This week sucked
and that's okay sometimes
Okay, I’m usually not the negative Nancy type. Giving negativity space in your mind typically allows for more of it to fester. But this week was just a bummer.
One of my best friends that I’ve known since I was barely not peeing in my diaper anymore was supposed to come out to hang in Vegas for a couple days, then I get a text from him while I was recording a podcast episode…
His mom (who was in her mid fifties) was in a terrible car wreck and didn’t make it. Her and his dad were my four year old Sunday school teachers so I’ve known the family for quite some time. This lady was a saint. She had eight kids, and I never saw her lose her temper with any of them.
Needless to say, he wasn’t coming out to Vegas anymore, and I dropped my plans and headed back to where we all grew up to be with the family for a couple of days.
This is where being a startup founder gets sticky. See, the market doesn’t care about what’s happening in your personal life. Things still move right along.
This didn’t change the fact that I had a big pitch coming up to one of the most well known angel investors in Silicon Valley, and I had a deadline to get them all of the necessary light diligence docs as well as complete a brand new pitch deck to their unique specifications.
If there’s anything I’ve learned as a founder, it’s compartmentalization. The ability to pierce through how I’m feeling and objectively tackle the task at hand.
My team and I worked hard and prepped the deck, and we finished it late the night before my pitch. It did NOT go how I had hoped. I still don’t definitively know the results, but my intuition in these things rarely leads me astray.
It was a finishing blow to a rough few days, and then this powerful thought hit me again…
“It happened. Now what?”
Regardless of the f*ckery that occurred, I still have to figure out the path forward. Life isn’t going to wait for you to regroup and lick your wounds. It just keeps going.
Are you going to have bad weeks? Yes. Are unexpected events going to throw you for a loop and make you wish you were shoveling pig shit for a guaranteed hourly wage in the middle of nowhere? Probably.
But it’s in those moments that you get to decide who you’re going to be and where you’re going to end up. Life isn’t a marathon. It’s an ultra marathon.
And the only way to finish one of those things is to dig deep, remember why you’re running to begin with, drink some water, and recommit to the finish line.
Here’s to hoping some of you had a better week than I did and definitely better than the Stafford family. I ask you all to keep them in your thoughts and prayers.
Until next week, ✌️
Your Friend,
Travis