Are you a Gen Zer and feel like your career can’t get out of the starting blocks?
Are you a millennial and stuck?
Are you at an age when people are telling you to retire, but you feel like you have not yet reached your potential?
Then let me tell you about Kenny Rogers. Rogers grew up in the housing projects in Houston. Today we would refer to his childhood as one of poverty. In his memoir, Rogers recalled that, as a first grader, a dance was held at his school where the girls picked the boys to be their partners. He was picked last.
Yet Kenny had musical talent and, as a young man, became part of a singing group called the First Edition. By the time Rogers turned thirty, they had succeeded on the rock and pop charts and appeared on several major TV shows. Then the First Edition broke up. Over the next two years, Kenny hardly worked at all. He had always been part of a group, but he had to learn to make a career as a solo singer.
Unfortunately, he did not have the first clue as to how to do it.
With nothing working for him, he literally headed in a new direction. Rogers moved from Los Angeles to Nashville and pursued a career in country music. When Kenny turned forty and was going nowhere, a person in the industry offered him a song that sounded so depressing that Rogers’ record company told him to forget it. But he and his manager fought to record it, and at last, the record company, United Artists, relented.
One evening shortly after, Rogers was booked to sing on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. Kenny opened his set by singing these words: “In a bar in Toledo across from the depot….” The song was called Lucille, and by the time he sang the chorus, the audience in the studio (and at home) was hooked. That was the launch of a long-lasting country and pop solo career.
At the peak of his popularity, Rogers’ was filling stadiums containing 70,000 seats. By the time he retired, Kenny had recorded over 100 songs that became hits and sold over 100 million records. Even though he passed away three years ago, I still hear his songs on the radio, in movies, and in commercials.
Rogers said that no one should enter the music business for money. In his book, he wrote, “Most people who set out just to make money don’t last long enough to actually see the money. They get discouraged and quit. Longevity is based on your ability to accept rejection and keep trying. Most people can’t do that. Those who do survive do so because they feel music is their calling. These people are hard to discourage.” That is good advice for any field.
Whether your career won’t take off, you are stuck, or people are prematurely attempting to put you out to pasture, take some notes from Kenny Rogers.
Don’t do work simply to make money.
Remember that longevity is based on your ability to accept rejection and keep trying.
If you want to survive and thrive, pick a field where you have a calling.