What Happens When The Storm Wins?

Hi…………….

How was your week? I'm hoping one of these days someone will answer me. But in any case, I've had conversations this week with people who are facing storms. Whether they're financial, medical, or business, they're storms. 

We’ve all seen the quote below. It’s plastered on motivational posters, shared across social media, and tattooed on the arms of the determined.

“Fate whispers to the warrior, ‘You cannot withstand the storm.’ The warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’”

It’s a powerful sentiment. It’s about defiance, strength, and having an unbreakable will.

But what happens when the storm WINS? What happens when the warrior is broken, the business is bankrupt, and the whispers of fate turn into a deafening roar of failure?

This isn’t a story about being the storm.

This is a story about the brutal reality of business, the sting of betrayal, and the grit required to rebuild not once, but twice, in the face of overwhelming odds.

This is the story of what it truly means to whisper back.

The Plywood Desk and the Unseen Niche

Every warrior has a story. This one doesn’t start in a boardroom or on a battlefield; it starts on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1977 with a plywood desk and a couple of file cabinets, in a rent-controlled apartment. 

It started with an idea that everyone else in the magazine distribution industry thought was foolish: computer magazines.

The big distributors refused to touch them, seeing them as a niche market with no future. But where they saw risk, a warrior saw an opportunity.

That warrior was me, and that simple idea became Total Circulation Services (TCS). By 1981, the niche that no one wanted was suddenly exploding in popularity.

First, Waldenbooks and then B. Dalton came calling. They needed a system to get computer magazines to 2,500 of their combined stores, and TCS was the only one that had it.

This was the birth of Periodical Marketing Services Corporation (PMSC), and it was the beginning of a meteoric rise.

PMSC became the dominant force in the market

It was the main distributor for computer magazines, mainstream comic books, and all the special interest magazines that the major distributors had ignored.

At its height, PMSC was a $40 million business, serving 4,000 stores with 2,500 different magazines. And employing 140 people.

It was a testament to the power of seeing what others didn’t, of having the courage to bet on yourself and your idea.

It was the embodiment of being the storm – disrupting an entire industry through sheer force of will and a better idea.

The Betrayal and the Five-Year War

But not all storms come from the outside. Sometimes, they wear a friendly face.

The president of Waldenbooks, the very partner who had helped launch PMSC, moved to a new role at Ingram Books.

And from that new position, he decided to challenge PMSC for the very distribution rights he had once begged us to develop.

What followed was a five-year, all-out legal war. It was a storm of a different kind – a relentless, systematic assault designed to bleed PMSC and me personally dry.

The pressure on publishers was immense. The legal fees were astronomical. It was a battle of attrition, and in the end, the warrior fell. PMSC, the $40 million powerhouse built from a plywood desk, was forced into bankruptcy.

This is the part of the story that the motivational posters leave out. The part where the warrior is not just weathered by the storm but utterly broken by it. The part where the whispers of fate are no longer a challenge, but a crushing reality. What do you do when the storm has won?

The Phoenix and the Perfect Storm

For many, this would be the end of the story. But for a true warrior, the end of one battle is simply the beginning of the next. I had to rebuild. The injustice I felt lit a new fire. But this time, it wasn’t about taking on the giant head-on

Total Circulation Services (TCS) was reborn. This time, the focus was on the international press. NYC was the number one market in the world, and no one had developed it fully.

TCS became the exclusive distributor for the French and British press in New York City and the surrounding areas.

It was a smaller, more focused business, with less of everything, except for happiness. It was proof that resilience isn’t always about brute force; sometimes, it’s about being nimble, strategic, and finding a new path when the old one has been destroyed.

But the world is a relentless place. And just as TCS started to thrive, a new, more powerful storm began to gather on the horizon. It was a perfect storm of disruption: the 9/11 attacks, which sent shockwaves through the global economy; the dot-com crash, which made expensive magazines a luxury that many could no longer afford; and the rise of the internet, which was beginning to give away for free the very information that people used to pay for.

This was a storm that no single company could withstand. And when the storm settled into a steady rain, where once there were over 500 magazine distributors in 2000, by 2010, there was a handful, and today, just two.

The True Meaning of the Whisper

So, what does it mean to be the storm?

 It’s not about being invincible. It’s not about never falling. It’s about what you do after you’ve been knocked down, betrayed, and left for dead.

 It’s about the lessons you learn in the dark, the grit you forge facing creditors and letting go of long-time employees, and the courage you find in the ashes of all of that.

Today, at Digital Content Creators (DCC), we don’t fear disruption. We embrace it.

We create immersive ways for creators to share their message. With print, digital, and audiobooks as well as eLearning courses that incorporate gamification and VR, and while nothing is future-proof, we have our eyes looking forward.

We offer free publishing and content creation advice to help authors and coaches navigate a new landscape. We do this because we know that the only way to lead is to be the change itself. We’ve been through the storm, we’ve been destroyed by it, and we’ve rebuilt from it.

So, the next time fate whispers its doubts in your ear, remember this story. Remember the Plywood desk, the $40 million rise, the five-year war, the bankruptcy, the rebirth, and the relentless onslaught of new storms.

Don’t just whisper back. Build the future.

What was your storm?

We all have a story of a time we were tested. A time we were knocked down and had to find the strength to get back up. Share your story in the comments below. Let’s create a community of warriors who have not just survived the storm but have become it.

And if this story resonated with you, please consider subscribing and sharing it with someone who need to hear it.

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