The Can't Smile Without You show was in 2008, and Sam didn't get cast in Nashville until January 2012. In the interim, he managed to keep working in the business, but he came close to having to get a sales job.
Sam says the "most depressing" was ending up in Abercrombie & Fitch and dreading working behind the tills, because the shop smelled "really funny". Luckily for him, just as he was going to have to end up in "the real world", he got a big hair advert that he says "saved [his] life": for VO5 Extreme Styling Shampoo.