Falling Forward

Dear Diary:

Entrepreneurs have this idea called “falling forward.”

So many start up ideas die in mid-flight or on the drafting table. Others die after obtaining initial funding and after discovering that, for whatever reason, the brilliant idea just doesn’t sell (normally due to lawyers freaking out their clients–e.g. someone invented this super duper cost-effective roll over protection bar about a decade ago when SUVs were rolling over left and right and making headline news from CNN to random blogs. It should have been a slam dunk idea. He got an investor and his company should have taken off but instead it went bankrupt. Why? Because lawyers were advising their car company clients not to purchase the roll over bar because it might be seen as some sort of admission of guilt that they knew of the danger of SUVs and would open the door to law suits. Nobody would even return the poor guy’s call. Of course we know that the law would not see this remedial action as proof of liability (in fact, we want companies to take such precautions, no?), most people would think otherwise and find some yahoo plaintiff’s attorney to file suit but I digress…).

Entrepreneurs may go through several ideas at different stages of development (from just an abstract idea to actually drafting a business plan to finding an investor to actually starting the company) and many of them go bust. That’s just part of the game.

But even though the entrepreneur stumbles and falls, so long as he learns something from his mistakes, his pilot ideas, his miscalculations of the market, his competitors, or himself, he falls forward and the fall isn’t a complete waste and may even be seen as a stepping stone to his next project which may be a slam dunk

Shouldn’t we take this same approach to our careers? We are all entrepreneurs of life in some sense trying to find the idea that is a home run… Sure, there are some formula one race car drivers that were groomed from the age of 4 or gymnasts whose parents sent them to gymnastics training at the age of 6 but not all of us had our paths laid out in front of us like that. Moreover, even laid out paths might end up like the roll over bar and be a bust even though it seemed like a golden fail proof idea. For some, BigLaw seemed like a pig-in-shit perfect path for them but at the end of the day, it might just be the shit without the pig (er…well, you get the idea).

Sure, our endeavor into BigLaw was costly (student loans, time spent and brain cells killed studying for the bar, and self-esteem and dignity lost through working in BigLaw), but let’s try to learn from this lesson, move on, and fall forward.

Related posts:

1. You Will Screw Up
2. Rather Suit Goes Forward; “Worst Client” to Testify