can offer a question—what does success mean to you? Take a week and think about it. Maybe jot down a note or two. Next Friday I’ll be back in your inbox asking you to share it with us all.
Have a great weekend. See you on the other side. Wish me luck.
Signing off
I’m a bit all over the place this week, and this essay is an accurate representation of my mind state—late, barely coherent, rambling, and spinning out in many directions at once. Did it work for you?
Loved | Great | OK | Meh | Bad
Branding by Selman Design. Illustration by Tony Johnson. Survey by Sprig. Thanks to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, another slashie, for a conversation and a career path that inspired me, and this essay. Avivah is writing about her own journey in “conciliating work, family and purpose” over at Elderberries.
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I’ve been on the internet too long.
This has to be a Prince reference, right? All kinds of yuck if not.
Depending on who you ask.
Appreciated the first footnote but have you been around as long as Webcrawler? 🕷 In all seriousness, this was in my top 5 newsletters you’ve done. Really hits home. Thank you.