Well, I Guess This Is Growing Up

On fear, a couch, and the person who saw what I couldn't.

“Almost $7,000. No fucking way lol.”

I hit send on the text to Michelle and put my head in my hands, dejected.

I’m sitting in Red Horn Brewing, one of my favorite work spots...cool enough to still feel like Austin, but there’s no electric scooters littering the front walkway. It’s a coffee shop and a brewery, though my time here usually involves more dark roasts and espressos than lagers or IPAs. I’ve spent the last few hours on the coffee side of the equation, writing and preparing for the call with the guy from the academy.

The unexpected unemployment has now dragged on for 3 months. What started as confidence in my skills and reputation has devolved, first into frustration, then anger, and recently, legitimate fear. The call is my first uncertain step towards an even more uncertain career pivot.

At 38 with 3 kids under 4 and a wife who was laid off the same week I was, there’s not a lot of margin for error.

I went into the call with a ton of excitement. I got a glimpse into a future I felt I could legitimately pursue. The freedom to be my own boss, do work I had become passionate about over the last few years, and build something that can’t be taken from me in one phone call.

Everything was energizing, but my Spidey sense was tingling as the conversation drew to a close. The sales rep re-stacked all of the benefits I’d be getting, building up the value...a play I now recognize straight out of Hormozi’s offer stack. Then he hit me with the number.

Before the conversation, I had anchored Michelle on a much lower number.

I just heard 7x what we had discussed.

I squirm, visibly uncomfortable for the first time in the conversation, and tell the sales rep that’s way more than I could pay right now. The rep pushes to close me anyway. But a career in negotiations has taught me how to stall, so I tell him I’ll either talk to him in 24 hours or we’re done.

His last lines to me aren’t parting shots, but questions that feel a little too intimate for someone who’s just met me:

“What’s the real fear here, Mike? Is it really about the money, or is it not believing that you can be successful?”

My phone vibrates. Michelle’s written back. “We’ll talk when you get home, babe. I love you.”

Yeah, right. We’ll talk about how I’d need to peel off nearly a month of our expenses in a time we’re draining both our severance packages to chase a new dream.

I go back up to the register. Instead of closing out my tab, I switch to beer.

THE COUCH

Hours later, all three kids are miraculously asleep at the same time.

We’re tucked into the white L-shaped couch that, back in 2022, I insisted was a ridiculous purchase. With two boys already in the fold, we’d need a cleaning crew on standby. But it wasn’t a hill worth dying on, and the joke’s been on me: it’s comfy as hell (and cleaners come once a quarter to perform miracles in my living room).

She sits in the “money” spot - that long side, facing the TV, where you can kind of melt into the corner. I’m opposite her on the chaise.

She’s relaxed. I’m not.

Usually, I can journal my way to a solution before we’re on the couch, but not tonight. Tonight, things are just too big. I need to talk this shit out.

“And, look, the guy walked me through a realistic path to hitting $20k a month by the time severance is up. He admitted it’s aggressive, but said it’s been done. So if it’s been done once, it can be done again, right?”

Michelle is at her best when I’m at my most frantic. She sits in a calm where my energy doesn’t seem to touch her, which is a good thing tonight, because I’m radioactive.

“So what are you scared of?”

I’m standing now, beginning to circle the couch and stretch - a routine that comes out when my inner tension is nearing its peak. Sometimes, the stretching prevents the panic attacks. Sometimes, not.

“He was reaching.” A decade and a half of attentive interviewing gives you access to the micro-tells and what they mean. “There’s been, like, one guy who’s done it. Maybe two. One lucky client outreach could get you there.”

She’s quiet for a pause. I work on my hamstrings.

“But that’s not what’s holding you back. You said, even if it takes longer to get to $20k, you can see this being successful, right?”

“Oh yeah, totally. I could make way more than I’m making now.”

“So what’s holding you back?”

Now I’m the one pausing, but what looks like silence to her is violence to me. I can hear my heart as increasingly rapid thuds in my eardrums. If I let my breath get out of control here, the attack will set in, and the universe will be giving me my answer:

You can’t fucking cut it, Mike.

Instead of breathing deeply, I throw myself face-down on the chaise and force myself to say it out loud.

“That I can’t fucking cut it. That I’ll spend the money and not be able to make it work. That the business will flop just like the album flopped, but instead of just my ego, I’m jeopardizing our future and my family’s ability to live in this fucking house.”

I want to throw up. It’s fine, I tell myself, because the cleaners are coming next week. I lift my head up and look at her, feeling weak and vulnerable and not anywhere near enough.

She waves her hand like she’s swatting a fly.

“Oh. I’m not worried about that at all.”

BELIEF IS A BEAUTIFUL ARMOR

Back when we started dating in 2012, John Mayer was on anytime we drove anywhere. We listened to him on our first (real) date, and we danced to for our first (married) dance. We see him anytime he’s in town.

The first weekend I drove up from Houston to visit Michelle in San Antonio, I had his brilliant Where The Light Is live album on repeat. His cover of Hendrix’s Bold As Love came on, and while it’s an awesome song, John goes on a bit of a tangent in the middle of the bridge (the topic, unsurprisingly, is love). But in the midst of the outpouring, two sentences hovered above the rest and tattooed themselves on my brain:

“I don’t mean, like a Roman candle, firework, Hollywood, hot pink love. I mean, like, I’ve got your BACK love!”

I’d heard it thirty times before and never thought about it once. But after he said it, Michelle, looking out the passenger window, smiled and said, “I want that kind of love.”

So did I.

On the couch on the verge of a panic attack with my 3-month-old in the next room, I know one thing in this universe to be true:

I’m lucky enough to have ‘I’ve got your BACK’ love.

“Seriously? That doesn’t worry you? Me fucking this whole thing up?”

Her head shake is immediate.

“No, not at all about that. I mean, yeah, the tight runway makes me uncomfortable. And I’d feel more comfortable if you kept applying to jobs, just in case something comes up that can help us sooner. And, I don’t want you to miss all of the baby’s time as a baby because you’re stressed out building a company. But, no, I’m not worried about you failing.”

I feel like someone is both taking a load off my shoulders and wrapping me in a blanket that just came out of the dryer. The storm in my head is quieting. My pulse is taking the escalator down.

These were logical concerns. They were risks that could be mitigated. More importantly, they weren’t my crippling self-doubt, my generationally-inspired tendency to play small, or my inner bitch.

They were just problems to solve for. Keep the important things the main things. Mitigate the risk where possible. Minimize the downside.

THE CLOSER

The next morning, I am ready to go at 6 AM, but the call isn’t until 12:30. I get on the Zoom and do the dude’s job for him. Run the card, already, woulda ya? Yeah, yeah, onboarding emails. Slack invites. Fine. Let’s go.

The receipt hits my inbox. My butthole tightens to pinhole width. I wonder if Chase will let me report this as a fraudulent charge if I call in the next 5 minutes? Is that a thing?

Then, beginning to model the erratic mood swings of a true founder, the guy born last night is back, and Mike Radice is an entrepreneur, baby. I’ve wanted this for a long, long time. I’ve got a wife who believes in me. Other than raising a newborn and two toddlers, I have no other commitments. Time to actually pull this off. LFG.

Within a week, three (3) recruiting leadership roles with impressive companies materialize from nowhere in 4 days.

Well, that changes everything. But that’s why we agreed on the guardrails in advance. I thought I’d get longer than a week at this, but I have my priorities clear.

So life happens (again), and the ghostwriting thing temporarily goes from the whole meal to the sauce simmering on a side burner. It’s there—you smell it every time you come in the room—but it doesn’t have your full attention.

And that’s fine. Because I didn’t need the ghostwriting business to crush it. I didn’t need to escape from corporate America - and honestly, I’m glad I didn’t. I’ve already made some life-long friends at this new gig.

What Michelle unlocked that night on the couch was more than a career choice. It was a total perspective shift. The moment someone believes in you more than you believe in yourself rewires something inside of you.

For me, it was recognition that my life partner, the one who will tell me (with pleasure) when I’m out of my goddamn mind, doubled down on me instead.

That’s real.

I’ve spent more time out of my comfort zone over the last two years than I did in the prior decade. I’m a far-from-perfect, pretty-damn-good dad. The ghostwriting business turned out to be the on-ramp to building 2nd Acts.

I’m not here without that.

I’m not here without her.