Success Isn’t Linear: Jordan Howlett (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Jordan Howlett’s talk titled “Success Isn’t Linear” at TEDxUW conference.

Jordan Howlett’s TEDx talk offers a deeply personal and inspiring account of his journey from aspiring athlete to social media influencer. He begins by detailing his initial dream of becoming a professional baseball player, a goal that faced numerous setbacks and led him to discover an unexpected path in content creation.

Through his story, Howlett emphasizes the importance of perseverance, adaptability, and the willingness to embrace new opportunities outside of one’s comfort zone. He shares how his venture into making videos started as a hobby but, with dedication and learning, turned into a career with millions of followers across platforms.

Howlett’s narrative is a testament to the idea that success does not follow a straight path; it is filled with challenges, failures, and unexpected turns that can lead to fulfilling outcomes. He encourages the audience to pursue their dreams fearlessly, learn from failures, and remain open to where their journey might lead. By concluding his talk, Howlett inspires listeners to believe in their potential to achieve greatness, regardless of the obstacles they may face.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Journey to Success

Success is not linear, as you can read. The path to success is normally thought to be three things, or at least I lived my life thinking that success was three main things: perseverance, persistence, and hard work. I thought, straight line, if you want to get from point A to point B, point C, that’s what you do.

Well, the thing about hard work is that with that should come success, but success sometimes does not come in the form that you might think. For me, I ended up having success at the same place where I started my entire journey, which was talking to myself in a bathroom mirror.

Now, just as important as how you’re going to be successful is a why. Your why has to be so good, because that’s what’s going to drive you to want to do more. My why was my family. My parents worked so hard their entire lives to make sure my brother and I had the best childhood we could possibly have. I don’t know if that’s, there we go. Ooh. So, as you can see, my brother and I, I mean, we were so close.

We had hand-me-down clothes, walking to school, a lot of frozen food nights is what my mom called it, and I loved it. It was my favorite night of the week, but again, as a kid, you guys, no one knows about their financial situations. Nobody knows about what is, what’s wealthy, what’s not, right? I didn’t have the same luxuries as my peers, but we were happy.

Realizing Dreams

We were very, very happy. But as I got older, I realized, I don’t, I don’t want there just to be this. I want to provide for my family. I want to give them everything that they possibly wanted for me and my brother and for us. I wanted to do that for them, but I had to figure out how.

So, you know, at the age of 16, right, I’m standing in my bathroom mirror, right, at the time for me it was totally normal, standing in my bathroom mirror, I’m talking to myself, what can I do to not only provide for my family to make sure we don’t have to want really anymore, but what can I do to where it’s something that I’m passionate about, something that I can really put my all into and have it return to me something that I truly, truly want. So I thought of the brilliant idea, baseball, very random, right? I love baseball.

I love the idea of baseball. Baseball is a sport that tells a story, right? Baseball is a sport to where all your hard work, if you submerge your passions into baseball, right? It exudes through your play. You, you’re literally, your play tells a story and I loved it. The only problem was I never played baseball. I never picked up a baseball. I never swung a baseball bat.

Overcoming Obstacles

I barely watched baseball games, but that was mainly because we didn’t have the access to watch baseball games really. So I thought to myself, okay, if this is what I’m going to do, I need to start my journey now because it’s now or never. So I transferred to a high school at 16 years old to start my journey to becoming a professional baseball player. But I knew that the best chance I got to go to the professionals is to get to a division one program, division one school, division one program.

Now to go from a division one program, from not starting baseball until 16 is almost impossible and basically unheard of. But for me, that’s what I wanted to do. That’s what I wanted to start and that’s where my journey had started. So they always told me, rule number one about baseball, there’s no smiling. I definitely, I failed the first rule there.

So that picture right there was me at 16 years old. I wasn’t good at all. My first practice was abysmal and I was bullied relentlessly. People did not accept me in the space at all. I heard from peers, from teammates, from coaches, from parents that I was not going to make it to a division one school, that I might as well stop trying, put my efforts towards something else because this is impossible.

And as a kid at that age where all I was seeking was guidance, I wanted somebody to tell me that I could do it, that it was okay. No one really did that for me. No one really gave me that reassurance. I had to find it for myself and that was so difficult to do. That is what grew me, that’s what aged me, but it was something that I was so blessed that it did because it showed me my first lesson about hard work and that’s the fact that you have to do it whether everybody supports you or they don’t, you’ve got to keep the work, it has to happen. So that’s what I did.

The Path Forward

I got to work. I worked every single day and then out of high school, I didn’t have any division one offers. I thought, okay, well if I don’t go to a division one school out of high school, I’ve got to find a way to get there and how am I going to do that? But statistically speaking, there’s a 7% chance of people who go from high school to division one and then if you get to division one, the odds of you being a professional increases significantly to 9%. Such great odds.

But I thought, right there, proof is in the pudding, right? Even if I am that 93%, I can’t mentally think that I am. If I automatically think to myself, I’m the 93% that doesn’t make it, I already stopped my growth. I have to work every single day, eat, breathe, sleep, work as if I’m that 7%. Doesn’t matter where I started. I have to think to myself, I’m that 7%, that’s what I did every single day. Every day.

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I was playing in a sport with people that have been playing since they were children. Growing up, the grueling practices and now they see someone like me jumping into the sport probably thinking, you know, I just think it’s so easy that I can just do it. That wasn’t the case. There was a miscommunication.

I had to grow to understand their side of it, but again, it just took a lot of experience. So the next journey from there was I went to community college. I went to community college and I knew that I was in a very intense environment. I had to put myself in there.

The College Experience

I went to College of the Desert. It was in Palm Desert. My first practice that I had at College of the Desert, it was about 105 degrees outside. We had intense conditioning and I told myself, I’m either going to succeed or I’m going to fall down on this ground, but I cannot come back home empty-handed. That’s how I always thought.

At College of the Desert, I had a $2 a day budget. I didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to worry my parents because I know they didn’t really have it either. So I didn’t necessarily know what my next meal was going to come from. I walked everywhere. And in that community college space, they didn’t treat me too well there. So again, I had to be my own support group. I had to be my own friend. I had to be my own mentor for a long time.

And you know what? From there, I decided that I have to work as if every single day is my last day, every day. So what I did was I worked out three times a day. I worked out in the gym morning, afternoon, night. I would run every day until I either wanted to throw up or I wanted to pass out. I would treat every single thing that I did from drinking water to the way I walked towards my future. So the outcome with that was I gained about 20 pounds of muscle in about less than a year. I got really strong.

I was able to hit balls as far as 448 feet, which is exceptional enough to at least stay in the space. I got faster. I got smarter. And I told myself that if I was going to make that leap to the next level, I had to do it. Nobody was going to come out here and do it for me. I can’t let my future be in the hands of people that don’t necessarily see my vision. I had to do it. So I emailed a bunch of schools, hundreds of coaches.

The Final Stretch

And I thought to myself, you know what? The only thing that I can do right now is the one thing that’s probably every athlete’s last resort. I have to walk on. So walking on at a Division I school is basically like a tryout. You’re going to walk onto the school, you’re going to do your best, trial for the team.

Now, every single Division I school, 2, 3 school, every school has to really have to have a tryout. They have to at least leave it open for people to join the team. So this is like something they have to do. It’s not like they need to do it. So I’m literally walking into an environment where they mentally might not even take anybody. Matter of fact, when I academically applied to all my schools, I chose UCR. UCR is UC Riverside. It’s in California. It’s close to where I was at. I have family members that went there and that taught there, so I figured it’s a good fit. Division I school.

Well, I went to the school preemptively, before the season started, to talk to the coach. And the coach told me, there’s no shot you’re going to make it on this team. You cannot be better than the last guy on the team. You have to be better than the first guy on the team.

Facing Rejection

And he’s like, quite frankly, you’re not going to do it. So he said, “Don’t bother. Relax. Go be a student. Don’t walk on.” Now, little did he know, I saved up just enough money to pay for the first quarter of school. And on the quarter system, that’s about maybe two months. I saved up just enough money to pay for the two months.

I had no money after that. All my money went to the tuition payment so that I can have enough time to get to the trial. I figured if I put it all on the field, if I made the team, if I can get a scholarship, I can do it. I figured if I can get there, if I can get all my efforts to get to this spot, then who’s to say that I can’t make the team? So that’s what I did. At that point of the tryout, I had no money left. I was sleeping out of my car. I would shower in the school gyms.

And I would get my food from the… It’s kind of like a food court. I’m pretty sure universities have something similar. They had older food out there, and I had people, friends who worked there, so they’d give me some extra food for free. And nobody knew that I was doing that, but I would. If I had enough money for gas, I’d probably drive over to a family member’s house. But if I didn’t, I’d just sleep in the car. But it was worth it. So, the coach didn’t know I took that big of a jump.

The coach told me not to try. But like I told you before, you cannot let anybody stop you from trying to succeed in something you want to do. Even the person that’s holding the keys to your dream, you can’t let them tell you that you can’t do it. You have to believe in yourself so much that it’s almost delusional, in a way.

But that’s the amount of passion that it takes to try to do something this big. An impossible dream, it takes an impossible mindset. So I did. I went on that walk, and I tried out. I put it all on that field. All of it. I was tired. My body was in pain.

But I had the biggest smile on my face because I knew I’d get everything I possibly could for that trial. And so, at the end of it, I waited those grueling seven days. I was about $3,000 in debt already because I owed the next payment for the quarter, and I had none of it. And I was failing my classes because I was barely sleeping or eating.

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Making the Team

So, when I ended up making the team, I sat down with the coach, and he told me the good news. He said that he can see my passion. He can see that I want this bad enough, and he knew that I was going to work as hard as I could to not only stay on this team but be the best player on that field, if I could. So I made the team.

I ended up becoming a Division I baseball player, something that a percentile of people are able to do. I finally did it. I felt like Superman. I felt like a superhero. Not only that, people didn’t believe me until they actually picked the pictures showed. That was me right there. That guy right there. That guy right there. You can look online right now. My name’s still up there. And the way that I saw it is that nobody can take that away from me. Nobody.

The Next Chapter

Not any person on Earth can look at me and tell me that I didn’t achieve something that everyone else told me was impossible. I was able to do it. And so, from there, you thought, okay, this is a story of the beginning. From here, the next step is the major leagues. Nine percent, right? I got it. Right? We’re good.

So I worked hard. I kept putting my all. I just kept trying to grow and grow and grow. But funny enough, guys, I actually got the attention of major league scouts. I did. I was actually going to become a major league prospect. We were talking about having me get into the 2020 draft. I was ecstatic.

That kid right there. That guy right there who started from almost nothing at all. Had an afro so big I couldn’t even fit my hat on. Had basketball shorts, big size 15 basketball shoes. I was in no spot to even think I could succeed, but I did because I didn’t let anybody tell me I couldn’t. So I thought to myself, this is about to be it. Nothing can stand in my way from getting into the 2020 draft, except for a global pandemic, actually. Those pesky things, right? I was like, darn. So the pandemic happened. Cut our season in half. Completely done.

The Dream Deferred

Put me back in my apartment to where I didn’t even realize that the last day that I was going to be in a baseball uniform, had no idea. None at all, actually. It was heartbreaking to slowly realize that the dream of being able to take care of my parents, being able to play on this team, being able to be a superhero for the people that I represented back home. All gone. All of it.

I was heartbroken because I told myself, you know what? I think I ended up just proving everybody right, and I didn’t want to do that. So I thought to myself, what do I do? Well, I can tell my story. I didn’t want my story to go untold. I didn’t want this to be a story that I just tell people while I’m sitting at a restaurant like, you know, I played baseball. “Oh, for real?” I don’t want to be that guy. I want people to know what happened here. I want people to know the story. So my brother Elijah, my friend Jonah, and myself, we made this documentary called Dear Baseball.

Dear Baseball: A Love Letter

It was my love letter to baseball, my love letter to everything that I went through. And it was about five minutes, full narration, and I’m like, I got to get this out. I want people to see it. So what I did was, I’m not saying do this, so don’t do this.

On Instagram, right, there’s a contact button. It’s an optional one, of course, but it has your email on it. If you press contact, you don’t want to change that. If you press contact on your page, it will have an email that you signed up with on the page. Some people do it willingly for businesses. Other people don’t know it’s there.

So what I did was, I had Dear Baseball. I put it in a nice little email package, and I emailed 150 people every day because there’s thousands and millions and millions of people on Instagram. So what I did is, I followed my favorite athletes, favorite actors, favorite musicians, favorite gymnasts, anybody. Saw everybody they followed, and I sent it to everybody.

I said, “Hey, take a look at this.” And funny enough, those efforts did not go unheard. That video, when I had like 500 followers, got 30,000 views. My first time ever going viral with anything, and it was with my story. People liked it. Athletes from Kyle Kuzma to LeBron James, people saw it. People actually knew I existed for a second. It felt amazing. It showed me that I can do something different besides just be a person that lifts weights and runs, and that’s it. I’m almost certain you guys right now, working so hard in your crafts, you probably think to yourself, like, this is my identity.

Finding Identity Beyond the Field

I’m going to study. I’m going to succeed. I’m going to be a successful engineer, a successful doctor, right? You get so entrenched in it that you forget that you’re a human being. You have other passions. You have other wants, other needs, but sometimes you forget that because you’re just so wrapped up in what you’re doing. You’re more than that. And as for me, after being an athlete, all I thought, again, I eat, sleep, breathe, baseball, all of it, every time, because I was going to be the guy that brings everything to my family.

So when I was taken away, I’m like, who am I? What worth am I? That’s the one downside to pouring myself into this. I forgot I’m a human being. So, you know, I was in my apartment like everybody else during the pandemic, scrolling through TikTok. I found out my brother made a TikTok, actually, and my brother got TikTok famous before I even knew about it. I made fun of him for it, because I’m an awful little brother. I was like, oh, I could do this. I couldn’t. I was like, I could do this.

So I made a video or two, or and then three, then five and then seven and twelve. And I realized I’m like, you know, this is actually kind of fun. Usually, I have a little video diary. I started working nine to five jobs during the pandemic. And, you know, everybody has those customers that aren’t the best or those bosses that don’t really treat you that well. So I would, I would, you know, tell everybody, hey, this is what happened at work today. I didn’t have a great time. Hey, this person did this to me. I didn’t like it. I would wear my work stuff.

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Probably shouldn’t have done that. But I wear my work stuff because I was just like, guys, check this out. Right. People liked it. They liked my opinions. They liked what I had to say. They enjoyed my personality. So it validated me. It made me feel like, oh, my goodness, people see me that no one here knows I play baseball. No one here knows all the stuff I went through. They just like what I’m saying. It was unfathomable. I couldn’t believe it. So I kept doing it.

The Rise to Social Media Fame

I would make seven videos a day, twelve videos a day, four videos a day. There are people here in this audience that had to deal with me making videos constantly. We’d be eating. I’d be like, “I’ll be right back.” I’ll make a video. I’ll come back. I’ll finish the meal. It was fun to do.

And then, after a while, gained a bit of a following. We gained about two million followers. And that’s when I knew I’m like, “You know what? Maybe this can be something that’s worth exploring.” So I took it a little more seriously. I started making videos. I started giving quotas for myself. “You know what? I’m going to make three videos today. I’m going to make four videos today. I’m going to do this. Instead of just doing this one thing, I’m going to try this also. I’m going to try this out, see how people like it.” I started learning, learning the craft and learning the sport.

Understanding the Audience

I realized that having a social media is basically like this: It’s a job where the audience is my boss. You guys tell me what you want. And I give it to you. I provide the best I possibly can for you. So hopefully you guys enjoy it. And then if I can do that in a way where I like it and you like it, we’re synonymous right here, it’s the best thing in the world. Because now I understand that I’m more than just a baseball player. I’m more than just a dude who went Division I and failed.

I’m Jordan Howlett. You guys know my last name. It was insane to think about. So then I got management. I got a team behind me. They taught me more about business. They taught me more about how you can make this more of a thing than just a fun thing to do. It can be a business.

It can be something I can provide. So with the right people behind me, with the right mindset, with the right support group, I took it seriously, very seriously. I took my audience seriously. I respected them every day. I wanted to make sure that they got something that they can take home to their families. It’s something informative. It’s something you can talk about. It’s something you can think about or laugh about.

If I can provide that to you, that is the biggest blessing in the world for me. Sure enough, eventually we ended up accumulating over 22 million followers across all the platforms, 85 billion impressions. My cat is famous. “Oh, I’m so serious.” I was telling him that the UPS guy recognized Harvey before he recognized me and wanted a picture. It was amazing. I was able to provide for my family. I now am in a better financial position to help my parents, to give them things that they wanted to give me and my brother.

I can give to them now. And it was doing something that I didn’t even realize I was doing from the start of this, talking in my bathroom mirror. Who would have thought? Now I can’t get away from my bathroom.

Full Circle Moment

And funny enough, people who told me that I never stepped foot on a major league field, well, thanks to my bathroom rants and whatnot, I threw the first pitch at the Chicago White Sox game. The satisfaction, the overwhelming amount of love and appreciation for the fact that stepping on that mound, that full circle moment, I don’t think people understand just how much that truly meant to me.

Just how much this all means to me. It’s people walking up to me wanting to take a picture because they care about who I am. “Are you kidding me? It’s amazing.” It doesn’t matter what day I’m having, good, bad, whatever. If somebody walks up to me because they actually are a fan of me, that makes me so happy. It takes me right out of my whatever mood I’m in. The ups and downs, the crying nights, the depressions, to get to this part of my life.

They truly understand why this is something that, again, like I said before, nobody can take this away from me. I’m grateful for every single one of you, and I want to leave here today by telling you guys this. Three things. One, do not be afraid to dream.

Life Lessons

Do not be afraid of failure. Learn from it. Failure is not something that you just experience. Failure is something that you learn from. If you learn from failure, you didn’t truly fail. You’re only building yourself up for a bigger success later. And the third thing, like we said, success is not linear, it’s scattered. If you want to get there in a straight line, it’s the most efficient way, it’s the fastest way.

But sometimes it’s not the most mentally effective way. Sometimes to get to that last point, you’ve got to go up, down, sideways, you’ve got to take two steps forward, ten steps back, just to get back here. But when you make that destination, when you figure out the person that you end up turning into by the time you get to that ending point, it adds to the things that you want.

You’re starting right here at the University of Waterloo, but you can end at the complete other side of the world, doing something you never thought you’d be able to do, but from the lessons that you learn from your failures, it turns you into this most amazing person that you never thought possible until right now. So again, please understand, you can do anything that you set your mind to. As long as you understand mentally that if you truly believe that you’re that .7 percentile, you actually might end up being the .7 percentile. Thank you guys so much.