It isn't every day that I get to sit down with someone and have him share with me anecdotes about his business journey, so when the opportunity comes, I grab it, grab the green tea, the notebook, the coffee and listen wholeheartedly.
Just a bit of a background here. This particular person, whom I shall not name, has been in his industry for over a decade, and whilst he's gone international, has also stayed close in touch with the nuances of the local climate, not just in his own industry, but in the general economic climate altogether.
"I don't know everything in detail," he tells me, "it is not possible for one man to know all the ins and outs, isn't it?" But he keeps a half-opened eye to what's happening, and he keeps a fully opened one to the "spirit of entrepreneurship" movement that is the hipster thing right now.
I don't ask him his age, but he gladly reveals that he hovers somewhere between the hippie and the xennial, which means that he finds the millennials a pretty interesting bunch. "They have a distinct quirkiness about them," he says, "I don't agree that they're all strawberries, there're some durians, mangoes, peaches, plums and oranges in the mix, which is a very good thing, because if everyone were a strawberry, then sustainability would fall back on the shoulders of the baby boomers and pre-wars all over again."
"We're a bit too off to take on that responsibility all by ourselves," he laughs.
But despite there being not all strawberries, there's one thing he's seeing quite frequently, "even amongst the mangoes, peaches and plums," and it is that many of them don't seem to be able to admit that business is not about 100% success but a journey of hits and misses, and that some hits can be pretty big ones.
"Oh, they do celebrate failure. They do celebrate those who have spoken about their failures and they quote ad verbatim from them," he tells me, "but ask them to take responsibility for their own failures, and they suddenly shy away."
"They blame everyone else, but themselves. It is as if they didn't make the d*** decision to do what they did, but someone else who coerced them into it."
That's not going to go far, he believes;. Others will be able to see through eventually what you're doing. If you've made a mistake and fast forwarded your plans, or if you've, in your eagerness, made a too quick decision and not tested it enough, or planned for it enough, resulting in consequences, let it be. S*** happens. Big s*** happens.
He should know, he candidly tells me. Back in the day when there were discussions to transit the education arm into content development, he okayed a decision to include a motion capture studio. (I've no idea what entails a motion capture studio, so he very kindly explained to me what it all involved.) The short and long of it is, and I hope I get it right, that one needs a very huge space, and one needs very specialized tech that captures a person's movement in real-time. It is the technique used in a bunch of movies, the most oft-quoted one being Lord of The Rings.
They had everything pat, the research side had done their research and narrowed it down to this particular firm, the sales side went ahead and met the company's rep over at CES in Vegas, the rep came down, it all seemed good to go.
And then the hitch came.
With the local rep.
I'm pretty sure I heard a quiet sigh as he described how the system had come and got set up and everyone in the team was excited about it, except that there was one problem. The local rep had no idea how to translate the tech specifically for his industry. They knew how to operate the machine and balance it with the softwae and all but he soon discovered that they were, literally, technicians, operating a high end (at that time) piece of equipment. And that despite their assurances, they had actually no idea how to translate the tech into the needs of his industry.
Take the word of the wrong person, he tells me, and sometimes you'll pay a heavy price for it. But one has to take responsibility. "I can't go around blaming the sales side, the research side, this person, that person, every other person but myself, for making the mistake. I can't transfer the blame from responsibility to other vendors either. It just doesn't work that way."
Taking responsibility for one's failures, he says, is a norm. It happens to everyone who has earned the stripes to call themselves an entrepreneur. No industry is immune from it. Don't just celebrate others who overcome failures, he advises, but work to celebrate your own.
"How are you going to be like your mentors and those you admire if you keep b***dy pushing away the responsibility from your own mistakes? How are you going to stand up there on some stage one day and say that yes, I f**ked up at this and this time and it was a challenge clearing the mess all up, but I'm here today and so on and so forth, if right now, when it is so obvious that you've screwed up, you continue to blame everyone else?"
Sure, the consequence might be more than a dollar factor and you might take some time before you climb up, but that's how it is. Take it as a lesson, learn to slow down, learn to listen hard at consultations and interviews, Take time and be slower to act. Don't jump into stuff simply because you think you can do better than others, or that you can make shortcuts. There aren't any, he laughs, no shortcut to the solution, no shortcut to the consequence when the solution falls apart either.
"Oh, they do celebrate failure. They do celebrate those who have spoken about their failures and they quote ad verbatim from them," he tells me, "but ask them to take responsibility for their own failures, and they suddenly shy away."
"They blame everyone else, but themselves. It is as if they didn't make the d*** decision to do what they did, but someone else who coerced them into it."
That's not going to go far, he believes;. Others will be able to see through eventually what you're doing. If you've made a mistake and fast forwarded your plans, or if you've, in your eagerness, made a too quick decision and not tested it enough, or planned for it enough, resulting in consequences, let it be. S*** happens. Big s*** happens.
He should know, he candidly tells me. Back in the day when there were discussions to transit the education arm into content development, he okayed a decision to include a motion capture studio. (I've no idea what entails a motion capture studio, so he very kindly explained to me what it all involved.) The short and long of it is, and I hope I get it right, that one needs a very huge space, and one needs very specialized tech that captures a person's movement in real-time. It is the technique used in a bunch of movies, the most oft-quoted one being Lord of The Rings.
They had everything pat, the research side had done their research and narrowed it down to this particular firm, the sales side went ahead and met the company's rep over at CES in Vegas, the rep came down, it all seemed good to go.
And then the hitch came.
With the local rep.
I'm pretty sure I heard a quiet sigh as he described how the system had come and got set up and everyone in the team was excited about it, except that there was one problem. The local rep had no idea how to translate the tech specifically for his industry. They knew how to operate the machine and balance it with the softwae and all but he soon discovered that they were, literally, technicians, operating a high end (at that time) piece of equipment. And that despite their assurances, they had actually no idea how to translate the tech into the needs of his industry.
Take the word of the wrong person, he tells me, and sometimes you'll pay a heavy price for it. But one has to take responsibility. "I can't go around blaming the sales side, the research side, this person, that person, every other person but myself, for making the mistake. I can't transfer the blame from responsibility to other vendors either. It just doesn't work that way."
Taking responsibility for one's failures, he says, is a norm. It happens to everyone who has earned the stripes to call themselves an entrepreneur. No industry is immune from it. Don't just celebrate others who overcome failures, he advises, but work to celebrate your own.
"How are you going to be like your mentors and those you admire if you keep b***dy pushing away the responsibility from your own mistakes? How are you going to stand up there on some stage one day and say that yes, I f**ked up at this and this time and it was a challenge clearing the mess all up, but I'm here today and so on and so forth, if right now, when it is so obvious that you've screwed up, you continue to blame everyone else?"
Sure, the consequence might be more than a dollar factor and you might take some time before you climb up, but that's how it is. Take it as a lesson, learn to slow down, learn to listen hard at consultations and interviews, Take time and be slower to act. Don't jump into stuff simply because you think you can do better than others, or that you can make shortcuts. There aren't any, he laughs, no shortcut to the solution, no shortcut to the consequence when the solution falls apart either.