What Rocky Balboa, Crash Davis, and Don Draper Taught Me About Getting Back Up
What three fictional men taught me about survival, self-sabotage, and starting over.
Some people turn to mentors. Others turn to business books.
Me? I turned to Rocky Balboa.
And Crash Davis.
And Don Draper.
Not because I thought I was a boxer, a washed-up ballplayer, or a Madison Avenue ad man.
But because at some of the lowest, messiest, most uncertain moments in my career — I needed a story to believe in.
I needed to know that a comeback was possible.
The Fall
There’s no need to romanticize it. I’ve been laid off. I’ve burned out. I’ve stared down the kind of silence that only comes when your inbox goes quiet, your purpose gets blurry, and your confidence cracks.
I’ve been the guy who gave everything to something, only to be told the company was “moving in another direction.”
I’ve been the one clearing out the support queue one last time, rewriting résumés, questioning if any of it mattered.
And yet — every time, something pulled me forward.
Not a plan.
A scene.
Rocky, battered and bleeding, pulling himself off the mat in the 14th round.
Crash Davis, hitting dingers in empty ballparks, because even if no one’s watching, it still counts.
Don Draper, unraveling in the Hershey meeting — baring his soul when he was supposed to sell a pitch — and getting benched for it.
These weren’t just characters. They were mirrors. And they gave me the words I didn’t have for what I was trying to do:
Survive.
Adapt.
Rebuild.
The Tragic Flaw
There’s a reason I keep coming back to these men. They’re not heroes because they win — they’re heroes because they don’t.
Not always.
They lose. They self-destruct. They sabotage the very thing they want.
That’s the tragic flaw.
And that’s what makes their stories feel real.
Because I’ve had mine, too.
I’ve clung too tightly to roles that no longer fit.
Stayed quiet when I should have spoken.
Tried to be indispensable to everyone — instead of authentic to myself.
And I’ve paid for it.
But the gift of hitting bottom — if you’re lucky enough to get back up — is that you start building differently.
You don’t chase applause. You chase alignment.
You don’t build for scale. You build for substance.
The Reinvention
This blog — The Content Catalyst — isn’t just a newsletter.
It’s the product of everything I broke, everything I built, and everything I’m still figuring out.
It’s a home for people who’ve taken hits — professionally, creatively, emotionally — and still believe that story has power.
Not just the story you tell the world, but the one you tell yourself when you’re starting over.
In this space, I’ll write about:
The psychology of reinvention
Content and creativity as survival tools
AI, branding, and storytelling without the soulless hype
Lessons from characters who hit hard and fell harder — and still mattered
If that resonates with you, you’re not alone.
And you’re not done.
Because maybe the fall isn’t the end of the story.
Maybe it’s the start of the arc.
Subscribe if you’ve ever had to rebuild from scratch — and want to do it with soul this time.