The essential quality that makes someone successful... and, well, what if I don't have it??
Much is said about the importance of resilience for an entrepreneur, leader, CEO, or even just a well-adjusted adult. But what if I don't have enough?
This is a very personal, long, meaty letter today— so buckle up, get your beverages ready, settle into a comfortable chair.
I loved this piece on how Athletic Greens and other greens powders are ultimately bullshit. I have suspected this for a long time. This Plate Will Save Your Life writes about food how I want to consume it, without the stupid wellness buzzwords. When it comes to eating healthy or being healthy, I kind of think if it seems too good too be true or suddenly easy… it’s not real. There will be no major innovation, besides GLP-1, when it comes to the foundation: eat vegetables (real ones, ones you can chew), exercise.
Outdoor Voices was gobbled up by Draper James (Reese Witherspoon’s brand) owner Consortium Brand Partners.
The latest in
’s pieces on product development was positively a banger.I am leading a class for members of Sophia Amoruso’s Business Class tomorrow! She commented on this post and you can consider my inner girlboss absolutely gassed… legend… my workshop is an amalgamation of all of the issues of First Rodeo that have resonated the most with current and aspiring founders. 😇
- wrote a really clear, thorough explanation of what’s going on with deeply troubled beauty brand Youthforia.
The Tinx x U Beauty collab is a slam dunk to me… but that price!?! I thought I was reading wrong… and here I was thinking I’d cop…
Via
: if you’re a start-up founder and you’re going on The Bachelorette this next season, think it’s safe to say your brand ain’t gonna make it. Prayers up for Gainful, whose founder Jahaan Ansari (fellow Iranian-American? Potentially?) was just cast on the next season of The Bachelorette! Gainful is a more mature start-up, and they kindly sent me a bunch of their stuff while I was at Thingtesting. I liked it all but you already know that I was unable to consume that much creatine before it expired…
Most media— whether memoir, self-help, founder podcasts, or what may have you— tend to agree that resilience is the X factor that makes an entrepreneur or leader successful. Resilience may go by other names in said media: perseverance, tenacity, grit, discipline. They are all the same side of the same coin, if you ask me: it’s not giving up when things go wrong, because most of starting or running a business actually just is stuff going wrong.
In general, as a society, we say we value resilience in people, we prize it! But to
’s point on Konstantin Kisin’s Substack two weeks ago, we are also raising young people who are majorly lacking in any sort of resilience in the face of adversity.
I read the article above and was like “YUP!”, that is soooooo real. Totally.
And now, weeks later, I’m metabolizing it a little bit differently…because, ultimately…
I gave up!
In the past, in the I-just-gave-up-and-am-not-yet-healed era of my journey, it wasn’t the giving up that made me feel insecure about my ability to run a business or be a founder— it was my fixation on what felt like very obvious fuck ups in retrospect. I couldn’t get past hiring or firing decisions or how I spent money or how I managed my time or what I focused on. That distaste felt so big that I didn’t even really focus on the fact that I gave up.
The f-up that cost my business its runway.
It’s both simple and complicated all at once: I hired too big and too fast, and then continued to make a series of decisions that were bad for the company but good for those hires because I really didn’t want to deal with painful truths, being disliked, or firing people.
While the end was very hard, I wouldn’t say that I gave up because it was hard: I gave up because it wasn’t a viable business model or something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. It wasn’t that I gave up on the business so much as I gave up on the sunk cost fallacy.
But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel sort of paralyzed when shit went wrong that last year. It’s not just fight or flight when you’re backed into a corner, there’s a third option: you can freeze. And that’s exactly what I do when I am past my “fight” quota at work. I saw it as a founder. And I’ve seen it in both jobs I’ve had since.
When things go crazy, stupid wrong, I act like a novice swimmer stuck in a rip tide: first I thrash relentlessly, fighting for my life even if I know the level of fight I’m putting up is unsustainable in the longterm.
I actually usually make a lot of progress here! I am able to convince myself, my boss, my team, or our investors that if I just keep fucking grinding like a madwoman, we will win.
But that formula relies on one indispensable, crucial ingredient in order to work: me! It’s all in my hands.
And I’ve just burnt myself to an absolute crisp flailing and fighting for my life against a riptide, an indeterminable force that is so, so, so much bigger than myself.
When I’m tired and I realize I no longer have the strength to fight the riptide, that’s it. I don’t know what to do. I’m paralyzed. I’m frozen.
I don’t throw in the towel! I tread water, almost confused. Is the current pulling me? Fuck, it is. What do we do? I don’t know. I can’t stop treading water though, or we’ll drown. Should I just keep trying? I can’t try as hard as I was trying before, but I can keep treading.
In life and in business, this is the point where I start wondering: what if it’s me? What if it’s not the riptide? What if I’m just not good enough?