Fuck it. Why 100% commitment is needed to succeed.
I began my career at Red Bull, which is an amazing place to launch a career and learn. I started working for the company in college and was able to transition to a full-time job post graduation and then slowly climb the ranks. It was my dream job, working in action sports for a brand that I believed in. Red Bull taught me to believe that anything was possible, the people within that organization are sharp and they take huge, calculated risks.
Ever since I was young, I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur. I don’t know why, but I’ve always been interested in business. I had a ton of great hobbies growing up — snowboarding, soccer, music — but somehow I always knew my calling was business. I’ve always looked at other people and thought to myself: if that person can do it, it can be done, which means I can do it. It’s simple logic — which can be both dangerous and exhilarating.
After a few different roles at Red Bull I started to really contemplate how, and when, I could leave to build a company. There was tremendous opportunity for me to continue my growth within the organization, but it wasn’t my own company. I wanted to perform the ultimate litmus test and prove to myself that I could hack it as an entrepreneur. So in late 2014, with a business partner, I struck out on my own to launch Grin.
Before committing 100% to Grin I had worked on dozens of small side projects. I had managed a band, started a marketing consultancy, began work on a towel & accessories company. I did all of these while still working at my “day job”. In my own head, I was trying to mitigate the risk of leaving such a great opportunity. If I could get a business off the ground, with revenue, before leaving my existing role it would make everything easier. I wouldn’t have to worry about not paying rent as I had grown my business to a point where the step-off would be easy, manageable.
The reality is, this half-in mentality, never afforded me the opportunity I was seeking. What it resulted in was a bunch of promising business ventures with half-assed outcomes that never made it anywhere.
I continue to think a lot about this time in my life. I’ve contemplated at length the difference between my mentality then and my mentality now. Why, at Grin, were we able to raise over a half million dollars and reach more than 2 million users in our first year, while everything else struggled to get off the ground? After contemplating this idea, I think it boils down to a pretty simple, but often overlooked concept.
Commitment.
The key difference with the business I am operating now, versus the other projects I had launched, is commitment. Saying fuck-it and going for it. Going all-in. Quitting an amazing job with potential, to go after a big scary dream. I am confident that this is the reason we are making such significant progress — since we launched, my co-founder and I have been 100% all-in, with no backup plan.
“Once you make the decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”
There is profound truth in the Emerson quote, magical really. The moment in which you decide, without doubt that you are going after it — serendipity ensues.
The truth is, however, that committing to the unknown is scary. Extremely scary indeed, but it is required to succeed. Why is 100% commitment required?
Without full commitment you will never gain meaningful traction.
Without full commitment challenges that arise will cripple you.
And without full commitment few people will follow you.
Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you stories of their struggle to get off the ground. Times when they came into work and the world seemed like it was collapsing around them, but they persevered. Or times when they were able to convince someone to believe in them, which changed the trajectory of their business. Meaningful traction, perseverance through challenges and leadership are must-haves in order to build a company. You simply cannot succeed without them.
Conversely and in my own experience, once I fully committed to the unknown and cut the life line of a steady salary, my perspective changed in 3 dramatic ways.
1.) My self-dialogue, how I talk to myself, completely changed.
2.) A sink-or-swim mentality forced solutions to seemingly impossible problems.
3.) Unseen doors began to open that I never could have predicted.
On the surface these changes in thinking may seem small, insignificant, but I can assure they are not. Here i’ve outlined the three ways in which my thinking changed once I fully committed to our business.
1.) My self-dialogue shifted:
Most of success is mental, it starts in your own head, and how you talk to yourself defines the quality of solutions you are able to deliver. Being half-in is like sitting on the sidelines, you’re not fully in the game, it’s a passive experience. Being 100% committed is like being on the field, it’s action oriented, you are forced to make decisions in real time.
The questions turned from doubts to must-dos. Being all in forced us to be action oriented, which set the stage for momentum with our business.
2.) Sink or swim forces solutions:
Momentum is a cruel mistress. Momentum can turn on you with the drop of a dime and it’s not a question of if, it’s a question of when. Without doubt, as an entrepreneur, momentum will turn, the tides will shift and the world will look like a bleak, dark place. The challenges you face will seem insurmountable at times, like they could drown you, and they can — if you let them. When your halfway in the ocean and the tsunami comes, you will get out of the ocean. You will retreat to safety. When you are all in, in the middle of the ocean, with no boat, you are forced to swim. Forced to find a way to survive. From my perspective, this is a critical component to success. Having your back against the wall, not being able to back out drives resourcefulness and creativity.
I can remember being about 4 months into our company and we were growing rapidly. My partner and I are both non-technical, launching a mobile app, we’ve built a product that users are adopting and our user-base is growing fast. So fast, that we begin crashing our servers. We have little to no money, are in desperate need of sustained growth to show traction, and we can’t keep our products live for more than 10 hours at a time. If you are halfway committed, it’s incredibly easy to look at this situation, slow down, and find a solution over time. When your life is on the line, you don’t have this luxury. Over the course of 2 weeks we interviewed and pitched 30+ technical advisors to come in and help us for equity, secured one, and he works with us today as our CTO. Being all in forced us to find a solution, and fast.
3.) Unseen Doors Opened:
I am not an overly religious person, I do meditate and I believe there is a force which I don’t fully understand at work in the world. However, I don’t attend church or prescribe to any set religion. This said, the serendipity that has occurred once we fully committed to our business is mind-boggling. It can’t be explained in earthly terms.
The Jobs quote could not be truer. There are countless examples of things that have occurred, and continue to occur, which are momentum-builders for our business. Dozens of things — from the way that we met our first advisors, to how we found our lead seed-stage investor — to the sale and liquidation of business assets as a driver of much needed cash-flow. The list goes on, and on. It seems to me that once you are all in, solutions begin to appear to your business problems. You just need to be aware of what’s in front of you and search for them, and they will come. Always. Trusting that doors will open, that you cannot yet see, is a critical component to success. It is my belief that somehow the universe knows if you’re all in, it knows if you really need the path forward, and if you do — it delivers.
As I sit back and think about the last few years it becomes evident to me, 100% commitment is a prerequisite to any success. You need to say fuck it and go all in.
The hard part is that there is always an excuse. It is never the right time to do anything. The timing is never right. There is never enough money. You will never have the perfect team to begin. The product will never be finished. The list goes on, and on, and on. Doubt & excuses will creep in from every angle, to try and get you to stop, to not do it. To not dive in head first to the ocean. But if I am confident of one thing, it’s this.
The key to making it work is understanding these excuses and committing to your dream anyways.
Sure, at Grin, we have a long way to go, and our journey has just begun. However, I do know one thing: I wouldn’t change it for the world. Learning to fly the plane in the air is a lot more exciting than sitting on the ground, waiting to take off.
