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How I turned the biggest failure of my life into my biggest success (you can do it too!)

About a year and a half ago, I lost the biggest job opportunity of my life. I had been dreaming about this job since I was a little kid. Every life decision I had made over the last 20 years had been geared towards one goal: getting this job. It took me about 15 years to gather enough experience, knowledge, and connections until I was able to take a shot at it.

It took a year of working 10 hours a day to make enough money to be able to relocate across the globe, get the appropriate work visa, and finally arrive at the place and moment of my dreams: an interview for my dream job in Hollywood. I would be one of a handful of sound engineers running the biggest film music studio in Hollywood, working alongside the most respected names in the entertainment industry (and, mind you, not as some kind of intern working his way up, no — as a full-time employee). 

What a moment that was, getting interviewed by the person who created the sound of my life.

Now, a year and a half later, I am still trying to understand what went wrong, why they ended up choosing someone else. I knew the right people, I had the perfect resume and more than a decade of experience; everything was perfect!

“How did you manage to survive in LA?”

That moment of failure was a turning point for me. It was painful but necessary. While I was sitting there, talking about my experience and the job I was about to take on, I slowly realized the life I would need to give up. “How did you manage to survive in LA for so long without a job?” That was actually a really good question. The answer: After so many years of devoting my life to this, I had become good enough to be able to go anywhere in the world and find my own clients. I spent 15 years building up a freelance career; I didn’t need a day job.

My dream job was not a good fit for me anymore. Somewhere along the way, I had surpassed my goal. Without knowing it, I had become a person with real dreams and a vision for life that stretched beyond the idea of a perfect day job.

Getting rejected like that made me rethink my entire life. What if there is more? What do I really want? Is being successful enough? Instead of working at my dream job, what if I could live my dream life? Does this kind of life even exist? Somewhere between books about happiness and the good life, it finally dawned on me that there was something far more substantial out there that I could have. Living in Los Angeles, the jungle of opportunities and hopes, the world capital of dreams and promises, I then started to realize that all my big dreams exactly matched everyone else’s. There was nothing special about me anymore.

Living my very own personal dream

So I gave up looking for a job, and started living my personal dream. Every day I got up and did the things that were important to me. There was one thing and one thing only that I cared about: How can I get the most out of every day, living up to my full potential now? What can I do that only I can do? What can I do today that nobody else would be able to do?

By now, I have come across dozens of people who live just the life that I wanted so badly. I have seen them working the job that I wanted; I have seen them living the live that used to be my dream. They are making a lot of money, and I am jealous that they got the job and I didn’t. But then I go home and realize how lucky I am—lucky that I don’t have to hide who I am, what I feel, what I desire, what I fear, what I dream about. After 15 years of low-key hard work, I am rediscovering my emotions. I am slowly discovering that being vulnerable is an asset, and being the best version of myself is attractive—to girls, boys, clients, you name it.

My day job now is to challenge my thoughts and expectations, and to dream big. No idea can be crazy enough that it is not worth at least a few minutes of seriously thinking it through. Starting a band? Getting a part in a movie or TV show? Getting a major label record deal? How boring. I want it all, and much more.

Of course I want to be rich and famous and happy, but is that all? Is there anything that goes beyond that?

Yes: time. I want to have time for the things that matter to me, the things that feel right. I want to be happy in this very moment, in every moment.

I don’t want to wait to become the person I like to be; I want to be that person now. Rich, famous and happy—yes, but not at some undefined later point in life. It has to be now. Everything.

 “So, what do you do?”

So, what do I actually do? Whenever I get asked that question, I struggle to find an answer. What do I do? I really don’t know, I don’t really do anything. At least I don’t do anything that I can actually put into a proper sentence. In fact, I have my own orchestra where I play almost all instruments, and I have a job in that very orchestra as the chief sound engineer, producer, arranger, and concertmaster. I also have a job as a session guitar player, bass player, MIDI programmer, and mixing/mastering engineer. And yes, it’s true, I produced a song for Bambi. I received a Clio award (the Oscar for advertising), started producing music for reality-TV shows (if you must know, among them are Mariah Carey’s “Mariah’s world” on É and Steve Harvey’s “Funderdome” on ABC), and became what people would call successful. And then I started getting calls to work with live orchestras, both in Los Angeles and abroad. That was a lifelong dream come true: standing in front of an orchestra and experiencing that special energy of a large group of top musicians playing together. I worked with a composer from India who hired me to put together the finest session-players of Hollywood, and then started getting really busy with regular live-orchestra sessions for Grammy-winning producer Kevin Gomringer (Kendrick Lamar, Eminem, Kanye West, Cardi B, 2 Chainz etc.).

I am also traveling the world recording sounds and music together with a small group of very special friends. We are creating a TV show, a production music library, and virtual instruments as tools for composers to use in their compositions. Our day job is to broaden our horizons and become better people. Whenever we come up with a new idea, we challenge it:

Is there something better, something bigger, something we are forgetting because we think we are not capable of doing it? Something that hasn’t even crossed our minds because it seems so out of reach? There is always something, and that something is what we have to go for. Anything smaller is not even worth a thought.

A life worth living…

Every day for me feels special because the combination of things I do is something nobody else can do. Living up to my full potential every day—that’s a life worth living. It is exciting, scary, and crazy, but rewarding. Waking up every morning, knowing that nobody else in the world is doing what I will be doing today, knowing I will get paid a considerable amount of money because there is nobody doing what I do—that is when a dream becomes reality, and life becomes worth living.

Somewhere along the way, I lost big chunks of my ego that had kept me so busy for all those years. I used to define myself by the work I did and the big-name projects I’d been working on. It felt good to talk about how committed I was, the amazing projects I’d worked on, and how amazing the people I worked for were. It felt great to be the person who never sleeps. “How are you doing?” “Very busy! Soo much work!!!” was my standard conversation. My motto was “Only hard work will get you there,” and to some extent, that became true to me—my hard work got me where I am now, a place where I couldn’t care less about working hard. Working hard is not a virtue; it is a product of western culture as much as many other things that we take as a given (e.g. monotheism, democracy, monogamy, etc.). I still work very hard, but it is a conscious choice that I make, and I don’t make it every day.

… without the pressure of “making it”

What has changed is the pressure that came with my commitment. I lived with a backpack of things I thought I had to do in order to one day be really successful. I felt the pressure to stay up late and work till 4:00 a.m. just because that’s what the people I looked up to did. I felt the pressure to say yes to everything, because the next project might just be the one taking off, pushing me into the heavens of fame and money. I never spoke up, and I got paid nothing, but treated everything like a million dollar project. I needed the feeling of being busy because that was the only life I had. I didn’t have time for a personal life or emotional interactions of any kind; I didn’t even have time to be lonely.

Being busy solved everything for me. But after my big failed attempt at the dream job of a lifetime, it slowly dawned on me that there was something else out there that didn’t equate busyness with success. I realized it might actually be possible to be successful without being busy.

After stepping out of this circle of constant pressure and commitment, surprisingly enough, I still got all the gigs. These days, I literally tell people that my goal is to not work; I make being lazy a virtue. Sometimes, when a project is not really that appealing, and the budget is low, I tell a potential client that it doesn’t make any sense for me to work on it, that I’d rather just sit at the beach all day and do nothing! Now, when I am asked for an estimate, I don’t calculate the time it takes; I calculate the value it provides. I used to feel pressured to put a certain amount of time into something because I got paid a certain amount of money. Now I am absolutely fine with getting paid thousands of dollars for half a day of work (yes, this actually happened!).

Let’s not take anything for granted. Question everything, think bigger than everyone else, do the things that nobody else does, and take it from Woody Allen: “Live every day like it’s your last, and one day you’ll be right.”

If you are interested in more details about the music & travel project I am referencing above, please visit symphonicplanet.com. 

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7 thoughts about leaving everything behind to follow your dreams

We dreamers have one thing in common: we would give up almost anything to follow our dreams. We would leave everything behind if we had to. Wait, would we really?

 When reality kicks in

In reality, we are just as hesitant to take the big step as anyone else. We live our lives comparing opportunities with habits and making decisions based on loose subjective assumptions. Instead of welcoming every opportunity with open arms, we are hesitant to actually follow them for the most trivial reasons, for example, leaving home.

The typical American lives only 18 miles from mom. Why?

Let’s say we have a big opportunity presented to us that would require us to relocate across the globe. What do we do? Should we really give up everything we have? Give up our job and leave friends, family, partner, kids?

Here are my 7 thoughts:

1. Being afraid of missing out at home.

Every time I visit home, I am surprised how things haven’t changed. It’s basically all the same to the point where I am convinced that I could return at any time and pick up exactly where I left off. Yes, people are a few years older, they might have moved on to a new job or new girlfriend/boyfriend, but that’s about it. Every time I stay home longer than two weeks, I find myself sliding into my old life, old habits, old everything. My best friends who haven’t heard from me in over a year call me as if we just saw each other yesterday.

2. Losing job opportunities.

Let’s be real. When you are gone, you are gone. You will lose 90% of jobs simply because you are gone. Unless you are a unique specialist, most people prefer to work with locals. But here’s the good news: most people prefer to work with locals. Wherever you go, wherever your new place is, chances are there is a job for you waiting, just because you are there.

3. Relationships with clients and friends.

Another surprising find of mine is that being away for a couple of years might seem like a big deal for us, but for some of our clients, especially those who only hire us occasionally, they might not even notice that we were gone. It’s the same with friends. Yes, they will miss us, but let’s hope they also have their own life. For a good, deep friendship, a few years away is nothing. Many of us have childhood friends that we’ve met – wait – 25 years ago.

4. Is it the right thing to do?

This is very easy to answer: I don’t know. You don’t know. There is one simple question to ask: will you spend the rest of your life asking yourself what would have happened if you had done this? If it’s important to you, chances are you will. Not only that, you will find yourself looking for excuses and blaming other people for your failure of not going through with it. And you will start the negative talk to justify everything. I have seen it first hand. It is horrible. Every time I come home, I meet people who tell me how horrible America is and why they would never ever consider living there. How do they know? Most of them have never left Europe.

5. Money Issues.

Often there is a high financial risk involved with any big life change, and the most common reason to not follow through with it is money. There is no point denying that it will be hard to adapt to a new lifestyle. But there is good news. If it’s your dream, there is always a way. If you didn’t know, there are people traveling the world for years and years without any money. It’s possible. Believe me, I have done it too. Doing the big things without having money is a lesson for life.

6. Starting all over again.

First, living in a new place far away from home and surrounded by people with zero expectations can be scary, but it can also be a liberating experience. I was excited to finally design the life I wanted to live, without having to justify anything to anyone. Second, you don’t lose your expertise. I stuck to what I knew, what experiences I have had, and what I’d done in the past. It turned out that I didn’t have to start all over at all. I picked up exactly where I left off. The transition was so smooth that sometimes I didn’t even realize that I had relocated to the other side of the world. Changing locations doesn’t have to mean starting all over again. It literally just means a change of location.

7. Romantic Relationships.

Now this is a very sensitive subject. Can your relationship survive one or two years apart? Do you need to break up? 

Here is my simple observation. First, there is dating. People date. Then they break up. They date again and break up again. Talking about the different people that we have dated over the years is like talking about trying different types of chocolate. The difference is that nobody would make big life-changing decisions based on the flavor of chocolate. Neither should we throw away our dreams for a person that might not even be in our life in a couple of years.

Real, deep, personal connections that go beyond dating are a different story. Would you “break up” with your best friend just because you are leaving for two years? I don’t think so either. If you have found your soulmate, there is no point worrying. You can a) take your partner with you, b) skype every day, c) fly back and forth frequently. If all that’s not for you, there’s still no need to worry. Take a break and go see other people. If you think you’ve found the love of your life, it will still be there in two or three years. If not, I would reconsider your definition of “love of my life”.

Every time I do something big and scary, something that I’ve never done before, something that I thought I would never be capable of doing, the world gets smaller and easier to handle. For me, jumping on a plane at LAX, arriving in London, and then taking another flight to Vienna literally feels like catching the metro to get home. No big deal at all.

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You may say…

We artists are dreamers. We have devoted our lives to the creation of ideas, to make the world a better place. We have committed to not giving up, to try and try and try, every day again. We have decided to be different, to take risks, to ask questions, to express ourselves, and not be silent. But most and foremost: we have pledged to love. We do what we love, we love what we do, and we demand to be loved for what we do.

I’m a dreamer…

Every day, I have to explain myself to an outside world that does not seem to understand. Why am I not getting a real job? What am I even doing all day? I am in my thirties and I still don’t have a job, a family, a house, a car, a life? What is wrong with me?

This blog is devoted to all of us and our daily struggle. This is what I would have needed, starting out as an artist. I was a 10 year old kid when i started playing violin. When I was 14 I got my own guitar, started writing songs, founded my own band, and began producing music. When I finally got out of school, there was no other choice than devoting my life to music.

I had been broke my whole life, nevertheless, at some point I decided to pack my things, get a visa, and move across the globe to Hollywood. That is where the real struggle began and where it is about to end. These days I turn on the TV and hear my own music playing; I get calls from Disney when they need a title song for a new show. And in between all the Hollywood craziness, I am trying to live the life I want to live, be the person I want to be, do the things I want to do.

… But I’m not the only one

In this blog I will share all that with you, my fellow dreamers. Every day I am trying to find new ways to live my life to it’s fullest potential; to do the things that I never thought would be possible. I research and test uncommon ways of living in order to not only be successful, but also be happy. I am humbled to share my experiences with other fellow dreamers on this blog and encourage you to share your experiences with me and the world. Here, on this blog, we talk about everything.

Do you have anything that is on your mind that you want me to write about? Comment below or send me your thoughts to jonas@wearedreamers.blog. With a a lot of mutual love, and hopefully heated discussions, we can grow together and create a community that shares the drive of creativity, the urge to express ourselves, and the aspiration to live a life worth living.

Here are some of the headlines I will be writing about:

  • You are doing what? How about getting a real job?
  • Can I charge money for doing what I love?
  • How much we should charge and a little reality check.
  • When am I finally good enough to become really successful?
  • The truth about being successful and why having talent is not enough.
  • Why taking the weekend off won’t kill your career (and will make you a better artist).
  • How to live within our means – a few thoughts about (not) spending money.
  • How long we should wait for inspiration and why we never get stuff done.
  • Being reliable vs. being flexible.
  • How much networking do we really need?
  • Why “trying hard” will not get us anywhere but “doing hard” will.
  • Why we need mentors and where to find them.
  • The difference between a successful business and a successful artist.
  • What we can learn from millionaires.
  • When to leave our bedroom and get the real jobs.
  • Working from home or better not?
  • When to stop learning and finally charge real money.
  • About the difference between being a “big shot” and actually being successful.
  • Why 90% of the projects in Hollywood never happen and what that means for us.
  • How to find out if my art is actually any good and if that’s important.
  • Some thoughts about “living the dream”, based on real-life experience.
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