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The gap between you and greatness might be your willingness to look stupid.
There's a video of a kid named Jimmy from 2017 where he says the word “Logan Paul” 100,000 times on camera.
Imagine for a second one of your friends did that now. How cringe would it be?
Today, MrBeast (Jimmy) is the biggest creator on the planet.
Before GoPro became a billion-dollar company, Nick Woodman was selling bead belts out of his van, desperately scraping together cash for camera prototypes.
His friends thought he'd lost it. Everyone saw a 26-year-old failure playing with toys.
What they couldn't see was that embarrassment wasn't the cost of greatness — it was the training ground.
Where It Showed Up in My Life
For me, it started with random TikToks in college.
I used to make SpongeBob conspiracy theories and awkward vlogs where I barely knew how to look at the camera.
Looking back at those videos now, I physically cringe.
The editing was rough, my voice was uncertain and the content itself was brainrot.
But here's what nobody tells you about those embarrassing beginnings — they're teaching you everything you need to know.
Those shaky TikToks taught me content rhythm.
They taught me how to hold attention and to speak to a lens like it was a person.
They taught me the discipline of showing up every day and even shifted my identity into someone who is committed.
But most importantly, they taught me that the fear of looking stupid is always worse than actually looking stupid.
That "cringe era" became the foundation for everything.
My creative agency and the brand work with companies 1000x my size.
Quiet Clarity and the writings I put out weekly.
Friends and mentors who inspire me daily.
None of it exists without those embarrassing first attempts.
What the Wisdom Reveals
Kobe Bryant understood something most people never grasp.
He would cold-call Oprah, Arianna Huffington, even Apple's Jony Ive, just to ask how they built what they built.
Imagine that.
One of the greatest athletes ever, calling strangers like a nervous intern.
But those cringey calls gave him wisdom that shaped his entire second career.
“Be not afraid of discomfort. If you can't put yourself in a situation where you are uncomfortable, then you will never grow. You will never change. You'll never learn.
Here's the lesson: Embarrassment is not the cost of growth. It is the training ground of growth.
The people you admire didn't skip the cringe phase.
They moved through it faster than everyone else because they understood something critical — your ego's need to look good is the exact thing keeping you small.
Every time you choose dignity over growth, you're choosing to stay exactly where you are.
How I'm Trying to Live Now
These days, I'm still embracing the cringe. Especially when I begin something new that I feel pulled towards.
I've been posting more personal reflections, more philosophy, more of the real story behind the business.
For old friends who knew me as just another goof, maybe it looks pretentious.
For new connections, maybe it seems try-hard.
But I've accepted that as the price of becoming.
When I sit on my floor in New York, recording videos about discipline and growth, part of me knows how it might look.
Another twenty-something talking about success. Another voice in the noise.
Slowly, I'm letting go of what other people might perceive it as.
Because if I'm following the pull I feel, and it's not to prove something to anyone else — what's wrong with that?
Every great had their awkward first drafts.
Their moments that made others laugh or dismiss them.
The difference is they kept moving through it.
So I try to live by this: Be more of me, follow the pull, and let the world call it cringe if it wants.
Because I know that every "cringe" step is carving the path forward.
Every embarrassing attempt is data. Every awkward beginning is just a beginning.
And the alternative isn't dignity, it's invisibility. It's dying with your real self still in you because you were too scared of a few people laughing.
And the people laughing are usually the ones projecting themselves onto you.
They're sitting on the sidelines, protecting their egos, waiting for perfect conditions that will never come.
So remember this: Everyone you admire was once exactly where you are.
Posting that first video
Writing that first piece
Making that first call
Starting that first business
The greats aren’t the ones who avoided that cringe.
They’re the ones who walked through it until they transformed cringe into greatness.
