Alright, gather ’round.
Alex Becker dropped a banger of a post on FB today. A little bit of truth that most people will scroll by while they’re sitting on the toilet pretending their 9 to5 isn’t slowly murdering their soul.
He showed the world his cringe origin story. His $200 a month bedroom, talking to nobody, SEO blog having, absolute dorkfest of a beginning. Crazy thing is that dork is now worth hundreds of millions. Usually most people leave out the parts that matter.
Everyone starts out cringe.
Everyone. Even Einstein started out cringe. Couldn’t talk until he was four. People thought he was “special”
Oprah? Fired from her first television job for being “unfit for TV.”
Stephen King? His first novel was rejected 30 times. 30 damn times.
You think caveman Grog wasn’t getting laughed at when he was rubbing sticks together trying to make fire while everyone else was raw dogging mammoth meat?
Cringe = Growth × Visibility.
The more visible your growth, the more cringe you generate. It’s physics. It’s math. It’s the fundamental law of the universe that says you can’t become extraordinary without first being extraordinarily embarrassing.
And guess what most people do? They choose invisibility. They choose safe. They choose to practice their dreams in the basement where nobody can see them fail.
You know what happens to dreams in basements?
They grow mould and die.
So here’s a couple of take aways from pondering on what Alex shared.
You’ve got that thing. That idea, that project, that business, that art, that whatever-the-fuck that makes your chest tight when you think about showing it to people. You know it’s not good yet. Hell, it might be actively bad. But there’s something there. A spark. A possibility. Pure unadulterated virgin cringe.
Most people die here. They suffocate that spark under a blanket of “maybe later” and “when I’m ready” and “after I take one more course.”
There’s a second stage to this though.
This is where you say “fuck it” and put it out there anyway. Your YouTube channel with 3 subscribers (your mom, your alt account, and that bot from Russia)
Your blog that nobody reads. Your business idea that makes people do that polite smile that means “oh honey, no.” (I’ve heard that a lot lol)
I’m fifty fifty when it comes to magic and woo woo. But this is where good stuff starts to happen. Not because you’re good. You’re not. You’re terrible. You’re so bad it’s almost art. But you’re VISIBLE. You’re IN THE ARENA. You’re getting punched in the face by reality instead of doing that little “I dunno” dance with your imagination or whatever.
But you’ve now made friends with the cringe. You’ve invited it for dinner. Even said it can spend the night in the spare bedroom.
There’s always a choice though.
You can be cringe for a few years while you figure your shit out.
Or you can be mediocre forever while you wait for the perfect moment that never comes.
You can be laughed at by people who don’t matter while you build something that does.
Or you can be approved of by everyone while you build exactly nothing.
You can eat shit in public while you learn to fly.
Or you can stay safe on the ground and wonder what clouds taste like.
I embrace the cringe by writing these silly little emails. I experiment with style. I twist my ideas. I look at others work and see how I can spin it with my unique tastes while expanding on it and hopefully giving a little more value.
I embrace the daily cringe of daily emails.
Go check out Alex’s post from roughly 8 hours ago.
‘Twas the inspiration for this email.
Stephen Walker.