Bombing is part of the job: how rejection built comedians, writers and musicians

The Short Version

Across five very different conversations, a comedian, a Soviet-born comic, a bestselling novelist (as Mel Robbins tells his story), a bassist and a former chess prodigy describe the same pattern: bombing, rejection and losing were how they got good, not detours from it [1][2][3][4][5]. Jo Koy puts it most bluntly: the only real failure is not trying, because "if the opportunity arises and you accept the challenge and you fail then you won" [1]. Tal Wilkenfeld plays "on the edge of the cliff" on purpose and says the more often you fall off it, the faster you recover [4], and Josh Waitzkin says his most painful losses "were the greatest moments of my life in retrospect" [5]. Yakov Smirnoff's collapse and rebuild and John Grisham's 28 publisher rejections show the same thing over years instead of single nights [2][3]. The practical point is to take more risks and recover faster. Avoiding failure doesn't work. They do disagree on one thing, how much the loss should hurt, and that matters for how you use the idea.

Table of contents

What They Said

Jo Koy: "You win when you fail"

Jo Koy has done stand-up since 1989, and he treats bombing as the entry fee [1]. When Lewis Howes asks how a young comic keeps a bad night from damaging his sense of self, Koy doesn't talk about coping. He turns the question around: "that's what makes us strong is like the failure like everyone fails" [1]. Then he redraws the line between winning and losing: "it's when you don't try is truly when you fail so it's like if you're thinking about something and you decide not to do it it to me that's failing but if if the opportunity arises and you accept the challenge and you fail then you won" [1]. The people who pass on a chance because they're scared, he says, are the ones who have really failed: "that's the real failure to me" [1]. He calls it cowardice, and adds that he doesn't mean it in a mean way [1].

He backs this with a sports example: "you're not going to sit there and tell me michael jordan sucks because he lost larry bird when he scored 63 points" [1]. The episode's title line sums it up: "You win when you fail" [1].

Koy's own record fits. His first bomb came at 18. He had lied about being 21, darkened his mustache with his mom's eyeliner and borrowed his stepdad's jacket, and a heckler got the biggest laugh of the night [1]. A Lionel Richie impersonator told him he had something, and Koy says he bombed about 25 more times before it clicked [1]. Asked whether there was ever a time he wasn't funny, he says: "there's times where you're you're trying to figure out the audience you're trying to learn" and "you just keep pushing even if you weren't funny that night" [1].

What stands out in Koy's story is how many times he thought he had made it and hadn't. Around 1994 a manager at Catch a Rising Star at the MGM booked him for a week of about 12 shows at $80 a show. He photocopied the check at Kinko's and called his dad: "i thought it was over with at that point i was like oh it's on" [1]. Then: "i think i got it two more times and it was just like oh man and then it just stopped" [1]. He says "there were several times where i thought i made it," and calls that part of "the beautiful thing about this journey": "it's a long bumpy ass road with a bunch of roadblocks and a lot of gravel roads a lot of like uh turns and start over flat tires all that like that's comedy" [1]. He won Showtime at the Apollo expecting to blow up, "and then boom boom nothing happened" [1]. He describes those years as "i'm losing but i'm winning," which included missing his son's birthday to take a $2,500 weekend in St. Charles, Illinois [1].

How he got his breaks matters too. He puts it down to never refusing a chance: "the way i got them was was amazing because i i never said no to the gig" [1]. For BET's ComicView he left his tour-guide job at the Mirage early, put on a suit because Eddie Murphy said he always wore one, walked to the front of the line with a resume in a Catch a Rising Star folder, and got onstage when the booked comics ran late. He got a standing ovation and a spot on the show the next week [1]. Later, Def Comedy Jam co-creator Bob Sumner offered him a slot most comics would have found insulting: go through the curtain before the show with the house lights on, and don't mention Def Jam. A stage manager dimmed the lights for him, Koy killed, and three weeks later he won the Apollo with the same set [1]. His explanation: "I don't get offended by it. I just get motivated by it" [1]. He drove from Vegas to L.A. for $40 sets and got a taillight ticket each way, and he rode a Greyhound nine hours home from an unpaid audition [1].

The biggest rejection came late. When Netflix passed on him, he shot Live from Seattle himself, Netflix bought it, and he says it changed everything [1]. After that he beat Mariah Carey's record in Hawaii with 22,000 tickets and became the first comic to sell out six shows at the Forum [1]. He also dropped the word "hope" from his vocabulary, because in his view saying you hope means asking for something other than your own talent [1].

Yakov Smirnoff: When the Wall Fell, So Did His Career

Smirnoff's failure was not one bad set. His whole act disappeared almost overnight [2]. When the Soviet Union collapsed, David Letterman's Top 10 list of things that would change had, at number one, that Yakov Smirnoff would be out of work [2]. He thought it was funny at first. He was living in Pacific Palisades and believed the American dream would never end [2]. Then, in his words: "all of the sudden it's six months later none of my contracts in las vegas atlantic city reina otaho none of them were renewed and i could not find work literally i mean i tried back to clubs and they wouldn't have me either" [2]. There was no scandal, he says. The topic had simply stopped mattering to audiences, and Joe Rogan points out that without social media a performer had no way to show people he was still funny [2].

The rebuild is where the pattern shows. After two years of struggling with two young kids, he co-hosted Willie Nelson's Farm Aid in front of 50,000 people, got a standing ovation, and was told by Nelson to go to Branson [2]. He saw packed matinees there in March 1993, rented a small theater in May, and 17 people showed up [2]. Instead of quitting, he started serving his mother's breakfast recipe in the showroom and doing two shows a day. Within a year he averaged about 400 people a show, and he eventually bought a 2,000-seat theater where he says he has entertained over 6 million people [2]. He calls the collapse a blessing in disguise, because it pushed his comedy toward family-friendly material [2].

His early career was full of rejection too. When he first flew to Los Angeles hoping a Three's Company producer would make him a star, the producer never showed and he bombed at the Comedy Store [2]. Mitzi Shore liked him anyway and rented him a room at her house [2]. A Tonight Show producer repeatedly turned him down, finally saying he'd get on the show "when the hell freezes over" [2]. A Super Bowl beer commercial then caught Johnny Carson's eye, and Smirnoff made six or seven appearances [2].

Even at 75 he is still taking the hit and adjusting. After his comeback through Nate Bargatze, the Ryman and Kill Tony, a young comic told him he'd become a one-man show rather than a stand-up. He spent a year rewriting his hour into tighter, punchline-driven material [2]. He also brought the same willingness to fail into his personal life: after a divorce that came at the same time as his career collapse, he polled his audiences and went on to study laughter in relationships at graduate level [2]. In conversation with Rogan he notes that "you don't know what your character flaws are until you're presented by something that tests you" [2], the same idea applied to character.

John Grisham, as Mel Robbins tells it: "It's not the end of your story"

Mel Robbins tells Grisham's story because of what rejection did to him [3]. She frames it this way: "it's easy to gaslight yourself into thinking that there's only one career or that making a mistake or being told no is the end of the story. It's not the end of your story. It's just part of the story" [3].

As she tells it, Grisham went to community college hoping for a baseball career, was benched and failed English, then transferred to Delta State University as a walk-on and was cut from the team [3]. He changed colleges three times, switched majors, went to law school, and practiced criminal law for nearly a decade in Southaven, Mississippi [3]. His first novel came from testimony he witnessed: "He was inspired to write that novel because he witnessed the harrowing testimony of a 12-year-old in 1984" [3]. Then: "Was it an instant success? Nope. He was rejected from 28 publishers before he published a Time to Kill in 1989. He began writing the firm immediately afterwards" [3]. He has now sold 300 million books [3].

The detail that fits this pattern is the timing. Grisham started his next book right after the rejections, not after a long pause. Robbins also reads from his 2010 New York Times op-ed, which opens: "Writing was not a childhood dream of mine. I do not recall longing to write as a student. I wasn't sure how to start" [3]. According to the summary, he wrote that A Time to Kill didn't sell and that writing was harder than his earlier jobs laying asphalt and selling underwear, but worth it [3].

Robbins pairs Grisham with Paulo Coelho: "I had no idea that when The Alchemist was first published in Brazil, it failed miserably" [3]. Coelho's foreword says: "When The Alchemist was first published 25 years ago in my native Brazil, no one noticed" [3]. One bookseller sold a single copy in the first week and took six months to sell a second, the publisher canceled his contract, and he wrote that he was "41 and desperate" [3]. The book went on to sell 65 million copies [3]. Robbins says it hit her hard because she was 41 and felt just as desperate when she found the five-second rule [3]. She adds: "there is no expiration date on discovering and expressing the power in you" [3]. Her takeaway is to ask what if the nos, heartbreaks and disappointments are the world's way of pushing you where you're meant to go [3].

Tal Wilkenfeld: Falling Off the Cliff

Tal Wilkenfeld has played bass with Jeff Beck, Prince, Eric Clapton, Herbie Hancock and others [4]. She gives the most detailed account of how failing on purpose builds skill. She makes a distinction: a pop or country session may call for playing the part safely, and she has done plenty of those [4]. But on her own tour she stood "on the edge of the cliff" all night, and a few clunkers didn't matter compared with the overall expression [4]. She says she loves the unknown because at the edge of the cliff is all possibilities [4]. Otherwise, she asks, is she just a clown showing off skills she practiced in her bedroom? [4]

Asked by Lex Fridman whether she has ever bombed, she says probably, but that it's all about recovery [4]. As the summary puts it, the more often you fall off the cliff, the faster and more varied your recoveries become, until listeners can't even tell, and eventually you learn to fly [4]. This is the clearest statement in any of the five sources that failing often is how you train to recover.

She traces this to Prince. He recorded to tape with no punch-ins to fix mistakes, and on "Same Page, Different Book" he had her improvise fills between his phrases without warning [4]. It was her first time being held at the edge of the cliff by someone else, and now she does it herself [4]. She worries that much modern music is flattened by digitally removing every imperfection [4].

She has also felt a failure hard. At the Montreux Jazz Festival with Jeff Beck, at 21 or 22, she played one note she didn't like and sat sadly on a road case afterward [4]. Festival founder Claude Nobs comforted her with wisdom from Miles Davis and asked what would help. She joked, "caviar, and he came back with a huge tin [4]. She says she no longer gets depressed about performances [4]. Her first mentor, Anthony Jackson, passed on a line drummer Steve Gadd had told him when he got depressed about imperfect performances: on your worst day, you're still a bad motherfucker" [4]. She still critiques her playing, but not in a way that diminishes her sense of self; she notes what might serve the song better next time [4].

Fear is what she warns against: "as soon as you bring fear to a bandstand, you're limiting yourself," walling yourself off from the other musicians [4]. Fear usually means fear of a mistake, which means approaching music as a perfectionist, and that makes it less expansive, vulnerable and true [4]. Her advice to young people goes beyond the stage: walk toward what's scary, because "If you avoid the demons, they become bigger" [4].

Josh Waitzkin: The Loss That Seeds the Breakthrough

Josh Waitzkin was a chess prodigy, then a Tai Chi push hands world champion, and now coaches elite performers. He applies the pattern to losing in competition and makes the strongest claim of the five: his most heartbreaking losses "were the greatest moments of my life in retrospect" [5]. He sees it in everyone he has coached: "the most heartbreaking loss has lead to the transformational change which leads to the biggest wins of their life Whether it's in basketball whether it's in fighting whether it's in business. It's in finance. It's in It's in writing" [5], and Andrew Huberman adds love [5].

He gives two examples. At about eight, he lost the last round of a national championship by falling into an opening trap. If he had won, he says, he might have linked winning with no pain, and the boy who beat him, David Arnett, became his best friend [5]. At 17, on first board in the final round of the under-18 world championship, Peter Svidler offered him a draw [5]. Waitzkin never accepted draws, but he now believes the urge to release the tension crept into his move, and he played slightly over-aggressively and lost [5]. The loss hurt so much he didn't study it for two and a half months [5]. When he did, he saw the right move was to pull his last defensive piece away from his king, because "His attack needed my defense like fire needs fuel to burn" [5]. He didn't grasp that principle then, but years later he won the 2004 Tai Chi world championship final against a bigger, stronger opponent by "harnessing the power of empty space": letting the opponent lean on him, then disappearing [5]. So the lesson from one loss produced a world title in a different art, years later.

Waitzkin also corrects how his own ideas have been used. Parents took the process-over-outcome message from The Art of Learning and told young players results don't matter, and the kids saw through it [5]. You have to care enough to be shattered for this to work, he says; the skill is to be in the rupture while also holding the perspective your future self will have about it [5]. He tries to live at max stretch without snapping, and says that if you're succeeding all the time you're not pushing hard enough [5].

He applies this to fear as well: "Fearlessness isn't a thing. It's how one works with fear" and "Usually what locked people up isn't fear. It's the fear of fear" [5]. He also says success needs its own discipline. His favorite example is Marcelo Garcia, who never missed a Monday training after winning on Sunday, and who, after dominating the ADCC championship, dropped his entire repertoire the next day and won two years later with something new [5]. He praises the Boston Celtics' approach of "hunting adversity" now that every opponent targets the champions [5].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

They agree that failure is part of the work. Koy says "we're all supposed to fail" [1]. Wilkenfeld says falling off the cliff trains recovery [4]. Waitzkin says the heartbreaking loss leads to the biggest wins [5]. Robbins says being told no is "just part of the story" [3]. Smirnoff's career was built on a collapse he couldn't have chosen [2].

They agree the real danger is avoidance. Koy calls passing on a chance out of fear "the real failure" [1]. Wilkenfeld says fear walls you off from other musicians, and that avoided demons "become bigger" [4]. Waitzkin says what locks people up is "the fear of fear" [5].

They agree on moving fast after a hit. Grisham began The Firm right after A Time to Kill was published following 28 rejections [3]. Smirnoff rented a theater, got 17 people, and added breakfast and a second show a day [2]. Koy won the Apollo three weeks after the curtain gig [1]. Wilkenfeld's point is about speed itself: the more you fall, the faster you recover [4].

They agree that "making it doesn't last. Koy thought he'd made it several times and then nothing happened" [1]. Smirnoff had Carson, Vegas contracts and a house near Tom Hanks, and lost them within six months [2]. Waitzkin warns that winning the championship you've chased your whole life can end a performer's freedom as surely as losing, and that success must be followed by reinvention [5].

They disagree about how much it should hurt. Koy mostly treats bombing as nothing personal and says he just gets motivated [1]. Wilkenfeld now critiques herself without letting it diminish her sense of self, and no longer gets depressed about performances [4]. Waitzkin argues the other way: parents who told kids results don't matter got it wrong, and you have to care enough to be shattered [5]. The difference comes from what each is protecting. Koy and Wilkenfeld are guarding against the fear that stops performers from trying, so they lower the emotional stakes. Waitzkin is guarding against learning nothing, so he keeps the stakes high and builds the ability to hold a longer view at the same time [5]. The two can fit together: Wilkenfeld herself was crushed by one note at Montreux before she learned to recover [4], and Waitzkin avoided his Svidler loss for months before it taught him anything [5].

They disagree on how much is luck. Rogan tells Smirnoff "it's all just dumb luck there's a giant percentage of it that's dumb luck," while adding "i'm very persistent that helps" [2]. Koy says he never says hope because hoping means relying on something other than your own talent [1]. Robbins leans the other way, toward the universe nudging you along [3]. The sources don't settle this. All of them agree persistence matters; they differ on whether the result is earned or partly given.

They differ on whether you should seek out failure. Wilkenfeld and Waitzkin go looking for it: the edge of the cliff, "hunting adversity" [4][5]. Koy accepts risky gigs but doesn't describe wanting to fail [1]. Grisham's and Smirnoff's failures happened to them [2][3]. Wilkenfeld also notes that some settings, like a pop or country session, call for playing safely [4].

Why It Works

The sources give a few explanations for why failure helps, some from neuroscience, most from practice.

The brain needs a mismatch to change. Huberman explains that the brain has little reason to change without some mismatch, frustration or agitation, and describes grief as the painful remapping of many "go" programs into "no go" [5]. On this view a loss isn't only unpleasant; it's the signal that makes change possible. Waitzkin's Svidler loss is an example: he learned the empty-space principle only because he lost in a critical position [5].

Repeated falls train recovery. Wilkenfeld says that with practice, recovery gets faster and more varied until listeners can't hear the mistake [4]. This is why she chooses the cliff edge: you can't train recovery without falls. Prince's one-take, no-punch-in sessions forced her to practice it live [4].

Fear shrinks what you can do. Wilkenfeld says fear is fear of a mistake and turns music into perfectionism, which makes it less expansive, vulnerable and true [4]. Waitzkin describes performers locking up after they lose their early naive freedom, and the fix is working with fear, not removing it [5]. If fear of bombing is what limits a performer, then bombing and surviving is what removes that fear. Koy's 25 bombs before it clicked fit this [1].

Rejection shows whether you'll keep going. Koy's view is that the failure is the test: after a bad night you find out "how much you love it and it always comes out going no i love this and you just keep pushing" [1]. Smirnoff's line that you don't know your character flaws until something tests you says the same about character [2].

Studying the loss matters. Waitzkin's improvement didn't come from losing alone; it came from studying the loss, even if months later [5]. He looks at mistakes in technical, thematic and psychological layers, because fixing the theme underneath clears dozens of related errors [5]. He also explains why lessons carry across fields: people who "didn't learn with universal principles" can't translate excellence into other places [5]. That's how a chess loss produced a Tai Chi title.

Rejection can redirect you. Smirnoff's collapse moved him to Branson and to family-friendly material he now credits for his success [2]. Netflix passing pushed Koy to self-fund a special that Netflix then bought [1]. Robbins asks whether the nos push you where you're meant to go [3]. The sources describe this happening but don't give a mechanism beyond the stories.

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Where it applies: in live, repeated performance, where each attempt is cheap and the next one comes soon. That covers stand-up open mics, gigs, tournament games and manuscript submissions [1][3][4][5]. Koy can bomb at a bar with 15 people after an arena show [1]. Wilkenfeld can hit a clunker and keep playing [4]. It also applies to long careers where one setback isn't final, as with Smirnoff's collapse and Grisham's rejections [2][3].

It applies to learning, not only to careers. Waitzkin brings the same logic to training: learning from others' mistakes ("fire walking") with the intensity of your own [5], and working on weaknesses rather than avoiding them.

Where it doesn't: Wilkenfeld says some sessions call for playing it safe, and a pop or country date may need a clean part with great groove, time and dynamics [4]. Waitzkin's drowning is a stark limit: he lay unconscious at the bottom of the NYU pool for about four and a half minutes during hypoxic breathwork [5]. Huberman warns never to do hyperventilation or long-exhale breathing before going underwater, because it removes the urge to breathe and can cause shallow water blackout [5]. Risk-taking in art is not the same as physical risk; for anything involving breath-holding, water or your body, get advice from a qualified professional.

It fails if you don't care. Waitzkin's point about the misused process message is that failure only teaches when the result matters to you [5].

It can cost your family and your health. Koy missed his son's birthday for a paycheck [1]. Smirnoff struggled for two years with two young kids [2]. Waitzkin says he would never put his own children through his childhood competitive pressure, having watched nearly all his young rivals quit and fall into crisis [5]. The pattern doesn't justify any sacrifice.

It isn't a promise. These are success stories told afterward. Rogan's point about luck [2] and Koy's several false dawns [1] are reminders that many people who fail repeatedly don't end up at the Forum. None of the sources claim that failure guarantees success.

Emotional weight differs. Wilkenfeld describes grief after losing Prince and Leonard Cohen that tore her to shreds, and she stopped playing for a while [4]. She advises facing your demons early through therapy, meditation, journaling or whatever works [4]. When a setback turns into something heavier than disappointment, a therapist or counselor can help.

What To Do With It

1. Treat declining as the failure. Use Koy's test: if a real chance comes up and you pass on it out of fear, count that as the loss. Showing up and bombing counts as a win [1].

2. Take the undignified gig. Koy's breaks came from saying yes to a curtain slot with the house lights on, a $40 set, an unpaid audition nine hours away by bus [1]. When a small or awkward chance comes up, ask whether it's stage time rather than whether it's beneath you.

3. Move straight on to the next piece. Grisham began The Firm right after A Time to Kill came out following 28 rejections [3]. When you get a no, start the next project, not a long break.

4. Go looking for your edge. In settings where mistakes are cheap, do what Wilkenfeld does and play at the edge of the cliff instead of repeating what you already know works [4]. Keep the safe version for jobs that really call for it [4].

5. Practice recovering. Wilkenfeld's point is that recovery is a skill you build by falling [4]. Rehearse your moves after a mistake so, as with her, listeners eventually can't tell.

6. Study the loss, even if you have to wait. Waitzkin didn't look at his Svidler game for two and a half months, but when he did, it gave him a principle that later won a world title [5]. Go back to your worst failures and look at the technical, thematic and psychological layers together [5].

7. Care about the result, and keep a longer view. Don't pretend results don't matter [5]. Let the loss hurt, and at the same time ask how your future self will see it [5].

8. Rebuild with what you have. When Smirnoff's audience dropped to 17 people, he added his mother's breakfast recipe and a second show a day [2]. When Netflix passed, Koy paid for his own special [1]. After a rejection, look for what you can control.

9. Reinvent after a win, too. Garcia dropped his whole repertoire after dominating ADCC [5], and Smirnoff rewrote his hour at 75 when told it had become a one-man show [2]. Don't let a success become a rut.

10. Critique without attacking yourself. Use Wilkenfeld's approach: note what might serve the work better next time without diminishing your sense of self, and remember Gadd's line, on your worst day, you're still a bad motherfucker [4].

Sources

1. Jo Koy on Rejection, Relentless Hustle, and Why You Win When You Fail · The School of Greatness
2. Yakov Smirnoff on Surviving the Fall of the Soviet Union, Rebuilding in Branson, and the Science of Laughter in Love · The Joe Rogan Experience
3. 4 Books That Will Change Your Life · The Mel Robbins Podcast
4. Tal Wilkenfeld: Music, Guitar, Bass, Jeff Beck, Prince, and Leonard Cohen · Lex Fridman Podcast
5. The Art of Learning & Living Life · Huberman Lab