{"id":45087,"date":"2025-09-21T11:15:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/isafespend.com\/?p=45087"},"modified":"2025-09-21T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T11:15:22","slug":"career-advice-from-rock-star-billy-corgan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isafespend.com\/?p=45087","title":{"rendered":"Career Advice From Rock Star Billy Corgan"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cI had a million dollars by the time I was 24 years old. A year before that, I was making $12,000 a year working at a record store, and I was broke.\u201d<\/p>\n

So starts a two-minute video that a friend implored me to watch\u2014twice\u2014this week, and by the end of the second time, the truth hit me so hard that my eyes welled up. I knew I had to share it with you, if only to ensure that it sunk more deeply into my consciousness, but I believe there\u2019s something here for you, too.<\/p>\n

The speaker was Billy Corgan, the lead singer of the band Smashing Pumpkins, and if you weren\u2019t in high school in the early \u201990s, the weight of his words may require some perspective. <\/p>\n

First, it was the \u201890s, friends, the decade for which the only competitors for the \u201cBestest Decade In The History Of Music\u201d are the 1960s and the 1790s, when Mozart \u201creleased\u201d Requiem<\/em> and Beethoven\u2019s first piano sonatas were performed.<\/p>\n

The Pumpkins sold 30 million albums in the \u201890s alone. They were Spin<\/em> magazine\u2019s Artist of the year in 1994. At MTV\u2019s VMAs in 1996, they had the most nominations (9) and most wins (7) of any band. And they were the only band<\/em> to have two albums listed in the \u201cReaders Pick the Top 10 Albums of the Nineties\u201d in Rolling Stone<\/em> magazine.<\/p>\n

They were kind of a big deal. Furthermore, when Corgan was 24, in 1991, a million dollars would feel more like $2,371,865 today, in 2025. And to illuminate their staying power, he\u2019s still playing in front of tens of thousands of people today.<\/p>\n

So Corgan had checked every box\u2014and about 50 more\u2014that millions of struggling artists yearn to check when he was still in his twenties. I\u2019d argue that he\u2019d have every reason to fall into that cadre of mercurial artists who apparently lose touch with reality and fall prey to personal deification scripts. <\/p>\n

But instead, drawing on Ecclesiastical wisdom, Corgan expands on the perspective he\u2019s gained, describing almost all of his professional success with a particularly interesting word: transactional. <\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he problem with all of it is that it\u2019s transactional,\u201d he explains, \u201cbecause no matter how many hit songs you write, it\u2019s always, what about the next one? No matter how many records you\u2019ve sold, there\u2019s always somebody who\u2019s going to sell more. There was always, like, an asterisk or a qualifier.\u201d<\/p>\n

And isn\u2019t that the transactional trap? You\u2019re only as good as the next<\/em> thing you do?<\/p>\n

Allow me to make you a little uncomfortable for a second: No matter how good you are at your job\u2014and no matter how beloved you are at that company\u2014if you lose your edge, you\u2019re also likely to eventually lose your job. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s just how it works. Our work is conditional. And even the highest of high performers up to this minute will only retain that status if they retain that performance. In fact, once you\u2019ve reached that peak, it tends to be even more noticeable when you inevitably slip (because we all do).<\/p>\n

But while dealing with those slips is fodder for another post\u2014and maintaining high performance is yet another\u2014what I really want you to feel<\/em> is the lesson Billy Corgan delivers on the only thing that does<\/em> truly satisfy:<\/p>\n

\u201cUnconditional love.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s coming home from one of your worst<\/em> days, only to collapse into the arms of a partner, parent, or friend who loves you for reasons other than your job title.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s coming home from one of your best<\/em> days to find a teenager who isn\u2019t the slightest bit impressed with anything you\u2019ve ever done, but who (silently) couldn\u2019t imagine life without you.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s walking in the door on any<\/em> day to hear a toddler\u2019s footsteps racing in your direction, desperate to behold you, and they don\u2019t even know what you do for a living.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s finding supernatural love through faith that provides a source of sustenance when the humans who love us unconditionally fall short, themselves.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a reminder that while money and titles are important, I believe they\u2019re not the full measure of wealth, which also includes who and what we\u2019d never trade away.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s truly believing some version of what Billy Corgan says to his kids after they dance with him onstage in front of 40,000 people:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter what you see daddy do, no matter what you hear about daddy\u2026you are so much more important than that to me. I would trade all of this for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Special thanks to Dr. Daniel Crosby for sharing <\/em>the only redeeming thing<\/em> I saw on X this week<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read the full article here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI had a million dollars by the time I was 24 years old. A year before that, I was making $12,000 a year working at a record store, and I was broke.\u201d So starts a two-minute video that a friend implored me to watch\u2014twice\u2014this week, and by the end of the second time, the truth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45088,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-45087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-retirement"},"yoast_head":"\nCareer Advice From Rock Star Billy Corgan | iSafeSpend<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201cI had a million dollars by the time I was 24 years old. 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