Honoring Success and Learning from Failure

Another example of the accountability would be fast-forward two years, I started Bill in 2006 and now we are in 2008. And just to give some context, it’s something that is personal, my dad passed in September, September 2, 2008. So, you fast forward a few weeks, I’m home, I’ve helped with all the services and we’ve had a wonderful funeral honoring his life, but I’m still pretty emotional about this stuff. And you get the Sequoia deck, which you probably remember seeing back in 2008, and it was all rest in peace, the markets has gone to hell and the hand basket, everybody look for corners, and hide and you read it, and I didn’t like the negative energy, but the facts, I actually couldn’t dispute.

So, I made a decision without the board having to push me on this to say, we’re going to lay off 40% of the people. And then I went to the board, and I talked to the board about it. And they felt like that was the right thing as well. We made sure that employees are taken care of, and we made sure that there were opportunities for employees to really connect on their departure. But that gave us five more months of runway. And when we think about mentorship, this is kind of the hard stuff of leadership. So, we would have been out of money and the business would not be where it is today without that decision. And it’s a painful decision.

And so I think that lesson of accountability, and that the leadership is responsibility, and it’s something that it’s okay to own, even if you’re wrong, just own it. The other thing would be to always be learning – growth mindset. You can’t be a great leader if you don’t have a growth mindset, because every day, it’s different.

And going back to your earlier point about owning your mistakes, I think that actually earns you respect from the people who work for you because it does make you more human, more relatable.

Yeah, one of the things I’ve had the exec team watch is the Brené Brown YouTube video on vulnerability, and I think people forget that it’s okay to be human. It’s not about celebrating only the successes in life. It’s about honoring the success and learning from the failures. And for me, it’s honoring all the work that came forth, all the employees that made it happen, all the customers that made it happen, all the partners, investors, there’s so many people that got us to where we are today. And it’s about honoring their effort, their belief and their confidence in me and the team. And it’s not about celebrating. The celebrating, that’s maybe a moment in time but that’s not something that you do every second.