The Fifth Element: Passion

A few days ago I was pitching Moniker to a business case competition panel and I recounted this story…

"I’ve heard start-ups need four key elements to be successful.

One, a great team. No question, I think Moniker has the best team. From Ivy League scholars to award-winning professionals, the four of us are the best at what we do.

Two, a great idea. We think we’ve got a great idea in open-source luxury and a great partner in Trinity Apparel to make our idea become a reality.

Three, cash. We’ve all been serious savers throughout our working lives and have been able to self-fund to this point, making cash an non-issue to date.

Four, luck. I believe luck is in the eye of the beholder. One person will fall down the stairs, break their leg and lament over their bad luck. Another person will fall down the stairs, break their leg and feel lucky they didn’t break their neck.

So yes, I think we're lucky and have all the key elements in place to be successful."

In reality, I think there’s a missing element from this story, a fifth element.

Passion.

Before I “officially” became an entrepreneur I remember chatting to a young couple, Dan and Garnet, who started up a Web-based focus group business. They were telling me about their business and how they got started at their kitchen table with one computer.

The hours Dan and Garnet put in at their “day jobs” to keep their household running meant they had to spend evenings and weekends at their kitchen table working on their business.

At the time I thought they were crazy. When did they have fun? Weren’t they drained from a day of work already? To put in another eight hours of work before starting the insanity all over again was inconceivable to me.

And yet Dan and Garnet did not look burnt out at all. In fact, they were energetic and glowing with pride talking about their business, which was just beginning to take flight.

I now know I was looking into the faces of people with a true passion. And this story has now become my reality.

I work a day job to help keep the household running, and when I arrive home I start my second day of work. Weekends are not spent going to movies, Sunday afternoons are not spent on coffee dates with friends.

Nope, I’m at my kitchen table with my computer working on Moniker.

To prove the point, here I am, at 11 pm on a Saturday night. My husband is out with friends and I’m at home working.

Everyone thought I was crazy to turn down a fun night out on the town.

That’s exactly what I used to think...until I found my passion.


NB: Dan and Garnet's hard work and dedication did pay off. It's been eight years since that fateful conversation and Dan and Garnet now run a wildly successful business called iTracks.

I know they have office space now, but I'll bet they can still be found at their kitchen table most nights, working.

(War Stories) Money isn't everything, but... (November 2006)

No, money isn’t everything. Except when you’re trying to start up a new business.

Unfortunately, my money is in short supply. Most of what I’ve earned, I’ve spent on education. I have a love for learning, and, I must admit, expensive tastes in that regard. I also have no interest in owning “stuff”; a lifestyle of elegant poverty suits me quite happily. 

And then there’s the apartment in New Zealand, an ongoing albatross that hangs around my neck. An unusual investment move on my part. When I moved to New Zealand a few years ago to be closer to my kiwi girlfriend, an apartment seemed like a good investment. I was tired of paying rent into other people’s pocketbooks, and my job inside an international management consultancy was lucrative. It was time to become an investor.

Or so I thought. Actually, it was a terrible time to invest in the New Zealand housing market. The shelf of self-help psychology I consulted in the aftermath of my messy break-up with the kiwi girl helped me to understand that this particular investment was “motivated by own need to be convinced that I really wanted to be here [New Zealand], rather than any appreciation of investment potential.” 

(Oh, the poetry we can compose when we’re heart-broken!)

Rather than despair over my financial woes, I’ve resolved to turn this experience into a positive. (Anthony Robbins would be so proud.) I’m going to learn from this mistake and become much, much more savvy about where I put my money. Yes, sir. 

In search of inspiration, I googled ‘famous bankruptcies’, hoping to find evidence that, in fact, there is hope for me. Sure enough, I quickly stumbled across rentafterbankruptcy.com, an American site devoted to – aha! – chronicling the lives of “Famous People Who Filed Bankruptcy And Became Successful”. (Actually, I suspect it’s a site devoted to selling advertising space for bankruptcy advisors.) Myself, I’m not sure what it means to ‘become successful’ – I suppose it means to accomplish what you set out to do. But on this site, I think it simply means “people who went broke, then made a lot of money.”

Here’s their list:

1. Henry Ford – started two car companies – both went bust – before creating the successful Ford Motor Company. (I wonder what he called his previous two car companies.)

2. Henry Heinz – his condiment company went bust, but then he came up with ketchup. One has to wonder what his failed condiments tasted like. Mmm…fish oil. (Condiment, a funny-sounding word, comes from the Latin condire, which means to pickle.) 

3. Mark Twain – lost all his money investing in an invention called the Paige Compositor (an early typewriter), then made it back on the European lecture circuit. That sounds fun.

4. P.T. Barnum – failed in various ventures until starting up “The Greatest Show On Earth”. So, if all else fails, I can join the circus.

5. Donald Trump – who’s that? 

So, that’s comforting. In the history of American business, 5 people have recovered from bankruptcy to achieve subsequent financial success. And two of them were named Henry. 

Incidentally, no sign of European equivalents. I can only suppose that either (a) EU bankruptcy advisors aren’t as web-savvy as their American counterparts, or (b) there are no European equivalents. And I didn’t bother to survey Japan, since most of their bankruptcies end in ritual suicide. (Sorry, I should retract that last statement. It’s a bit too macabre to be amusing – even if it’s true.) 

But seriously, I’m pretty much starting from zero here, money-wise. That’s going to constrain my start-up options somewhat. I need to find a venture that requires little upfront investment – say, a new airline?