There’s a particular piece of my entrepreneurial journey that I want to share with you. Some of you may know this. Many won’t. This isn’t about a great achievement or an award-winning project.
In fact, it was without a doubt the toughest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. An epic failure. But it brought with it some of my biggest lessons.
The story begins about 12 years ago. I stumbled into the events industry. It was never part of my plan or a career path I’d thought about. At the time I was running a surf school & started running events as a side hustle. Those events close to my heart: surf, skate, BMX & FMX, raising money for a non-profit I really believed in, SurfAid International.
I loved the feeling of watching something come together, knowing that my blood, sweat & tears had transformed an idea into reality. The creative process, the geeky systems & logistics, the buzz of achieving the seemingly impossible, I loved it all. And it turned out I was pretty good at it.
The events grew in size, as did the workload. And so they moved from side hustle to full-time business. We transitioned into music festivals and started building an event that incorporated everything I was passionate about sustainability, surf, folk/roots/reggae music & good local food.
Everything was self-taught. There were so many lessons along the way, but with every event, our experience & knowledge expanded & the festival became more successful.
At that point, our brand messaging was consistent. We knew what our values were and we stuck to them. We’d built a loyal following who had fallen in love with our boutique festival.
We decided it was time to grow. We were approached by investors, VCT’s & business mentors. All keen to come on board and play a role in our business growth.
Here’s where we stuffed up. The decision to grow was not, in itself, the mistake. The mistake was that we stopped listening to our instincts. We started listening to everyone else’s opinions. How big the event should be, who should be on the lineup, what sponsors to pitch to.
Suddenly we were swept up in it all, and producing an event that was so far from what we initially imagined. Instead of leaning into who we were as a brand, we stepped away from it. We shrank.
I remember sitting in a meeting one day, with the event crew, looking around the room thinking ‘I don’t even know half these people. They don’t know me. I’m working on an event I don’t even recognise and building something that doesn’t resonate with our brand whatsoever’. We’d gone from running award-winning boutique eco surf music festivals to producing 15,000 capacity shows with commercial lineups & massive scale infrastructure that was about as far away from ‘intimate’ as you could get.
It felt like a runaway train. Like we were too far down the track to do anything but push on.
And just like a runaway train, it eventually derailed and crashed spectacularly. Not only did we have to cancel the new event, but it wiped out our original festival (and 5 years of blood, sweat and tears) with it.
It quickly became the worst case scenario for any entrepreneur.
We lost everything. Our jobs, our home, and everything we had invested into the business. But we weren’t the only ones who were impacted. Employees (who had become really good friends) suddenly had no work. Contractors & suppliers were left high and dry. Investors (some VCT’s & angel investors, some friends & family) lost all their money.
Four years on, it still hurts like hell (and I’m still working my ass off to fix those mistakes ).
Sure, it would be simplistic to say that it all boiled down to not listening to our instincts & sticking to our brand values. But looking back, I can see where the first cracks appeared.
And in the work I do now, supporting entrepreneurs & start-ups to build their brands, I can see just how valuable it is to know your brand inside out. I don’t doubt that if we’d had this clarity (and stuck to our guns) we never would have made those mistakes.
This is what I know for sure
If you’re running your own business, you need to have clarity around who you are and what you do. Because at some point on your journey, this will be tested. In fact, it will be tested again and again.
Sometimes the consequences of not having that clarity will impact your bottom line; you’ll struggle with sales because your dream customers/clients aren’t finding you.
Sometimes it will impact your confidence, and you’ll find yourself questioning whether you’re ever going to ‘make it’.
And sometimes, you’ll be tested by having to make super important decisions that have the potential to realise or ruin your business dreams.
Entrepreneurship is one of the toughest, exciting and rewarding adventures you’ll ever go on.
And brand clarity is like having a compass & a map.