Friday, May 15, 2009
Here's a secret - I very regularly make bad decisions. I would venture to say that most entrepreneurs do. Especially those of us who are taking a first pass at this game. Yet few of us will admit it. Them's the rules.
From my current vantage point, when I think back to the myriad of bad decisions that I've made, and on all the levels they've occurred, it makes me cringe. I didn't just make these mistakes once either; some of them I made them over and over again, refusing to alter my path until I had absolutely no other option. Funny thing - many of these mistakes I made because I was scared of making mistakes.
One case in point: We had entered our first trade show. We needed a booth, but I decided we couldn't afford the $2000 for the premade exhibit; and they were ugly anyway. I decided we would build our own, putting all my do-it-your-self crafting experience to work. How hard could it be? I wasn't just going to do any nasty trade show exhibit either - I was going to design a self-sustaining waterfall system, with river rocks and a mist that would surround my fantastic, beautiful, mind-blowing booth. So I talked my sister into helping me, and off we went to Home Depot to get the supplies.
From concept to completion the exhibit took us two weeks to build - two weeks we could have been looking for contacts or researching how skincare distribution worked instead of sanding and painting.
The pictures give you a good idea of what we accomplished. We managed to build the damn waterfall. But what the picture doesn’t show is the multimillion dollar exhibits around the corner. So after all that effort, all of that work, trying to look bigger and better, we still showed up exactly as we were – homemade, with some charm, but still the victims of an overzealous leader caught up in a bad decision. I still have those 12 boxes of river rocks - can’t bring myself to throw them away. They’re a good reminder.
From my current vantage point, when I think back to the myriad of bad decisions that I've made, and on all the levels they've occurred, it makes me cringe. I didn't just make these mistakes once either; some of them I made them over and over again, refusing to alter my path until I had absolutely no other option. Funny thing - many of these mistakes I made because I was scared of making mistakes.
One case in point: We had entered our first trade show. We needed a booth, but I decided we couldn't afford the $2000 for the premade exhibit; and they were ugly anyway. I decided we would build our own, putting all my do-it-your-self crafting experience to work. How hard could it be? I wasn't just going to do any nasty trade show exhibit either - I was going to design a self-sustaining waterfall system, with river rocks and a mist that would surround my fantastic, beautiful, mind-blowing booth. So I talked my sister into helping me, and off we went to Home Depot to get the supplies.
From concept to completion the exhibit took us two weeks to build - two weeks we could have been looking for contacts or researching how skincare distribution worked instead of sanding and painting. On the last night before the show I was alone as I created an exuberance logo out of silver duct tape, cutting and taping and folding and sticking until I had a fairly good approximation of our logo on the back of my undulating waterfall background material. I pulled an all-nighter that night - 15 straight hours - making sure I had it perfect.
I was exhausted the next day, and spent much of the setup time sobbing from nerves and fatigue. (not my best hour!) It was around the time that I was lugging the twelfth eighty-pound box of river rocks to my exhibit that I began to question the path I was on. The final straw came crashing down the next day when a women gave me her card, told me she was a distributor, and I looked at her and said 'what's a distributor?'
The pictures give you a good idea of what we accomplished. We managed to build the damn waterfall. But what the picture doesn’t show is the multimillion dollar exhibits around the corner. So after all that effort, all of that work, trying to look bigger and better, we still showed up exactly as we were – homemade, with some charm, but still the victims of an overzealous leader caught up in a bad decision. I still have those 12 boxes of river rocks - can’t bring myself to throw them away. They’re a good reminder.The worst part? The exhibit ended us costing us $3000. Exactly $1000 more than a new one would have cost.
I learned a lot from the decisions I made for that trade show. So the million dollar question is; are bad decisions ever truly mistakes, or are they just choices that have sometimes unintended results? Because what I've learned is that what seem like mistakes usually also carry with them the greatest lessons: what not-to-do next time, how to focus on your outcome, and sometimes, simply learning that you have the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on moving forward, even when you are bruised and battered and lugging an eighty-pound box of rocks.
Signing off to go make a few more decisions. Bad or good? I guess we'll see...
I learned a lot from the decisions I made for that trade show. So the million dollar question is; are bad decisions ever truly mistakes, or are they just choices that have sometimes unintended results? Because what I've learned is that what seem like mistakes usually also carry with them the greatest lessons: what not-to-do next time, how to focus on your outcome, and sometimes, simply learning that you have the ability to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on moving forward, even when you are bruised and battered and lugging an eighty-pound box of rocks.
Signing off to go make a few more decisions. Bad or good? I guess we'll see...
posted by Jodi at
6:52 AM
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