Failure is not a dirty word.

Failure is not a dirty word. It's the right word for this story, but a tough pill to swallow. Writing this has been therapeutic for me. See I've never told this story to anyone, except my wife but my hope is in telling this I can finally put it behind me. I felt ashamed and didn't want to accept it.

Here it goes…I know failure is great and part of the process but at the time it didn't feel that way. And I failed…hard.

In the summer of 2013 I had this amazing idea. I wanted to create a social network for entertainment professionals. A database for the arts where you could post all of your work and coordinate productions all online. Essentially a LinkedIn site but bringing the profile to life…this was 2013 mind you so video content would be infused and so on. I was going to name it…are you ready? TALENTCOMM! (A very creative play on words for Talent/Communications) First mistake…no focus group was used on that.

I spoke with numerous people about TALENTCOMM. I contracted an agency to design the logo and mockups for the site. Spoke with them about what I wanted, user stories, flows, account creation, profile features, etc. At this time I needed legal advice for creating an LLC and negotiating contracts with the agency. I started accruing costs fast.

So now I had the contracts finalized, mockups delivered, and business formed. During this time, I began talking with more people in the entertainment industry to talk about the viability of the product. Yes, I should have done this much earlier in the process (lesson #3,456). I even got to pitch TALENTCOMM to a VC in NYC through a family friend and I didn't get past the login screen. Yes I pitched him the mockups…cringe. Needless to say, it didn't go well. I walked out of his office building, turned right and walked for almost two hours. I made a decision not to give up, and realized I needed a pitch deck and to rebrand this thing.

I hired a marketing agency and we rebranded TALENTCOMM to, wait for it…THE LIME. It was a way for talent to "step into the limelight," we had a snazzy logo that could be used across other mediums, a style guide, corporate identity, and so on. I was ready for the next step. I met a great person there that really helped guide me through this process and whom I keep in touch with today.

?I felt strongly that I needed a prototype. Now hiring the marketing agency came with a cost and development was certainly going to be a large cost and I was running out of money. Still, I felt confident that this was needed. I borrowed money from family to offset the development costs.

I think back now and how I got this far without doing proper research, no board of directors, and no co founders boggles my mind. But I did it. Got the website working, tested it, logged bugs, and made it live. I wanted it to be in beta for a while. I wanted to be able to invite people and I honestly felt people would use it once they logged in…lesson #8,923.

A short time later, I hooked up with a really talented partner that really pushed what THE LIME could be. It was great to have someone else that I could bounce these ideas off of. He brought in a friend and then there were three of us. We made updates to the platform, ability to add job postings, project boards, etc. He worked on getting users to adopt, I focused on the development, and our friend focused on the finances. We researched competitors, applied to incubators, wrote business plans, and explored revenue models.

Oh we had great plans. Hulu and Netflix were getting more main stream and we wanted to launch THELIME.TV where an entertainment professional could post their projects, demo reels, web series, whatever they wanted and users could view just like you do with any streaming device now. We would target casting agents and the like. Our whole goal with THE LIME was to replace the headshot, bring the resume to life, get talent noticed and get work.

#1 lesson learned: Your product is only good if there is a need for it.

Eventually it fizzled out and I found myself bummed, out a bunch of money, and worse having to let the family member who loaned me the money know that it's done. That was 2016. It still stings in 2021 but the lessons learned are ones that I would have never learned if I hadn't jumped in and took a chance.

What started out as wanting to work for myself, to learn how to start a business, create, and build something tuned into a life lesson on how to fail, fail hard, and learn from it. Each finding along the way has shaped me for how I approach work now.

I am sharing this because I know you fail many times on the road to success and more importantly you can learn from your failures. Without failure, you cannot grow. Which is exactly what happened to me.

Failure is not a dirty word.

Sample mockups of how far we took we. All was functional!?