Christopher Lin is a Fizzler who opened a recent forum post with this story:
“I went to the University of Utah, and majored in Entrepreneurship. At the orientation, there were 2 speakers, and the first one opened in front of the entire business school:
‘When I started my first business. I lost my wife, and it was worth it.’
Imagine a group of young starry eyed college kids listening to this opening message.
He continued, ‘I wish 10 years of horrible failures upon all of you, so you can truly become great entrepreneurs.’
Another slap in the face. Are we in the right room?
I'm now hitting just about 10 years after my first business, and barely hitting minimum viable income. It's been a rocky road of squirrel chasing and lack of focus, but I am optimistic that I've laid the foundation to build something great now.”
Wow. In those two bolded statements above is some inflammatory, scandalous, polarizing stuff!
But there’s more in there than just sludge for debate.
There is a question about what it means to fail, what’s at stake if your idea doesn’t work, what the “real world” requires from you and what you require from yourself.
More than anything, the conversation you’re about to listen to is about whether you give yourself permission to fail.
“Permission to fail” can feel buzz-wordy and insubstantial, but what you’ll find in this episode at large — and in Barrett’s story at the very least — is this could be the very reason why you can’t find the clarity or the courage for the next step.
Enjoy!
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““When I started my first business. I lost my wife, and it was worth it.” Whoa.”
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Barrett’s Story
Barrett reads from an email he wrote about his previous business in this episode. We wanted to publish that here in text as well as in the episode. Here it is:
Four years ago, I founded a company. It was probably bound to fail from the beginning, if for no other reason than simple lack of experience. But I stayed at it for three years.
That's three years with no day job, two years with little to no income, and an unbearable number of sleepless nights, fights with N., and days spent working alone.
I got so stressed out during that time that I convinced myself I had cancer. I went to the doctor repeatedly to try to find what was wrong with me. It turns out there was only one thing wrong: a failing business and no one alongside me in the trenches. In other words, despair.
In the process, I racked up $10,000 in credit card debt. N. added another $10,000 of her own just to keep us paying our bills and living an ok life. I lived in my parents' basement. N. lived at home with her parents. And it was all self inflicted.
Finally, three years in, after working with Seth, I finally started to see what I couldn't see before. The audience was all wrong. I wasn't clear on what, exactly, I was selling. I had no clear path to earning any respectable amount of revenue. It was time to shut it down.
That's when I showed up at Fizzle. Broken. In debilitating credit card debt. My confidence in shambles. Craving collaboration and learning and mentorship. Starving for technical skills, the lack of which had contributed so much to our failure.
It was a hard process and I'm still unwinding the physical and emotional toll it took on me and my relationships to N., family, and friends.
…
That's what I'm thinking about when I'm pissed off that we're not executing. Or when I don't understand why we've chosen a podcast topic. Or when we don't put out a course all year.
It's because I know there are hundreds and thousands of people who think if they just take the leap, quit their jobs, and believe in themselves, they'll have a successful business. But we all know that's just not true.
I want us to be the solution. I want us to speak truth to what they're going to experience. I want to acknowledge what they're feeling, sure, but more importantly I want to give them the tools to actually change their situation.
TALKING about self doubt would not have been helpful to Elon Musk when SpaceX's third rocket launch failed. What was helpful was launching the fourth rocket. All of his energy needed to go towards solving the root problems in order to move beyond the doubt and fear and prove that Musk was able to execute on his plans.
So when we choose a topic like that, I recognize it might feel good to the audience, but I come to it pissed off because my greatest fear is that we'll give people an excuse to feel sorry for themselves. That we'll talk so much about the symptom that we'll never help them address the root cause. It's not a lack of empathy, it's empathy so deep that I know what the downside could be if we don't approach the topic just right.
In other words, it's personal. It's not that I'm unhappy with where we are, it's that I have a sense of urgency about solving the problems these people have in their businesses. And the more we shy away from leaning into the work at hand — teaching — the more we cheat our customers out of everything they need to know to have a fighting chance at building a successful business.
Show Notes
Fizzlers: I lost my wife because of my first business, and it was worth it. – General Chat – Fizzle Forums
How We Deal With The Cesspool of Self Doubt (FS133)
From the Beginning (Trying Again After Stillbirth) — Medium
Every Morning I am Pulled Apart — # S W L H — Medium
5 Reasons Why I Quit my Business to Pursue my Dream Job (FS144)
For all those who feel it:
““Your work is not your worth.””
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The Top 10 Mistakes in Online Business
Every week we talk with entrepreneurs. We talk about what’s working and what isn’t. We talk about successes and failures. We spend time with complete newbies, seasoned veterans, and everything in between.
One topic that comes up over and over again with both groups is mistakes made in starting businesses. Newbies love to learn about mistakes so they can avoid them. Veterans love to talk about what they wish they had known when starting out.
These conversations have been fascinating, so we compiled a list of the 10 mistakes we hear most often into a nifty lil' guide. Get the 10 Most Common Mistakes in Starting an Online Business here »
I hope this is okay to share here but I did a recent podcast episode on the science and psychology behind failure and why we are actually hard wired to avoid anything that might lead to failure (as well as what you can do about that). Might be a good complementary morsel to this episode form you fizzle folks.
http://tinyleaps.co/why-you-should-embrace-failure-and-disappointment/
Thank you team for a very moving episode, and thank you for being so open about your life journeys. It’s the first time I’ve heard anyone make a blind bit of sense on the subject of failure. The episode was worth my entire 1 year special offer subscription (oh, wait, it was a podcast that was free anyway ,,,)
I map my life by 3 major milestones of failure and loss (a breakdown at 30 when I couldn’t work for 6 months and didn’t know if I’d ever work again; my beloved kid sister dying in an accident when I was 40, and ignominious failure of an IT project I’d staked my reputation on and nearly busted myself over at 50).
I remember someone ludicrously saying about my sister’s (young) children “I hope this doesn’t scar them for life.” Er, sort of misses the point. The big losses and failures at any age transform you, and you all you get to try and choose is whether your heart is contracted or expanded by the experience, whether you become compassionate or bitter, whether you learn or blame. How to be brave. How to be vulnerable. How to pick yourself up and face the world again.
I can’t say I’m glad any of them happened, especially the middle one. But I can see something of how those experiences have shaped me and taught me things that maybe couldn’t have happened any other way. The refiners’ fire and all that.
Thanks again.
Thanks so much for sharing some of your story with us, Sarah. I’m glad today’s episode resonated with you and that it gave you a way to make some sense of the idea of failure. :)
Sarah, it’s so true, isn’t it? Those experiences weren’t good. They were horrible. But what you have learned and done in response to them has been good indeed.
Chase and Barrett, thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your hearts. I could feel the pain in my heart as I listened. You connected in such a deep way to each other and to me. And I’m sure to many. I have had circumstances in my life too that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. What I have discovered out of it is that life, and the work we love, is worth fighting for. Struggling over. Risking failure for.
Chase, I am praying for a healthy child for you and your wife. I look forward to meeting your son in heaven, who is probably playing right now with the child I didn’t get to meet.
Barrett, I am glad you were willing to try again and join Fizzle. Thank you for your passion on our behalf. Thank you for being the voice that pushes harder to help us do something besides just think and feel.
Steph, congratulations on the impending birth of your daughter.
On the topic of failure: one thing that helps is to think of ways to experiment and fail small, so we don’t wait until our entire business is a failure. Try, measure, pivot. Repeat. It’s less risky that way, and allows for much more experimentation, without it being a disaster. The higher the stakes, the less room for failure.
Cheers, guys!
Thank you Kathleen!
Gang: this was a really incredible episode. I give it all 47 alligators.
Thank you for continuing to have the conversations that others are too afraid to have. I think there’s real strength in your numbers (as a team of 4) and it allows you to share your thoughts and experiences from a meaningful place.
Ya know, when I was in college I majored in theatre. I remember my mom pleading with me to get an education minor as a backup. I was so annoyed with that thought – that there could even be a plan B. While becoming a school teacher certainly wasn’t my calling, I do wish that college me would have listened more to the intention than the specifics and created a plan B back then. Clearly the theatre career is long behind me and I’ve managed to carve out my own plan B after much trial and error but boy do I wish I had listened to mom back then.
Life is what happens when you’re busy making plans, right? Best to make a few just in case.
I give it 48 alligators – 47 + one teeny, weeny baby alligator for Steph (congrats!). Great episode. I think this is the first one ever that I have both laughed out loud and cried. Really good stuff.
Thanks for keep putting out great episodes. Here’s a related anecdote: I actually got cancer (december 2015) within half year after starting my freelance business. I never thought of it that way, but maybe it was the thing that caused it ;) I couldn’t obviously work as much as I wanted, but I managed to land a few clients and do a few jobs while fighting the cancer. Today I’m cancer-free, and I finally have the energy and time to put in all the time that I want to. I’m sure your podcasts kept holding up the momentum for me during the tough times. Thanks guys!
Wow. Thank you for sharing that, Esben.
Barrett, it was incredibly moving and encouraging to hear your story in this episode. It’s hard for me to verbalise how reassuring it is to hear that going through failure and making mistakes is kind of a ‘normal’ part of starting a business. We get told so many times that ‘entrepreneurs’ are touched with some kind of magic dust and somehow just get everything right, are successful and make a load of money. I have thought so long that my past failures meant I was useless in areas where entrepreneurs had to be good to do well and in the past few months I’m learning that more than anything it’s about always be hungry to learn and how you come back from the mistakes – not that you never have to make any or that you automatically can know everything you need. Totally inspiring. I’ve picked up more great content and value from Fizzle in the last 2 weeks than the last 3 years.
So glad to hear it was encouraging for you, Martha. I’m also really excited you feel like we’ve been especially valuable of late. It does feel like we’ve hit a little momentum here — hopefully we can keep it going!
There I was, up some scaffolding, nailing cedar shingles onto the front of my house here in New Zealand and…wow!! such openness and vulnerability from people I hardly know.
I feel the most difficult thing these days is knowing what is actually the truth – most life stories are so “photoshopped”. Thanks for giving us the raw truth. You have no idea how much this means right now, to me and you can be sure, many others.
That’s a big up from Down Under.