Winging it

There is a version of every successful person's story that never makes the highlight reel.

Not the award speech. Not the chapter in the book. The other version. The one where they had absolutely no idea what they were doing. Where the plan ran out three steps in and they kept walking anyway. Where confidence, nerve, and a quiet prayer that the next step would reveal itself before they needed it was the entire strategy.

Nobody leads with that version. You only hear it in the interview after the win. After the company sold. After enough time has passed that they can laugh about it.

They were winging it. Every single one of them.

In Episode 2 of Season 2, Jamey Mixson makes the case that winging it is not recklessness — it is courage in motion. And by 50-plus, every person listening has winged something significant. Something that mattered. And they are still here.

The proof is undeniable. Sara Blakely drove to mills in North Carolina with a homemade Spanx prototype and no fashion experience — billion-dollar company. Richard Branson launched an airline with zero aviation background and called it a strategy — knighted by the Queen. Jay-Z couldn't get a record deal so he sold CDs out of a car trunk — one of the most successful music entrepreneurs in history. Oprah was demoted from anchor to local talk show host — she took the consolation prize and built a dynasty. None of them had the full map. All of them moved anyway.

Jamey brings it personal too. Moving to LA in his late twenties with ambition and no agent. Building NFB Fitness across fifteen years of figuring it out one day at a time. A Chemistry degree that was supposed to bridge to medical school and instead became the foundation for breaking down GLP-1 pharmacology for men who needed someone to explain the science plainly. Starting Man, Listen on conviction before anyone confirmed it was a good idea. Every significant thing — a wing. Not from carelessness. From courage.

The episode also breaks down the four types of wingers — the reluctant, the deliberate, the serial, and the accidental — and every listener will recognize themselves in at least one of them.

The take-home message is simple and it doesn't apologize for being simple.

Don't be afraid to try. The path reveals itself to people in motion.

Man, Listen is a weekly solo podcast hosted by Jamey Mixson — entrepreneur, fitness studio owner, and Black man living boldly after 50. New episodes every week on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you listen.

Man, Listen is written and recorded by host Jamey Mixson, Fitness Professional, entrepreneur, and your everyday awesome guy who is living as proof that 55 can be your strongest, clearest, most powerful decade yet. 

New Episodes Weekly. Subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and other podcast streaming services.

Contact: Instagram @theJamey, Facebook @Jameymixson, Email: mixsonfj@gmail.com 

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There's a version of every successful person that never makes the highlight real. Not the prologue from a book, not the acceptance speech, the other version. The one where they have absolutely no idea what they're doing. Where we're on the runway and we run out of runway. But stay with me, friends. This is exactly when the movie gets most exciting because everything's on fire and we have no idea how we're gonna get down this road or we're gonna jump off of this cliff to get to the bottom. That's how life is for some people. We are full of confidence and full of nerves. But we also know that we have the ability to make magical things happen beyond a shadow of a doubt, even in the darkness. Success is success, and we're gonna make it happen. See stuff like that? Nobody leaves with that part of the story. Nobody. That's the exposed, unmasked, unhinged duck duck go version only heard in interviews after we win. You only hear talk like this after I've sold the company, after I've made all the money, after we built the new thing. It's not like that in the beginning. It is hard work, it is insurmountable crazy that goes to the head of creators. But this is the kind of conversation that happens over laughter, over beers, over wine on a beach that says, wow, I did some crazy shit. But I'm here to tell you early. They were winging it every single time. Winging it, jumping out the plane onto the wing of the plane. Sometimes we were building a plane up in the air. What we call that? Winging it. Now I want you to check in with yourself before we get too deep into this because the reality is almost every person at 50 plus in this audience that might be listening to this podcast has definitely winged it on something. And not just a little something, not just like, oh, I'm gonna get spicy mustard over regular mustard. I'm talking about something significant like where the kids go to school, which house we're gonna buy, how much money you're gonna spend on golf clubs, let's buy a boat. And you know what, friend? We're still there. Listen, I know I came at you hot, but winging it, it's not a recklessness. It is courage in motion. What up, team? It's Jamie. Welcome back to Man Listen. Today we're gonna dig deep because we're always digging deep on subjects that matter most to you, me. I'm talking about us. Let's deal with the word first because it carries baggage that doesn't belong to it. Reckless, unprepared, not serious, flying blind. This is what people hear when they say winging it. That's the version of the word that has been hanging loose for a long time. But I'm gonna tell you, friend, I'm gonna tell you right here and right now, that is not what this is. Winging it is what happens when preparation meets a reality. When your knowledge, your foresight, your experience, and your nerves get thrown into a blender with crushed ice. What do you do? Get a straw. Yeah, yeah, I know, a disposable straw, and you drink that thing down. Keep it moving forward because standing still is never an option. Think about what you're actually working with at your age. Decades of pattern recognition, scar tissue from the things that didn't work, hard-won instincts built from thousands of decisions, some brilliant, some catastrophic. The ability to read the room, read the situation, read the person in ways the younger version of you simply lacked. That is not nothing. That's a Long Island iced tea. Knowledge, foresight, courage, and what happens, happens. All mixed together and deployed in real time. That is not winging it from an ignorance. That is winging it from experience. And the difference? The difference is everything. Growth and self-exploration do not come with a color-coded roadmap in an audible direction. Nobody hands you the GPS for the next chapter of your life. It's dark, isn't it? It's real dark. It gets murky. The path forward is not always visible until you already are on the road. And this is what separates the men and the boys, the women and the girls into two significantly different places. Confidence. Confidence keeps the successful people going when most just give up. Some win, some crash. Some win and crash at the same time. I know I'm talking to myself because the path is not easy. It's almost impossible to categorize this kind of work ethic. Either way, there's learning. The ones who never move, they don't crash. They also don't go anywhere. Here's the thing about successful people. We see the result. We see the company, the empire, the brand, the legacy. We see the finished product, and it's inevitable. Like it was supposed to be like that from the very beginning. But for real, for real friends, it was never inevitable. Behind every finished product, there's a version of the story that looked like all the people in charge were just winging it. No fashion background, no retail experience, no manufacturing knowledge. Sarah Blakely had an idea: a pair of scissors and the audacity to drive to Mills in North Carolina with a homemade prototype. And you kind of know what happened. She got turned down again and again. And then she decided to co-call Neiman Marcus, just one Neiman Marcus buyer, and talk her way into a five-minute discussion. That buyer, that one buyer, said yes. Spanks became a multi-billion dollar company. Since then, she has talked openly about the fact that she was making it up as she went along. She did not know how things went in the fashion industry. She did not know how retail worked. She figured out this step by step while it was happening. That's winging it. That's how you do it. You take the chance on yourself. She took that chance, and today it's a multi-billion dollar business. This next guy, Dyslexic, dropped out of high school at 16. Started a student magazine with no publishing experience. Then the famous Mail Order record company with no music industry background. And then they gave him an airline. Well, let me say only a certain type of person can get away with all these things, but one particular person, his name is Richard Branson. And as he's mentioned, his strategy across virtually every business he's built, find smart people, move fast, figure it out as you go. And he has said directly and repeatedly that he learned on the job for every company he launched. He did not wait until he understood the industry. He got in and learned by doing the thing. Mr. Branson, serial winger. Also knighted by the Queen of England. Let's talk about what happens when you can't get a record deal. You get turned down by every major label. So you, you and your boys, start your own label with no label infrastructure, no distribution network, no industry background, just to guarantee that it's gonna work. That record label, today, Rockefeller Records. That artist, Sean Carter, we know him as Jay Z. You see, it seemed like they didn't have any structure, but it was pretty well oiled machine from the very beginning. They sold CDs out of the trunk of the car at the barbershop, at the hair salon, at the club at night. They figured out the business while the business was happening. No blueprint, no precedent, no one that knew exactly what they were doing while they were doing it. Jay-Z and Rockefeller Records went on to be one of the most successful, if not the successful, music entrepreneurship in history. All that started out of the trunk of the car. She got pulled off of her anchor position and given a local news show as if they thought it was a demotion. Little did others know that she took that constellation prize and build it into a worldwide empire. As this pattern would have it, there was no blueprint for Oprah Wiffering. No one had done this before. She was making a road while she was walking through the dirt, figured out what the show was, what her voice was, and what her audience needed. All this was done in real time, on air, in front of the world. The few instances where I could get demoted, I felt failed. I felt as I've not done enough to be successful. But Oprah? We're talking about Oprah Winfrey, she turned her into a dynasty. Little did we know that Miss Oprah Winfrey was winging it the entire time. Every single one of these people had a chapter in their story where they did not know what they were doing, did not know where the plan was going, where moving forward was the only move available. And guess what they did? They moved forward. So if we break this down, this is what happened. These people were too courageous, too ambitious, too uninformed about what could go wrong to stop. They didn't wait for permission, they didn't wait for the opportunity to see the principal. They hit the go button, they went for it. They were winging it, they won. Let's keep it real. Here's my own recipe. I haven't been winging it my entire dog life. Not because I'm careless, it's a conviction. A blatant refusal to wait for a roadmap. And looking back, the evidence completely clear. So I moved to Los Los Angeles in my late 20s with a dream, nothing else. No agent, no connections, no industry knowledge, no plan behind an absolute conviction that if I showed up, something awesome, always gonna happen. I was completely unguided, uninformed. Those were very accurate, speaking of me at the time. But something did happen. Just not the something I planned. Because there was no plan. There was only go. And there's a lot that could be said about being lucky. There's even more said about being prepared to be lucky. So for me, I just happened to be at the right place at the right time to get cast on Star Trek. It wasn't a huge role, but guess what? For a kid that grew up watching Star Trek, it was huge. Then talking about lucky, I can play basketball. I remember being on live, I was just an extra on ER, and George said, Hey man, can you play ball? And I'm like, of course I can. So from there, I got bumped up to supporting casts. The next day, Ice Cube shows up. Eric Lasalle shows up. Look at me. None of that was on the itinerary because Jamie didn't have an itinerary. But here hear me out. It's not that I can't act, I act a fool every day. What I was doing, what I continue to do, I wing it. I won my is that a word? I won my way into moments most memorable that most people will never experience in life. Because you have to have the courage, sometimes while the fire is burning, to go into the house, to do the things that you never thought you could do, and guess what? I'm living. Building no fat birthdays, NFV Fitness was not a fully formed business plan that was executed flawlessly from day one. And as I am being completely honest with you, it was a mess. It was, oh, I'm a trainer and people will come and they'll have a great time and they'll pay me. Oh, it was a hot freaking mess. I didn't have any of the stuff. I didn't have KPIs, I didn't have uh profit loss sheets, I didn't know the life cycle of my clients, I didn't know specifically how long classes would be, I didn't understand licensure, I didn't have any of that. I knew I was passionate about helping people live better lives in some way, somehow, I was gonna make that happen. So for me, it's been 15 years of figuring it out, of learning what worked by doing what didn't work first, of building something real out of pure conviction and the willingness to stay in the business even when it gets hard. Do we remember COVID? Do we remember COVID? Do we remember COVID? That was a pure calamity for most of us in the brick and mortar business, especially those in health and wellness, because they said just stay home, don't go to the gym. I'm not gonna fool myself. It's been fun, it's been a lot of fun. It's also been a lot of learning based on getting things incorrectly. The job of building a new road is building a new road. Your hands are dirty, your knees hurt, everything is questioned in real time. But if you've got the conviction, if you've got the foresight, if you've got the gumption, go for it. And just like Billy Joel said, I'm still standing. 15 years later, I can't tell you it's been good, I can't tell you it's been bad, but it's been definite adventure day in, day out. But we're still standing, we're still building. This for me, I was winging it the entire time. Man listen, man listen did not begin with a tested format, a proven audience model and a guaranteed reception. It began with my own convictions that these conversations were needed and necessary to exist right here and right now, and a willingness to go forward where others would say, let me think about it. Maybe, maybe not. But Jamie, I'm figuring it out real time. And if you went all the way back with me to the first episode, oh, I was definitely winging. Even the second episode, and at some point the wings evolved and it became a process, a pattern, a consistency, and now, man, listen. The point I'm trying to nail home to you is you gotta do the thing. You've gotta step forward into the shoes you expect to be comfortable in. It's not gonna be easy. There are most likely gonna people be people that tell you don't do it, but you've gotta stand on your own laurels. You gotta put your guts out there on Front Street if you expect to be successful at the things you expect to be successful at. Not all winging looks the same. There are different ways people end up moving without the full map. Every single one of them is valid. There's the reluctant winger. Did not choose the winging. Circumstance removed the plan and they had to move anyway. It could have been job loss, a health crisis, divorce, a business that failed. The plan evaporated, and they discovered in the rubble that they were more capable than they knew they were. Most people who wing it successfully did not choose the situation. They chose their response. And that choice, that choice is everything. The deliberate winger sees the gap, sees the opportunity, sees the door that just was cracked open, and walks through it before the voice of reason can organize a rebuttal. This one requires a particular kind of audacity because the voice of reason gets louder as we age. You accumulate more to lose. The stakes feel higher. Moving anyway at 50 plus requires more courage than it does when you're 25. This is the most intentional winging, and most of the time, people don't know how powerful they are when they do these kind of things. Has been through enough iterations of darkness to trust from experience, not from blind optimism. That clarity comes from movement, not from waiting. This is the most dangerous kind. Dangerous in the best possible way. This person is all things unstoppable. The accidental winger did not did not realize they were winging it at all until it was over. Looked back and thought, oh, that's not part of the plan. That was me making it up, and guess what? It worked. These people often undersell what they've accomplished because they don't recognize the courage it took to actually get there in real time. If this is you, hear this. What you did took a lot of nerve. Own it. You were braver than you knew you ever could have been. Here's the thing about people that never winging. The kind of people who never move until every variable is controlled, every outcome is mapped, every possible objection is answered, and every condition is exactly right. Where are those people right now? Still waiting. At 50, at 60, maybe 70, maybe more. Still waiting for the moment when it feels safe enough, when the timing is perfect enough, when someone hands them the permission slip and says, Yeah, you can go, you can proceed, it's never gonna happen. The people we admire who actually did the thing, who built the thing, who launched the thing, who became the thing did not wait. They moved imperfectly, incompletely with information that was partial and a map that was tattered and torn into three, maybe ten parts. What is the thing you've been almost doing? Not the thing you've been planning forever, the thing you keep almost starting, the thing that lives in the back of your mind as a what if? The thing you would do if only conditions were just a little better than they are right now. So let me keep it 100 with you. The condition you're waiting for, it's not coming. The candle, your candle, it's definitely burning. The time that feels like it's available, it's not gonna be available. All you have is two and day and now. What would happen if you just win? With everything you have, with 50 plus years of knowledge, scar tissue, pattern recognition, hard one, instincts working on yourself with the long island iced tea full of mixed and ready-to-go goodness. This is what happens, friends. Some will win, some will crash, some will do both at the same time in ways that are difficult to explain. Either way, you will learn something that waiting will never teach you, and you will be further along than everyone still waiting, still standing, still hoping for the perfect conditions. That courage keeps you alive, keeps you moving. Do not be afraid to try. Alright, team, here are the goodies. Here is the lesson of the week. Here is the homework assignment. Here's your challenge. Three things this week. Name the thing you have been almost doing. I need you to write it down. Don't text it to yourself. Get yourself a pen and a paper. It's time we write it down. Give it a real name, not something very vague, something very specific. The business, the health decision, the conversation, the move. Let's name it. Oh, this is gonna be tricky. So identify the one thing that is actually stopping you. Not the list of things, the real one. It is your resources, fear of failure, fear of what other people think, fear of success. That's a tricky one. A lot of people are fearful of being successful. So find whatever your real obstacle is, and it's time to look it them or yourself in the face. Let's make a move. It could be a small move, it could be a huge move, but I need you to make one step forward in whatever your plans are this week. Wing that thing out. That's what I want to see you do. See what you reveal by taking in action. Winging it is not a strategy for the whole journey, it is a strategy for the next step when the full map, if you get a full map, becomes visible. Take the step. The path reveals itself to people in motion. Winging it is a path forward. I don't know. Sarah Blakely in North Carolina at the mill parking lot with a homemade prototype, Jay-Z selling music out the trunk of the car Oprah, taking a constellation prize and taking it all the way to the top. Let's talk about Richard Branson. I mean, my man has done some incredible things under incredible odds, and we love him for it. As for me, I moved to LA. And understand, this is before we had millions of YouTube or other social media uh followers before we had viral videos before we knew we needed an agent, before we knew we could write our own script. I moved to Los Angeles and I did okay. Then I moved back here to the Midwest or wherever it's called, the Great Lakes region, opened a fitness studio. I knew it was what I wanted to do. I didn't have a roadmap. Matter of fact, there was no roadmap at the time. You joined a big gym with the crappy contract, you got in there and it smelled horrible, and then you were a gym membership. Now I've got a podcast. I got a kind of cool podcast. I got this podcast. And I didn't start my podcast because I was like, I like what they're doing. I knew I had a voice and I knew something something I needed to share with you as my people. Here we go. All of it, winging it. All of it, real. All of it, forward. Often the most successful people let us know after the fact that they were winging it the entire time. The difference, the difference between them and everyone still waiting is that not only did they go for it, but they go for it. They didn't waste their time waiting for enough information or during the research, they jumped into the deep end of the pool from the beginning. Listen, I'm gonna jump off this whole Tony Robbins, you can do it thing, but the reality is you can do it. Maybe you can't do it, maybe you know, maybe you're the kind of person that needs to be insulated by others or more research, and that's cool. But know that some of the most successful people, some of the most uh revered people did the thing minus a plan. You wing it, you get that thing done. We're watching it happen right now in the country. If we love it, we hate it, but I'm gonna tell you, they're winging it real time. Don't be afraid to try. Wing it. What's the worst that can happen? See where it takes you. You'll be surprised because you're gonna be further along than you were when you were just thinking about it. Alright, kids, on the next episode, we're gonna be talking about the party over here. Sometimes the party is wild, sometimes the party is mild. It depends on what you bring to your table or who you allow at your table. It is the way that you present yourself, it's how people see you. It could be, you know, a flower shirt, it could be a teen shirt. You do it how you do it, but trust me, the party is over here. Team, you know what? I'm so grateful for you tuning in. I'm grateful that you keep humming back checking this thing out because I had a little gap in time. Uh luck's happening, but you know, life happens. At any point, stay vital, stay in your game. Man, listen, it's Jamie, and I'm out.