150: Lessons From KGB Spy Jack Barsky

“I became an American & said goodbye to them [the KGB].” – Jack Barsky Sounds like the opening line of a spy thriller. Except this one’s real. For a decade, Jack lived undercover in the U.S. as a KGB agent. His mission wasn’t excitement. No tuxedos. No martinis. Just the discipline to disappear — and never get caught. And he did it so well that he not only avoided capture — he built a whole new life. A college valedictorian. A corporate exec. A family man no one suspected. Until one day, the story broke on 60 Minutes. That’s when Jack faced the choice every entrepreneur knows too well: – Start over. – Reinvent yourself. – Risk failing again & again. He wrote a book that flopped until he rewrote it from scratch. He gave speeches so bad he wanted to “jump in a lake”… and kept at it until Microsoft put him on stage. He built a business that went nowhere — and had the guts to kill it when no one showed up. Every failure became fuel. Every dead end, a redirection. This isn’t just a peek into espionage. It’s a raw look at resilience, reinvention, & the grit it takes to survive when the plan collapses.

Winston Churchill said it best: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

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