How to move onward through the fog

My uncle Scott lives in Alaska.

Before he had kids, he was a deep sea fisherman.

He used to fish the Bering Sea. Not the ocean you see in the vacation postcards. The ocean that disappears people, mysteriously, and no one knows what happened.

Anyway. My uncle Scott now fixes refrigeration units on boats and warehouses up in Sitka. And he’s also a poet.

He isn’t trying to be a poet.

He just is one.

Once, when one of his kids was arguing with him about some detail, he said, “well, it’s close enough for government work, son.”

I just love that.

And even through my uncle Scott lives far away, he’s always sent me gifts.

Now, I’m not a big gifts person. But uncle Scott’s are some of my favorites.  Because he’s either giving me something quality, or something he thinks could be important to my development as a human being.

When I was in college, uncle Scott sent me Naomi Wolf’s book Fire With Fire. I don’t have that book any more, but I remember the inscription saying something like: Read this and it blew my mind. Now it’s your turn.

Last winter, he sent me a 10 pound box of king crab legs, meant for my mother (who had already left town several days prior). We boiled them up, had the neighbors over, and feasted like kings.

But the best gift my uncle ever gave me was a phrase.

It’s become something of a touchstone for me.

It’s something I now pass along to my clients and friends and colleagues, when they sometimes ask for my advice.

It’s something that I say to myself, when I feel lost, unmoored, or out of signal range in the Bering Sea moments of my life.

There’s this myth out there that there is “one way” to do business. That all you have to do is buy the right 8-step system. That all that stands between you and success is one mouse click.

But what if that’s not what success is like on the ground, at all?

My business is doing better than ever, but to tell you the truth, more than once this fall, I’ve said to my team, “Look. I don’t know if this is going to work. But let’s just see what happens.”

Sometimes, when I talk to business owners, they say, “I guess I want some sort of guarantee that this is going to work before I go out there and do it.”

Side bar: If you see this idea running around in a dark alley of your own mind, grab an empty beer bottle, smash it open, and fight to the death.

Because that’s not how it works.

The way it works is that you have to get out on the skinny branches, again and again, and do things you aren’t entirely sure are going to work out.

Some of them will.

Most of them won’t.

Doesn’t matter. You keep going. The going and the doing and the trying and the failing and the learning from the experience is the thing.

A few years ago, I called my family up in Alaska. My uncle Scott answered the phone. I asked him how he was, only to have his reply become a cornerstone of my philosophy of business (and life):

“Onward through the fog!”

Mighty thanks to Kasia for the creative process.

Stella Orange is a copywriter who helps people put their work into words. For eight years, she wrote email campaigns that resulted in more than a million dollars in sales for her clients. In that time, Stella also taught popular marketing writing workshops to business owners on both sides of the Atlantic -- and a few in Australia and New Zealand. In 2017, Stella cofounded a creative and consulting shop offering a complete and slightly unorthodox line of business advising and marketing services. She continues to write copy and advise clients on customer delight, how to resonate with more sophisticated, discerning clientele in your marketing, and just who, exactly, your ideal clients are. Stella is the founder of Show Up And Write, a weekly writing group and writes a letter every two weeks or so (here’s the sign-up). She lives with the Philosopher and their two kiddos in Buffalo, New York, a fifteen-minute bike ride to the Canadian border.

3 Comments


  1. emma

    Love your storytelling.
    And the phrase is awesome.
    I agree – there are no guarantees and if you wait for them it will never happen!
    The funny thing is, there are no guarantees across all parts of our lives – we just think there is. But when you admit there isn’t it’s actually easier to move forward.

  2. Connie Vanderzanden

    Such a good share Stella! My perfectionism stopped me from taking action for a long time. Only when I changed my perspective that everything is a learning opportunity did I break the chains of being a “normal” business. What if, doing business like everyone else was just broken? What if, the riches are for those businesses brave enough to take a step into the fog? I’m ready, let’s go!

  3. Amy

    I needed this one today! Onward! Xo

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