Welcome! I'm Erica Douglass. I am committed to teaching you how to build an inspired, successful business. I would love to hear your opinions and help you grow your business. If you are motivated to change the world and want to learn from my successes (and failures!), please subscribe and join my community!
Difficult things to admit…
I’ve been struggling a lot lately. I’ve been angry about a lot of things. Over in the work field, mostly, which is what I’ll blog about here…but it applies in a similar way to my personal life as well.
As I look around the office here, I realize I am not where I want to be in life. Somewhere inside of me, I know Simpli can be an amazingly successful company. That’s what attracts customers and employees to us. It’s what people see in me that makes the difference between selecting Simpli as their hosting provider and selecting another (faceless) hosting provider. You also know that I’ve done something amazing and will continue to do amazing things. That’s why you read my blog.
I have a confession to make: Simpli barely breaks even every month. I know we have lots of reasons why that’s the case, but they all boil down to something simple. You see, I’ve been running this business the wrong way. The reason the business isn’t massively profitable is because I actually fear running a successful business.
“What?” you might be saying right now. “But you already run a successful business!” Yeah, I do. And I’ve struggled with that for a long time. You see, I never intended Simpli to be a $1M/year business. I intended it to be something fun that made me some extra money on the side while I did web design and programming and whatever else floated my boat. Except that word got out that Simpli was doing something different — that we were putting our customers first and not treating people like numbers. With basically $0 invested in marketing, we grew and grew and grew. Friends referred friends who referred friends. In 2004 I gave up consulting and went into this full-time.
You may have already known most of that story. I’ve said it a lot. But here’s what you don’t know. During that entire time, and still to this day, I engage in a very personal debate about whether I deserve all this. The crux of the matter is that I feel like I don’t deserve to be successful. (This is really difficult to even type…sigh.) Therefore, little pieces of Simpli fall apart. Those pieces are focused around the money aspect of Simpli: Our billing system sucks. Our website is difficult to order from. We don’t bill most of our customers properly, even when the debt from our upstream providers piles up and we’re not able to make the ends meet. And even when my employees get frustrated with me because they work long hours and because we can’t afford to hire new people. They’re all symptoms of the same problem: I’m afraid.
Let me tell you what my greatest fear is. My greatest fear is that all of our customers leave and I am left dirt poor, with no money (I have personal debt too, because I pay myself this ridiculously low salary from Simpli) and no place to live and I’ll have to go back to Indiana and face my parents, who really didn’t believe I could do this in the first place, and see some look in my mom’s eyes that said “I told you so, Erica. I told you you wouldn’t make it.” I have nightmares about this.
I get angry about my personal financial situation and about Simpli’s. And throughout all that, I battle constantly with which upstream provider bills to pay and which personal expenses to pay. All of this could be solved by billing our customers properly, getting investors, or making better hires. Instead, I filled my days with busywork (until my staff forced me to hire an office manager) or read blogs instead of doing things that really mattered to myself or my company.
I have to face reality before I throw either myself or my company off a cliff. I’m writing this because I want you to understand that the life of a CEO is not all glitz and glory. Even CEOs of $100 million+ companies have to get over fears, and I can tell you that those fears are multiplied in an intense way because the livelihood of other grown adults depend on the decisions you make. This is a big reason why companies tend to innovate less as they grow larger. Put simply, the people at the top are afraid. They’re afraid of alienating current customers or of losing stock values. And some of them, I think, have fears like mine. They’re simply paralyzed because they’re afraid it will all melt away someday…especially if they build the companies themselves, or like me, they’re afraid to really take the reins and run with what they’ve built. Why? Because what if it fails?
I am coming out on this blog and stating that I have this fear. It needs to be said. More CEOs need to act like human beings. We need to admit that we all have fears and nightmares and days when we think life or work is going to completely fall apart and we’ll wake up and realize that our businesses were just some cosmic joke and that we really have nothing. Those days suck. Let’s communicate about that.
What am I going to do about it? The same thing anyone with fear needs to do…get over it! I can no longer manage this company from a position of fear. I can’t manage it based on what we have and don’t have today. I must manage it based on where I see it in the future. I must create an amazing company on paper and then work backwards from that to where we are today. I cannot manage it based on hiring employees to fill gaps we have today. I must hire employees to fill the positions we need to grow and be profitable tomorrow, based on my vision for a highly successful future for both myself and Simpli.
Overall, I like being a CEO. But it is not easy. Each decision I make regarding my business affects hundreds of people. If I make a mistake, or say something wrong, I must be humble and apologize. But the reverse also applies. When I do something right, or my employees or customers do something amazing, I have to be the first one up there acknowledging it and thanking them.
I have a piece of paper on my bathroom mirror at home that says “Just say THANK YOU!” So…thank you to my customers, employees, and friends…and thank you to those who used to be customers or employees, too. I am grateful for all of you, and I promise you that I will lose this fear and lead Simpli from here on out. I will create a picture of where Simpli should be and focus all my effort there…and you will be part of a remarkable change from a little homegrown side project (circa 2001) to a $1 million per year revenue, successful business in 2007. I owe it to you to be the successful visionary you all see in me. I will make my dreams come true.
P.S. Simpli now has a blog at http://simpliblog.com — you can keep track of corporate happenings over there.
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10 Responses to “Difficult things to admit…”
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Of course you are afraid! We’re all afraid. I’ll give you a hint… it’s not really failure you are afraid of, it’s not being in control. (Same thing I’m afraid of, but it took me a long time to figure it out.) I’ve seen evidence of this in your business and personal life. If you fail because you tried and couldn’t make it happen, then you aren’t in control. If you fail because you didn’t give it everything you had, then you were still in control. So you’d rather fail and maintain an illusion of control than to try and fail. The funny part is, you still aren’t in control, because you let your fear control you. It’s some weird circular logic shit to get your mind around, but it’s true for most people. So go out there REALLY be in control, don’t let fear push you around.
I’m considering starting a company, but if I wasn’t scared, I would have started it a long time ago.
You should be proud of your company, and everything you have done so far.
Erica — you’ve done an excellent job thus far. There may be some areas of improvement, to be sure, but generally I’ve only heard positive comments. Continue your work. I’d love to speak with you as well, at some point, if you can find the time. You’ve got my cell in your system if you want to simply discuss.
— Philippe, ISU
I have a similiar fear. It’s the reason I’ve been so angry with myself lately. There have been a lot of things that have happened outside of my control in the past 10 years (well, most of my life) but there have been a lot of things that were in my control that I was too afraid to grab the reigns and move forward with. It’s one of the things I’ve been struggling to change in my life… it’s the foundation of why I’m going to school… to prove to myself that I can do something… and succeed. I know that my life is mine and that I can do anything with it… it’s just hard acting on that knowledge.
You’ve managed to do a lot and I hope you can give yourself credit for that while acknowledging the weaknesses you’ve been brave enough to state publically.
Not long after Dogster hit break even, I realized that while running a so-so business is easy, running a succesful business is hard. I had no idea how little pressure I felt when I was losing a little of my money each month … I was supposed to be failing. Once we proved it really worked, the pressure was /huge/ in my mind to not fritter that. All decisions became much more important. I’ve very glad I’ve had two firm partners in this whole thing because that allows any one of us to freak out and lose faith, yet be caught and re-emboldended by the other two.
You’re already a giant success in our books. Go for it!
Erica,
This is a fantastic post. I’ve always found (as you have) that the fear you try to deny is far more paralyzing than the fear you confront in the open. I admire your courage and candor, and wish you the best.
I always tell people I know who bootstrapped their ventures how much I admire them–I’ve always been a “raise VC” kind of guy, and while that has a lot of issues, I guaratee you that it is an easier road to hoe.
By the way Erica, I love your thoughtfulness. If you’re interested, the intellectual discussion society that Ben Casnocha and I started, the Silicon Valey Junto (http://bigben.blogs.com/junto/who.html), is having a lunch meeting on 12/14 in Palo Alto.
We’ll be talking about the importance of love in business and our lives. I think you’d enjoy it, and I’d be delighted to have you attend as our invited guest.
hi Erica,
your honesty is truly heartwarming. I especially relate to it as I am in somewhat similar position with my web design and development company (losing money and wondering what the heck to do about it). I would suggest to you (in the spirit of “take what you like and leave the rest”) to look at whether running a big hosting company is really your passion. I know for myself that running a web design and development business is NOT my passion. Is it a wonder then that I have trouble attracting customers or charging fairly for my services? Of course not. MY truth is that I want out, that I was made to do something different, that God wants us all to have a good time and that how we know that we are really in tune with universal energy and living deeply is when we experience that joy. There would be nothing wrong if you decided to exit the business, surely there are people for whom running a hosting company WOULD be their passion. It would just have to done with integrity towards your customers and employees. I am currently working to figure this out and you are welcome to call me for support or encouragement..
Marc
Hi Erica,
Anonymous thought from the ether: Maybe you don’t have to deserve happiness, you just have to want it.
The next question is, “What makes you happy?” And how do you define success? Trite, yes. Sorry about that. But assuming you do want to be happy, screw deserving it. =)
Fear of success held me back for years… :). I’m glad you’ve realized this and welcoming success into your life!
EN