Story

When I was a senior in high school, one of the classes I had the most fun with was our school store management course - I was in charge of marketing and merchandising. Now, where I grew up in Michigan is very blue collar, and football is all that matters for about half the school year. This makes sense as at the time, our varsity team was playing in the state championship every other year and the entire town would rally behind us. Understanding our fan base and having a love for work shirts (think the button down shirts a mechanic wears with their name patch on them), I reached out to a store downtown that sold excess work shirts, complete with random name patches on them, for pennies on the dollar. Using our school store's budget, I purchased as many as we could afford and took them to a printer. On the back of each shirt, I printed in bright yellow: "Hudsonville Superfan. We may not be pretty but we get the job done."

The day we got them back, I made a quick video with a few friends from class in which I played an average student who happened to walk past the school store when nobody was around. The store was pitch black with only one light on, a seemingly perfect ray of light cast down directly on a pile of these new work shirts. Face pressed to the glass, I tried the door. It was unlocked.

The next scene was shot in slow motion black and white using a huge fan from our gym - I was walking down the hallway with my Superfan work shirt on and people were coming out of their classes just staring in awe at my hair, blowing in the wind (that's right, my locks used to be wonderful). It faded to black and said something to the effect of the new superfan shirts releasing on Friday.

The next morning, the 'commercial' we made played on TV in every classroom in our school during the announcements. I thought the idea was awesome and it turns out everyone else did too - the first batch of shirts sold out to teachers, staff and the boosters before they even released. So we made more, and more, and more. To the point where nearly everyone in my town, at that time, had one of the shirts I had created. It was an incredible feeling I still get goosebumps thinking about, even to this day.

But what does that have to do with failure, you ask? This is where the story gets good.

During this crazy whirlwind of shirts in town, my friend's dad had asked to see me. Mr B had the biggest property (and home) in our neighborhood - he owned a very prominent ad agency that I had been interning at part time for school.

When I met him at his home, he sat down and showed me a variety of layouts for a new branding campaign they were working on for his company. He said that after seeing my creativity with the Superfan shirts that he'd like me to come work for them and handle the creative direction myself.

After picking my jaw up from the floor, I thanked him profusely for the offer and rushed home to tell my parents. I couldn't believe I had an offer from the best place in town and I was only in high school.

That following workday, as I arrived to intern, I anxiously told the designers there what had happened. I, being incredibly naive, thought they'd love the fact that I didn't have to go to four years of college like they did in order to get a better job offer directly from the owner. The world was taking notice of my genius and nothing could stop me!

Until I got back to class the next day. My teacher had gotten a call from the manager of the division I was interning at. He had spoken with the owner and told him after everything I had shared with the team yesterday, there was no way he could bring me on. It just wouldn't work as the rest of the team would be too upset.

I was crushed. I had outperformed everyone, yet I lost. And 20 years later, I still remember how that pain felt.

Now let's be real here - the failure was my own doing. I made a mistake that directly impacted my future. If I'm honest, I think I took it so personally that I ended high school on sort of a 'who cares' note - a place many of us go when we've just experienced the pain of failing, especially after trying so hard.

This feeling is not exclusive to work either - nearly all of us know what it's like to have failed relationships, promises to ourselves we don't keep and an overall feeling of just not being good enough.

But you know what? We're all still here. Failure didn't mean defeat, it just meant we had to figure out another way. Maybe that way hasn't shown itself yet, or maybe you're currently in a 'who cares' place like I was and you haven't bothered to look. No matter the circumstance, my hope for you with this beautiful ZOX is strikingly simple. Get back up.

Big Hugs,
- Jason

Artist

Natalie Miles

Failure ≠ Defeat

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