Entrepreneurship: “I Told You So.” Get Used To It.
Scheduled to speak to my HR/Management class for budding entrepreneurs was a former colleague of mine who I regard as one of the best human resources partners in the business. Unfortunately, we had mucho trouble getting the link to work. Try as we might, the audio would not come through. We had to go to Plan B. (By this time, you know all about Plan B’s.)
Plan B is oft times me riffing or riffing on questions the students throw at me. One of the first questions I got was “What do you do if people discourage you from pursuing your idea?” GREAT question and I knew where it was coming from: the student had an idea, somewhat developed, and some authority figure, probably a parent, is discouraging them. (I had a similar experience when I wanted to go to graduate school and my mom did not want that to happen despite grad school being self-funded. I went.)
The obvious answer is that entrepreneurs have to be passionate about their idea and be willing to go forward with that passion despite the risks and despite the naysayers. Edison, Bell, the Wright Brothers and others all had their ideas scoffed at. A man fly? (The Wright Bros.) Ridiculous. A reusable rocket? (Musk.) Pretty far-fetched. Stay in stranger’s homes? (Air BNB.) No one is going to let you do that. All persisted and all succeeded.
My favorite is James Dyson. Starting in the late 1970s/early 1980s, Dyson developed his dual-cyclone bagless vacuum after frustration with traditional ones losing suction. He built 5,126 failed prototypes…over five years…in a shed. And spent a lot of money doing so. Manufacturers and retailers rejected the idea repeatedly, calling it too expensive, too weird-looking, too unnecessary ("who cares about no bag?"). Friends and others thought he was mad. He nearly went broke. Eventually, James Dyson—a name we all now know—launched, on his own, “Dyson,” a brand worth billions today. (There was a great article recently in the Wall St, Journal after Mr. Dyson’s death.)
But you do not hear much about those entrepreneurs who failed, were ridiculed, persisted, failed again, and had to listen to the naysayers. “I told you so.” You think Mr. Dyson heard some “I told you so’s?” And is not that one of the biggest fears entrepreneurs face? Not just the failure itself but the jeers and embarrassment from those that purport to knew better, want to gloat and/or want to feel smug about themselves, and try to discourage the budding business people. My student was hearing the harbingers of “I told you so.”
If you are going to take on the risk of being an entrepreneur, you can’t care about the naysayers. Those types will try to discourage you before you embark on your journey, during your journey, or after a journey when you end-up, hopefully temporarily, on the rocks. You just can’t listen to them. Or you will be paralyzed. And it doesn’t matter if the naysaying comes from your parents, your colleagues, your friends. You need to be strong and ignore them.
That doesn’t mean you don’t consider good advice. That you must do. But just pouring water on the hot fire isn’t an idea. It’s just putting out the fire.
Entrepreneurs, and many of them do, use the skepticism of others as an added motivation to do the “one more thing” needed to prove the critics wrong. How many times do you think Jame Dyson heard “I told you so?” If he hadn’t heard it by the 2,351st prototype, he surely heard it many times after that. And what if, after the 5,125th prototype, he said to himself, “I can’t take it anymore” and gave up?
So, if you are going to be an entrepreneur, you are going to have to have a lot of passion for your idea, a lot of resilience, and get used to hearing “I told you so” when you inevitably encounter failure.
It’s funny. No one says to the minor league baseball player and hasn’t made it to the major leagues, “I told you so.” No. We say, “Well, I’m glad you are trying. You never have to look back and second guess.” And that’s the attitude aspiring entrepreneurs need to have too and let the “I told you so’s”---and the fear of them—roll off your back like so much rain off of James Haney’s umbrella, the umbrella being another idea that was scoffed at.
Show A Little Faith.