Failure

Failure is an interesting word. Too much of the time we focus on it in society. Hell, I’m one of those people. I believe that success is the result of lack of failure however, I couldn’t have been more wrong. The idea of failure came from the French word fillir or nonoccurrence. How did a word meant for something not happening turn into a word that had so much more condemnation behind it? The feelings that come behind failure are what I think will define that answer.

Why is this on my mind? Frankly, it is because failure has been consuming my mind lately. Over the last 30 days I have had to liquidate two companies, had to tell employees that they don’t have a job, and have had to make steps to try to find some sense of normalcy in my life that I have never needed to find before. The reality that I have “failed” is by far the hardest thing I have ever had to fight through and try to succeed out of. We always have heard that saying – failure is not an option. Ha! Yes it is and it is a true reality we will all have to face. I look back at my university career and realize the amount of “failures” I have had and realize the amount of naivety I had when not even noticing those episodes of failure, from relationships, to emotional support, to personal health I was deteriorating and this moment was bound to come.

Post-graduation I thought I would be able to to focus on the companies and that would make them really successful however, I couldn’t have been more wrong (again!!!). It got harder! Putting more time in and not staying busy with other things such as Denver Health or School made me realize the amount of work or the lack of work that I had been putting in. Holy shit! It is this reality that made me realize that keeping 4 alive was harder than I thought. It was this reality that I wrestled with and it resulted in Vi and I shutting down one of the companies, the first one that even got me into the business of entrepreneurship – Students for Intellectual Property.

The feelings from this hit me hard and broke me down. From tears to rage at myself for what just happened I was ready to give up completely, to succumb to the conventional idea of failure! In fact this started a cascade of me questioning everything I was doing, from my relationships to my other companies – I didn’t know if this was something that I was going to make it through. I remember losing it in front of my parents a couple of weeks ago realizing that I was giving into everyone’s thought about me – “you cant run a defense company,” “you cant run a non-profit,” “you cant pass legislation.” It tore me up inside. That people we coming to be right! I couldn’t let that happen yet I was, I was subjecting myself to failure.

Following this period of questioning everything I continued to press through. I figured if I stuck to the plan that I have that maybe it would all work out however, I was very skeptical. The harsh reality that you are “free-loading” as someone close to me called it, sucks! I hate realizing that you can put so much work into something to not have it pay off the moment you need it to. I was needing to pay bills, I needed money to survive; yet the companies that I had worked so hard for and traveled the world for are not producing the moment I need them to.

Fast-forward three weeks to when I am in San Fransisco, my outlook on the last month has been very interesting. I have made a complete turn around. I look back at those weeks as the lowest point I have been at professionally in my life. However, as they all tell you – things that go down must also come up – at least that is how the saying is going in my life. After attending the Global Entrepreneurship Summit with President Obama, Secretary Kerry, and a number of other influential individuals I can now say that the life I am living is actually turning up.

How is it turning up? Well that is the interesting thing; it might not be what you expect. Naturally the companies are now turning out to do well, Vita is in the process of making the an investment of over $1,000,000 with one of the most influential investors in the world, The Ideation Foundation has made a huge partnership with Lift Off Health which will help fund scholarships in Rwanda, and I am personally much happier that I have been in a long while. But the thing that I focus on when thinking of my life “turning up” is not anything to do with the companies any more, it has to do with my personal relationships. I have been able to get really close again with Cody, Dominick, Drew, Kevin, and many others. This would have never happened if I just drove my head further into work day in and day out, as that is my conventional reaction to failure. I was actually happy and beginning to be content with my life. Failure might actually be the gateway to success…. Who would have known.

So going back to my point as to how failure moved from a word meaning just the lack of presence to a term meaning the complete falling apart of something; I think it as to do with humility. When graduation hit, I was done. I had run 4 companies, worked a shit ton, and destroyed relationships; I thought that nothing could take me down if I could get through that. Haha – I was wrong. I had to truly fail in order to see that in fact I was not doing well. I had to face some humility. That moment where I broke down in front of my parents was that point for me, realizing that I was cocky, stuck up, and thought that I was doing it all in the start-up world. I needed to fail.

This idea of failure I think has a deeper meaning that many of us put it to, its not just a descriptive word but a process. A process of humility and of realizing that the life you think you are living is actually not the true reality. Looking back I thank the failure that we had to go through. It humbled me, made me realize the important things in life – that being relationships. For so long, I was thinking that I would leave a legacy that would effect millions and that is how people would love me. Ha! That is a joke if you don’t have any close personal relationships. No matter how hard I worked on the companies or how much I traveled, the true happiness I was seeking and the legacy I was aiming to leave would have been solidified through the close personal relationships I had generated. It is this that I will be able to continue into the future and into the coming years of my life.

Post-failure I am now able to say that I am someone that is still passionate about my companies but care about something greater than that – my close friends and family. Those relationships are the people that will carry the true legacy I want to leave, not the millions that I was intending to impact. If I do help millions, then great but the reality that I had of that being the priority is no more. I am happy to say that I look back now with a changed perspective, one that is relationship based and not works based.

So failure. Its not the stigma that we all talk about – the utter destruction of something. It is a process, a process of humility, reflection, and action. We must welcome failure to grow as people, a community, and in our individual relationships. Throughout the rest of our lives, we must welcome failure and instead of looking it from the lens that I did – one of true destruction of who I was; think of it as something that is meant to make us grow, the question is how will we grow this time?