“He will make a great Master’s student”
While starting my career, my family, I was also continuing my education. I had always dreamed of having a PhD, and during that same early stint, I had applied to go to Stanford for the PhD. They needed a recommendation from my advisor at SMU. They were delivered back to us in signed envelopes we couldn’t open…
… and eventually, I never finished my application. I had found my Passion was actually more aligned with people – but being thick headed even that took another 30 years to fully materialize. That letter confirmed my advisor knew something I didn’t. I wonder if that feedback could have been delivered sooner, and closing that door earlier would have been better?
…the door that closed on you…
Everyone who has led for 20 years carries a short list they do not talk about. The promotion that went to someone else. The degree you did not finish. The job you were sure of, and the phone call that said otherwise. You still flinch at the list, and you have never once asked what it gave you. Back then, each one felt like the end of a road. Now you can see how Time changed what it meant.
Look at where you are now and trace it back. Very often the road you are on started at one of those closed doors. It usually takes less looking than you expect, once you stop defending the old story.
…the truck driver who wondered out loud…
Ronnie Platt drove a truck for a living. He sang on the side, joined a working band called Shooting Star in 2007, and kept driving. When Steve Walsh left Kansas in 2014, Platt did something most people his age would not: he sent Rich Williams a message on Facebook and asked to be considered. That July, at 52, he was named the band’s new lead singer. He told the fans that first and foremost, he was one of them, and Phil Ehart called him a perfect fit. In February 2025 he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, had surgery in March, and was back on stage in April, calling it a bump in the road.
So Time has shown those early failures were great gifts.
…what it takes to wonder about the closed doors…
To wonder is to ask why you are doing this, and whether you are the right person to do it. Most of us only ask that question about the future. The richer question points backward: what did each setback steer you toward that you would never have chosen on your own?
The trap is the story you tell about the failure. You have told it so often that it has hardened. Tell it again, starting from where you are now, and the ending changes.
…a song that named the miracle years…
Miracles Out of Nowhere is the fourth song on Leftoverture, one of the songs Kerry Livgren wrote alone in the months when, in his words, he was a writing machine. Rich Williams played it on his Martin acoustic. It was never a single, and it never needed to be. One critic heard baroque styling in it, and the same search for meaning Livgren was writing about all through that album.
In 2015, when the band finally told its own story on film, from the Topeka years through Point of Know Return, the documentary took this song’s name. The band that had needed a hit to keep its record deal looked back and called the whole run a miracle. None of them planned the order it came in.
…what I wondered when I opened the letter…
I probably opened that in 1992 just as I was leaving IBM and heading into my work with Object Technology at Fannie Mae with NeXT. What resonated then and has been confirmed – I am NOT PhD material. I like to know a little about a lot of things, not a lot about one narrow thing. I also love people not tech, and this rejection helped me double down on it.
The other thing like it was in 1977… when I got a D at SMU just as I met Wes. I realized that after that, I would never be a Magna Cum Laude … so I worked more on the Politics and “fun” parts of life. This was replayed at Fannie where in that season I realized I would never be a VP so I focused on fun things – being in a Bluegrass band, working with NeXT Corporate User Group, coaching Youth Soccer, starting a Men’s group at Church…
Your “Simple… Not Easy” move: List 3 failures from your first 10 years of work, and next to each, the gift it turned out to be.
If one of those failures still stings, and you want to wonder about it with someone who has a list of his own, let’s talk. Schedule Time with me here.
Write the list, and look for the gifts that came like… Miracles Out of Nowhere
