In this episode, Gresham Harkless reflects on the often-overlooked failures and lessons learned in the entrepreneurship journey.
He shares his experience starting an editing business called Exemplary Editing while transitioning from college to a master’s program.
Gresham emphasizes the importance of learning from mistakes and adapting.
Furthermore, he highlights the importance of understanding oneself as an entrepreneur, learning from mistakes, and recognizing failures as opportunities for growth.
Links:
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Transcription:
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Gresham Harkless Teaser 00:00
Often when we hear about people that are successful, we don't hear about those losses. We don't hear about the losing.
We don't hear about the things that didn't go right. We hear more about those wins and I think that there's a big reason for that.
There's a lot of belief in the Horatio Alger story of being able to pull yourself by the bootstraps, do things by on your own or by yourself.
You don't hear about the fails or the missed attempts. There's a Michael Jordan quote where he says he doesn't succeed because he succeeds, he succeeds because he's missed so many shots and he's failed.
Intro 00:45
Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview?
If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.
Gresham Harkless 01:01
Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. This is episode number 2247 of the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode where I want to talk about something that doesn't get enough limelight.
Of course, when I'm interviewing entrepreneurs and business owners, you're hearing about all the successful things that they do, or the things that they've accomplished.
And by all means, my goal is really to shine them in the best light, hear a little bit more about what has led them to the success that they've had, things that they learned, things that they haven't learned.
[restrict paid=”true”]
So for this special episode, I want to talk a little bit more about what I called exemplary editing.
Exemplary editing was the editing business that I started actually as I was kind of graduating college going into my master's program I eventually found out about.
So I knew that I probably wanted to start a business at that time. I was an English major.
So decided to say, hey, let me take my superpowers and start an editing business. What proceeded to happen from there was not exactly what I wanted to happen.
And one of the big things that I wanted to kind of do and talk about that a little bit more today is because often when we hear about people that are successful, we don't hear about those losses.
We don't hear about the losing. We don't hear about the things that didn't go right. We hear more about those wins.
And I think that there's a big reason for that. There's a lot of kind of belief in the Horatio Alger story of being able to pull yourself by the bootstraps, do things on your own and by yourself.
You don't hear about the fails or the missed attempts. There's a Michael Jordan quote where he says, he doesn't succeed because he succeeds, he succeeds because he's missed so many shots and he's failed.
And one of my misses was exemplary editing. So check out episode number 1500 of the I AM CEO Podcast. I have something I call a fail wall.
On this fail wall, a lot of quotes related to failure, why and how it is actually an important part of business.
And I bring up this a lot of times when I am talking about failure. There's a story around Sarah Blakely that we also have in our Netflix for Business, at least a breakdown of what she talked about where she was high-fived by her dad because he used to celebrate her failures as a kid, the things that didn't go right, the things that didn't go the way that they wanted to go.
So with exemplary editing, like I mentioned, I realized that I wanted to start a business. I wanted to be in entrepreneurship.
Prior to that, I started a nonprofit basically with one of my buddies from high school called Minute Character Virginia. He was in an organization called Minute Character.
So we basically joined forces and started that. That didn't really go as well as I hoped it would go either.
It was very ambitious, the aims that we had for that organization. And we did eventually give away some scholarships.
We got a youth venture grant, which was pretty awesome to get at a young age. I think we were 19 or so.
Might have been 18, 19, 17, something around that age where we were able to kind of get that youth venture grant.
We put that youth venture grant to set up the organization, but we eventually just were able to provide some scholarships to some young men that would actually go to college.
So super awesome that we got to do that. But I had a little bit of entrepreneurial experience. If you rewind back, I can tell you a little bit more about, or you check out some of the episodes about like how I feel like I had that entrepreneurial itch at a young age.
So I knew that I wanted to start this editing business. When I say editing, I mean literally if there's papers that were written, we would edit it for grammar, punctuation any of those things that are of course important.
I really researched around doing that. I looked at potentially doing something related to, books, things like that.
But because I was in school, I figured that there would be a lot of papers that I can help out with.
So, I remember it really didn't start the way that I wanted it to start, and it also kind of reminded me of like who you are, what your superpower is, what you feel like you're best set up to do.
And I remember when I announced that I was starting the business, I sent out an email.
That email was basically announcing the start of the business and all the things that we would do.
And by we, I mean me, because I was going to be the one that was literally editing these papers figured out pricing I had actually done a really long I won't say it's thorough.
But it was a long business plan as well, too so I did all the things that you were supposed to do so I go and I send out this email.
I think I BCC everybody through the email, say, hey, I'm starting my business. We're going to do X, Y, and Z, and A, B, and C. And I hit send, right?
So I send this out and almost immediately, I go through and read the email that I sent. And what do I find?
Spelling errors. So to say it was a flop, I literally felt like my heart sunk. Like, it's like, who would start an editing business and not even edit the things that they do.
So I know now that I'm probably a lot better writer, a lot more of a creative than somebody
that, is going to check out the box and make sure you do all those things.
But that's why I now know we have teams and why it's so important to kind of put those things in place.
So needless to say, I was probably a lot more of the visionary than I was the person that was actually going to be doing the editing.
But you learn that about yourself as you go through life. And it wasn't a huge flop, but it was definitely embarrassing.
But to save grace, after I found out, I think the next day, I sent an email after that and I said, hey, this is where the marketing genius might have came from.
If you did not catch the errors in the email that I sent, then you might need my services.
So it is to say, didn't generate a lot of business, didn't drum up a ton of business, but I did, hopefully, create a marketing opportunity from a flub that I had from doing that.
So, I bring all that up to say, like, this is a lot of times how business and entrepreneurship goes.
That's somewhat of a silly example. It's a true example and it's something that I was not happy with and I still hold true.
I actually have it on my fail wall, exemplary editing or EX editing largely for that reason.
Had a really cool logo that actually was created by, I think, the intern that I worked with at the Environmental Protection Agency when I did it.
I was super excited about it, but it just never really took off how I wanted it to take off.
And I experimented with a lot of different ways of creating a whole website that had a database where you could upload the files and you could get the files created.
So I had that visionary in me. I didn't really have the execution as much as I've learned in the US, the more of the integrator.
But the point that I really wanted to bring home is that I learned a lot throughout that process and probably the most powerful thing that you learn from building a business, whether it goes well or it doesn't go well, is you learn a lot about yourself.
So that's the biggest thing that I really want you to kind of take away is that as you have these things that don't go the way that we want them to go, whether they're within our business or frankly within our life, you can learn a lot about who you are and what you're kind of built to do.
You might find out strengths, weaknesses, things that are exciting or not exciting, but at the end of the day, it is a learning experience.
As much as you're building your business, you're also building yourself. So that's one of the big things that I learned.
Second thing I learned is really being kind of present to the opportunities that are in front of you.
Failure is one of those opportunities. Mistakes are those things. They're not the end all be all.
They're not the speed bump, the road, well, really the roadblock. They're more of a speed bump, potentially.
So there's something that you can kind of learn from and continue to kind of iterate and get better.
So many times when we, and I hear this all the time, when you do reach some type of turbulence, setback, pothole, whatever it might be, we often can throw in the towel because we think we're not cut out for it.
I think that that has a lot to do with, for one, not understanding the true journey of entrepreneurship and frankly, the true journey of success for the people that have reached whatever success they've achieved throughout entrepreneurship is they do make those mistakes.
They do do those things wrong. And there's not enough information, not enough, I guess, media coverage or, light shined on the failures that people have.
And I think that's because it honestly feels terrible when it happens. When I sent out that email and I found out there were spelling mistakes in the email, I sent to try to get people to pay me for the spelling mistakes.
It was one of the most frustrating times that I've had in my life, definitely at that time, because I feel like I was taking a leap and I completely flubbed. I fell flat on my face.
So know that there's lessons that can kind of come from that. So that's the second big takeaway that you wanna have from those mistakes and things that you kind of go through.
But the third thing that I think is probably something that there's not enough information about, but I started to adjust and change is that you want to create a scenario where you can create an MVP.
Now, prior to, or actually when that happened, I had not read the Lean Startup. The Lean startup wasn't even written.
But the whole concept of that, if you're going to fail, fail at a very quick rate so that you can continue to iterate, but also fail in a way that it is not going to cost you everything.
And I think that's one of the big misconceptions around entrepreneurship is that you literally have to Annie up, put everything on black or everything on red or whatever it might be that your taste is.
The bottom line is that you can very quickly and easily create small tests to be able to see how successful you'll be.
That could be everything as simple as if I had sent out that email to just maybe family and friends, or just maybe just a few friends, maybe 10 people instead of my whole list of people that I had as email, and my email address, maybe that would have been different.
If I, instead of having written a full page, 20, 30 page business plan, I just wrote a one page business plan and iterated from there, then maybe that would have been different.
So it's just understanding like how you can minimize the risk in the steps that you're taking.
And I think that there's a lot more information related to that than there had been at that time.
We're talking maybe almost 15 years or so when I started this. But once you start to understand those 3 big things, I think that's just going to increase your likelihood of success.
I think it really shines light on the true journey of entrepreneurship and you too can kind of take those lumps, those things that happen and just get better from it.
So I feel like I'm a better entrepreneur and business owner as a result of that. Had I not gone through those experiences, had I had this perception that perfection was the only way to be successful, then I would have pretty much threw in the towel years and years ago.
So that's some of the things that I learned. That's one of my big flubs. That's why failure is not always final.
So hopefully that's helpful for you. If you've had some mistakes, we'd love to hear about them.
If you also are going through the process and maybe just need to talk more about that. Definitely, feel free to reach out to us. Know that it is a journey. Know that it is not a straight line.
I always say success is much more like a plate of spaghetti. So enjoy the process as much as you can and learn from it because it will definitely be a great teacher.
So this is a Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
Outro 13:06
Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community.
Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating.
This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening. Thanks for watching!
00:00 - 00:30
Gresham Harkless: Often when we hear about people that are successful, we don't hear about those losses. We don't hear about the losing. We don't hear about the things that didn't go right. We hear more about those wins and I think that there's a big reason for that. There's a lot of belief in the Horatio Algar story of being able to pull yourself by the bootstraps, do things by, you know, on your own or by yourself. You don't hear about the fails or the missed attempts. There's a Michael Jordan quote where he says he doesn't succeed because he succeeds,
00:30 - 00:33
Gresham Harkless: he succeeds because he's missed so many shots and he's failed.
00:45 - 01:00
Intro: And founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the IMCEO Podcast.
01:01 - 01:28
Gresham Harkless: Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the IMCEO podcast. This is episode number 2247 of the I am CEO podcast. And this is a special episode where I want to talk about something that doesn't get enough limelight. Of course, when I'm interviewing entrepreneurs and business owners, you're hearing about all the successful things that they do, or the things that they've accomplished. And by all means, my goal is really to shine them in the best light, hear a little bit more about what has led them to the success that they've had, things that they learned, things that
01:28 - 02:02
Gresham Harkless: they haven't learned. So for this special episode, I want to talk a little bit more about what I called exemplary editing. Exemplary editing was the editing business that I started actually as I was kind of graduating college going into my master's program I eventually found out about. So I knew that I probably wanted to start a business at that time. I was an English major. So decided to say, hey, let me take my superpowers and start an editing business. What proceeded to happen from there was not exactly what I wanted to happen. And 1 of the
02:02 - 02:34
Gresham Harkless: big things that I wanted to kind of do and talk about that a little bit more today is because often when we hear about people that are successful, we don't hear about those losses. We don't hear about the losing. We don't hear about the things that didn't go right. We hear more about those wins. And I think that there's a big reason for that. There's a lot of kind of belief in the Horatio Algar story of being able to pull yourself by the bootstraps, do things on your own and by yourself. You don't hear about the
02:34 - 03:14
Gresham Harkless: fails or the missed attempts. There's a Michael Jordan quote where he says, he doesn't succeed because he succeeds, he succeeds because he's missed so many shots and he's failed. And 1 of my misses was exemplary editing. So check out episode number 1500 of the IMCO podcast. I have something I call a fail wall. On this fail wall, a lot of quotes related to failure, why and how it is actually an important part of business. And I bring up this a lot of times when I am talking about failure. There's a story around Sarah Blakely that we
03:14 - 03:44
Gresham Harkless: also have in our Netflix for Business, at least a breakdown of what she talked about where she was high-fived by her dad because he used to celebrate her failures as a kid, the things that didn't go right, the things that didn't go the way that they wanted to go. So with exemplary editing, like I mentioned, I realized that I wanted to start a business. I wanted to be in entrepreneurship. Prior to that, I started a nonprofit basically with 1 of my buddies from high school called Minute Character Virginia. He was in an organization called Minute Character.
03:44 - 04:16
Gresham Harkless: So we basically joined forces and started that. That didn't really go as well as I hoped it would go either. It was very ambitious, the aims that we had for that organization. And we did eventually give away some scholarships. We got a youth venture grant, which was pretty awesome to get at a young age. I think we were 19 or so. Might have been 18, 19, 17, something around that age where we were able to kind of get that youth venture grant. We put that youth venture grant to set up the organization, but we eventually just
04:16 - 04:45
Gresham Harkless: were able to provide some scholarships to some young men that would actually go to college. So super awesome that we got to do that. But I had a little bit of entrepreneurial experience. If you rewind back, I can tell you a little bit more about, or you check out some of the episodes about like how I feel like I had that entrepreneurial itch at a young age. So I knew that I wanted to start this editing business. When I say editing, I mean literally if there's papers that were written, we would edit it for grammar, punctuation,
04:46 - 05:19
Gresham Harkless: you know, any of those things that are of course important. I really researched around doing that. I looked at potentially doing something related to, you know, books, things like that. But because I was in school, I figured that there would be a lot of papers that I can help out with. So, I remember it really didn't start the way that I wanted it to start, and it also kind of reminded me of like who you are, what your superpower is, what you feel like you're best set up to do. And I remember when I announced that
05:19 - 05:47
Gresham Harkless: I was starting the business, I sent out an email. That email was basically announcing the start of the business and all the things that we would do. And by we, I mean me, because I was going to be the 1 that was literally editing these papers figured out pricing I had actually done a really long I won't say it's thorough But it was a long business plan as well, too So I did all the things that you were supposed to do So I go and I send out this email. I think I BCC everybody through the
05:47 - 06:23
Gresham Harkless: email, say, hey, I'm starting my business. We're going to do X, Y, and Z, and A, B, and C. And I hit send, right? So I send this out and almost immediately, I go through and read the email that I sent. And what do I find? Spelling errors. So to say it was a flop, I literally felt like my heart sunk. Like, it's like, who would start an editing business and not even edit the things that they do. So I know now that I'm probably a lot better writer, a lot more of a creative than somebody
06:23 - 06:49
Gresham Harkless: that, is going to check out the box and make sure you do all those things. But that's why I now know we have teams and why it's so important to kind of put those things in place. So needless to say, I was probably a lot more of the visionary than I was the person that was actually going to be doing the editing. But you learn that about yourself as you go through life. And it wasn't a huge flop, but it was definitely embarrassing. But to save grace, after I found out, I think the next day, I
06:49 - 07:19
Gresham Harkless: sent an email after that and I said, hey, this is where the marketing genius might have came from. If you did not catch the errors in the email that I sent, then you might need my services. So it is to say, didn't generate a lot of business, didn't drum up a ton of business, but I did, you know, hopefully, you know, create a marketing opportunity from a flub that I had from doing that. So, I bring all that up to say, like, this is a lot of times how business and entrepreneurship goes. That's somewhat of a
07:19 - 07:51
Gresham Harkless: silly example. It's a true example and it's something that I was not happy with and I still hold true. I actually have it on my fail wall, exemplary editing or EX editing largely for that reason. Had a really cool logo that actually was created by, I think, the intern that I worked with at the Environmental Protection Agency when I did it. I was super excited about it, but it just never really took off how I wanted it to take off. And I experimented with a lot of different ways of creating a whole website that had a
07:51 - 08:20
Gresham Harkless: database where you could upload the files and you could get the files created. So I had that visionary in me. I didn't really have the execution as much as I've learned in the US, the more of the integrator. But the point that I really wanted to bring home is that I learned a lot throughout that process and probably the most powerful thing that you learn from building a business, whether it goes well or it doesn't go well, is you learn a lot about yourself. So that's the biggest thing that I really want you to kind of
08:20 - 08:47
Gresham Harkless: take away is that as you have these things that don't go the way that we want them to go, whether they're within our business or frankly within our life, you can learn a lot about who you are and what you're kind of built to do. You might find out strengths, weaknesses, things that are exciting or not exciting, but at the end of the day, it is a learning experience. As much as you're building your business, you're also building yourself. So that's 1 of the big things that I learned. Second thing I learned is really being kind
08:47 - 09:21
Gresham Harkless: of present to the opportunities that are in front of you. Failure is 1 of those opportunities. Mistakes are those things. They're not the end all be all. They're not the speed bump, the road, well, really the roadblock. They're more of a speed bump, potentially. So there's something that you can kind of learn from and continue to kind of iterate and get better. So many times when we, and I hear this all the time, when you do reach some type of turbulence, setback, pothole, whatever it might be, we often can throw in the towel because we think
09:21 - 09:54
Gresham Harkless: we're not cut out for it. I think that that has a lot to do with, for 1, not understanding the true journey of entrepreneurship and frankly, the true journey of success for the people that have reached whatever success they've achieved throughout entrepreneurship is they do make those mistakes. They do do those things wrong. And there's not enough information, not enough, I guess, media coverage or, you know, light shined on the failures that people have. And I think that's because it honestly feels terrible when it happens. When I sent out that email and I found out there
09:54 - 10:26
Gresham Harkless: were spelling mistakes in the email, I sent to try to get people to pay me for the spelling mistakes. It was 1 of the most frustrating times that I've had in my life, definitely at that time, because I feel like I was taking a leap and I completely, you know, flubbed. I fell flat on my face. So know that there's lessons that can kind of come from that. So that's the second big takeaway that you wanna have from those mistakes and things that you kind of go through. But the third thing that I think is probably
10:27 - 11:01
Gresham Harkless: something that there's not enough information about, but I started to adjust and change is that you want to create a scenario where you can create an MVP. Now, prior to, or actually when that happened, I had not read the Lean Startup. The Lean startup wasn't even written. But the whole concept of that, if you're going to fail, fail at a very quick rate so that you can continue to iterate, but also fail in a way that it is not going to cost you everything. And I think that's 1 of the big misconceptions around entrepreneurship is that
11:01 - 11:35
Gresham Harkless: you literally have to Annie up, put everything on black or everything on red or whatever it might be that your taste is. The bottom line is that you can very quickly and easily Create small tests to be able to see how successful you'll be. That could be everything as simple as if I had sent out that email to just maybe family and friends, or just maybe just a few friends, maybe 10 people instead of my whole list of people that I had as email, and my email address, maybe that would have been different. If I, instead
11:35 - 12:08
Gresham Harkless: of having written a full page, 20, 30 page business plan, I just wrote a 1 page business plan and iterated from there, then maybe that would have been different. So it's just understanding like how you can minimize the risk in the steps that you're taking. And I think that there's a lot more information related to that than there had been at that time. We're talking maybe almost 15 years or so when I started this. But once you start to understand those 3 big things, I think that's just going to increase your likelihood of success. I think
12:08 - 12:38
Gresham Harkless: it really shines light on the true journey of entrepreneurship and you too can kind of take those lumps, those things that happen and just get better from it. So I feel like I'm a better entrepreneur and business owner as a result of that. Had I not gone through those experiences, had I had this perception that perfection was the only way to be successful, then I would have pretty much threw in the towel years and years ago. So that's some of the things that I learned. That's 1 of my big flubs. That's why failure is not always
12:38 - 13:04
Gresham Harkless: final. So hopefully that's helpful for you. If you've had some mistakes, we'd love to hear about them. If you also are going through the process and maybe just need to talk more about that. Definitely, you know, feel free to reach out to us. Know that it is a journey. Know that it is not a straight line. I always say success is much more like a plate of spaghetti. So enjoy the process as much as you can and learn from it because it will definitely be a great teacher. So this is a grad signing out. I hope
13:04 - 13:06
Gresham Harkless: you have a phenomenal rest of the day.
13:06 - 13:46
Intro: Thank you for listening to the I am CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at imceo.co. I am CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a five-star rating. This has been the I Am CEO podcast with Gresham Harkness Jr. Thank you for listening. Thanks for watching!
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