Patience, Patience, Patience…

I follow someone in the business world by the name of Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary is a Rockstar in the world of business and entrepreneurship, and while I would consider some of these viewpoints a bit off, there are quite a few that I have personally experienced ring true. The main one: patience, patience, patience…

I remember my first field day when I was about 6 years old. It was time for the 100-yard dash and as I lined up again the other first graders, I could feel the pent-up energy being channeled into my legs like rocket fuel-ready to be set ablaze. As I waited for the starting gun to fire, all I could think about was speed. With a loud *CRACK*, I left the line only to be passed up by almost all the other runners. It was that day that I set speed above all else in my mind - I never wanted to be in second place. This had led to a great level of efficiency, and a deficit in the patience department.

I’ve always struggled with patience. Since I was a kid, I can remember always rushing to finish my chores, homework, and anything that required any prolonged mental attention. In college, as I walked from class to class I would rebel against the sidewalks and beeline it straight to my next destination for the sake of “efficiency” and “speed”, and I was proud of it.

Since I started working on Swayy back in 2015, patience, as well as speed, have been something of a “frenemy”; the journey has been filled with a whole lot of hold-ups and has forced me to be patient due to the mishaps and unforeseen issues along the way. In 2018, we thought we had settled on a US-based manufacturer when, last minute, that didn’t work. We went to Asia and found two factories, one to make the Eira and one the Premus. Months passed and we lost the supposed Eira manufacturer (insert required patience and a prolonged time frame). We found another manufacturer last minute and were able to send out product - late, but rather that than never, right? Fast forward to summer 2019 and once again, patience came a’knocking. In late August I got a call from our Eira manufacture that went pretty much like this: “Hi Seth, I uh… I don’t know how to say this, but we are going bankrupt effectively immediately.” I think we can all imagine how stressful that phone call was, but alas, it called for patience and again, abatement of progress.

But this journey has also been a friend. When we landed our first real professional manufacturer, it taught me so much about how important it was to go back over your work once, twice, and even five times to make sure all is correct. When it comes to a bill of materials that has more than forty individual parts and pieces, having the discipline to love details and curtail the love for speed for a moment has been my greatest ally because after a product hits the production line, the slightest mistake, down to one misplaced stitch, will be repeated the entire way through.

Similar to a past experience where I went to China as a last-ditch effort, this past September I once again found myself aboard a plane to Shanghai where we would work with our Premus manufacturer, Huilang, to see if they could pick up the slack that our bankrupted manufacturer left us. Once arriving in China, things moved rather quickly. We were in a different city almost every night, meeting with the factory workers, visiting new and previous suppliers, and building plans for the next year. My goal was simple: go to China, build relationships, and see if Huilang could make both the Eira V2 and Premus V2.

What is the V2? They are new products we have been working on this past year and were almost ready to release right up until the bankruptcy. We had to retrain a new set of people to make not only a new product (the Eira) but to make a better version of it… patience anyone?

Working in China is honestly one of my favorite things though because it pushes me on every front. Communication across language barriers, understanding cultural cues, sifting through all the noise to act on the most pressing problems, these are the things that fuel my passion for building a business. Best of all, it teaches me patience.

So here we are in Oct 2019. We are behind schedule and it feels like new issues surface each day, but things are also moving forward. There are even a few miracles in the works that could shift us into a more sustainable business model. Even if, for some reason, the deal goes up in smoke, I’m happy to know that this entire experience, all the ups, and downs, are teaching me patience. You see, this virtue is one of the key factors to success because it predetermines so much of how effectively I am are able to communicate, plan, and execute. So here’s a tribute to the unknown, foggy territory, for it shall always train us into the people we are meant to be if we just. have. patience.