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.