Dear Family,
By the time Steve Stoute was 29 years old, he was already one of the most successful young executives in the music business.
He had worked with artists like Nas and eventually became president of Urban Music at Sony. He was making roughly $2.5 million a year.
Then he walked away.
Stoute left the music business to join the Arnell Group, an advertising agency, where he went from making millions of dollars a year to earning a salary of roughly $150,000 with equity in the company.
Think about that for a second.
Most of us spend our careers trying to get to the position Stoute was already in. He was young, successful, making more money than most people could imagine, and working in an industry where he had already established himself.
And he gave it up.
Looking back today, knowing what Steve Stoute went on to accomplish, it's easy to say he made the right decision. He would eventually become one of the people who helped major corporations understand the influence hip-hop was having on American culture. He later founded Translation, his own advertising company, and built an entirely new chapter of his career. In 2017, Stoute went on to found UnitedMasters, raising $70 million from Alphabet, Andreessen Horowitz, and Floodgate to build a new kind of music company, one designed to give independent artists the tools, distribution, and brand opportunities of a traditional record label without requiring them to give up ownership of their music.
But none of that was guaranteed when he made the decision.
When Stoute walked away from that $2.5 million salary, he didn't know how the story would end. He didn't know what his equity would eventually be worth. He didn't know whether he would be successful in advertising. He didn't know whether he would regret leaving the music business. He simply saw an opportunity to learn something he didn't know and potentially build something greater.
Opportunity is the key word.
We have a tendency to look at successful people in hindsight and turn their sacrifices into sure bets. They weren't. Before the success came the uncertainty. Before the payoff came the anxiety. Before everyone called the decision brilliant, there were probably plenty of moments when it looked foolish.
That's what real sacrifice looks like.
So many of us say we want something different for our lives. We want to start the business. Build wealth. Change careers. Own our time. Get healthier. Spend more time with our families. Move somewhere new. Pursue the thing we've been talking about for years.
But wanting a different life and being willing to sacrifice the life you currently have are two very different things.
And I'm not talking about the kind of sacrifice that sounds good on social media. I'm talking about real-life sacrifice. Making less money for a period of time. Changing the lifestyle your family has become accustomed to. Watching your friends advance in their careers while you start over. Saying no to things you can afford today because you're trying to build something for tomorrow. Walking away from a good situation without knowing whether the next one will actually be better.
Those decisions create real uncertainty and real anxiety because failure is a real possibility. You could make the sacrifice and still lose.
That's what makes it a sacrifice. If giving something up today guaranteed you something better tomorrow, there wouldn't be much courage involved. It would simply be a transaction. Short-term sacrifice doesn't guarantee long-term gains.
It gives you the opportunity to pursue them.
That doesn't mean we should make reckless decisions or put our families through unnecessary hardship in the name of chasing a dream. As our responsibilities grow, the consequences of our decisions grow with them. But we should also be honest with ourselves.
Sometimes we say we want a different life while doing everything possible to protect the comfort of the one we already have.
At some point, those two things can come into conflict. The career you want may require leaving the title you've worked years to earn. The business you want may require giving up some financial security. The financial freedom you want may require living differently from your peers. The family life you want may require saying no to opportunities that look like success from the outside.
There is always a cost.
The question is whether we are willing to pay it. Steve Stoute traded income for education. He traded certainty for opportunity. Fortunately for him, the bet paid off. But the lesson isn't that everything worked out.
The lesson is that he had to make the decision before he knew that it would.
We all want the long-term gain. Every once in a while, it's worth asking ourselves whether we're truly willing to make the short-term sacrifice required for the opportunity to get there.
From LUX, With Love.
Matt
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