Why Sustainable Success is based on Values and Communities.

Over the last months we’ve been scaling our startup FUN WITH BALLS (yes, the name is intentional) on a global scale while onboarding amazing partners on all continents, negotiating with governing bodies and governmental organizations and maneuvering a lot of personal politics and in the process. 

Being a strong believer in the importance of personal relationships and values, we always focused on building a strong eco system to share our vision and success all over the world and welcomed partners to join us on this journey. After all, we're in sports and what greater value is there that we can learn from sports than values like fairness when building scalable businesses? But as it goes with any optimistic approach to things in life there are always some downsides to this and it is absolutely certain that some people will try to take advantage of that. In our case it was our UK distributor that reached out to us early last year to then reveal in October that they've been working on an exact copy of our product, games, marketing strategy and even documentation while playing the good game.

This lead me to writing this article about why I believe that strong ethics very much matter when you're in for the long game in business. And being a crazy optimistic, I'd like to rather focus on the learnings and benefits in this article.

Values (and how to keep them in today’s time)

Having started my first company Visual Drugstore at the age of 20 I had to learn a lot of things to have a successful company. I had great ideas that I wanted to bring into the world. But having no financial backing, mentor or help, one thing became very obvious to me at a very early stage. People needed to trust me to be able to pull off all these moonshot projects I pitched. Coming from a complicated family situation, I also had made a promise to myself early to never compromise my values and morals for quick cash. Over the years on the advertising and nightlife world, the temptations to cross that line are always more than present and I think I could have made a bulk of money over the last several years crossing that line. For me, this inner compass even made me abandon this world for something that I believe to be more meaningful, but that’s a story for another article. Even today, the strong relationships I built based on mutual trust are the key to our success.

Values x Actions x Time = Reputation

Reputation might be a very much overlooked element of today's world. We live in a time where the way we see ourselves can be blurred sometimes. Even worse it might differ much how other people see us and some people might not even care. In a time where political and social polarization increases every day, it's easy to be at ease at all time if you tell yourself the right stories and many stories today also suggest that a strong "not giving a sh*t" attitude might succeed. Trump is president after all. I think the key element here is in which group your reputation is established and how. No question that Trump (just to stay with that example) might be revered as reputable in his peer group, but how about the other side of the spectrum? Reputation is not a PR thing, it's the overall feeling that people take away from all interactions with you.

Community is Everything

Everything that was ever achieved by humans came form one simple thing - the ability to collaborate in communities with a shared goal and values. If you want to go quick, you might be moral flexibility and just going for fast cash, but if you go far, you’ll need a strong community. This is particularly important when being on the forefront of new technologies and disruption. These areas are normally very small and connected communities. We felt that very much the during last few weeks based on the vast amount of partners, clients and even our direct competitors (which we very much respect and love their products) reaching out to us, offering to help, providing guidance and positive feelings about what happened in the UK. This was an amazing and positive thing for us, especially since we've been putting a big part of our work into building very personal relationships over the last four years.

Thanks a million for that ????

The Value of Meaning 

Let’s be honest here for a second. Yes, business is good and we all need money to survive. But the main thing is the why behind what you do, and today it’s becoming more important than ever. If your reputation is the key to building great things, the meaning behind it is the foundation you build it on. Of course, there are still a lot of people that will follow you on a “mission to cash”, but these rarely lead to sustainability and a larger value for our communities. But with our society advancing and information being omnipresent, these "bad" models tend to have a shorter life span every day. Looking at all the stories about fraud and people cashing in on the cost of others, we will not get far having only the accumulation of wealth being our driving force. 

My driver was always creativity and that anyone can create amazing things. In recent years I found that I needed more than just creating beautiful things, so today we’re solving a real problem of our time - in a creative way. So find whatever you think your mission is, pair it with a good and sustainable model and change the world without having to cross any moral lines.

Parrots are Easy to Spot (Normally) 

Having said that, it is obvious how that can also lead to others using the same mission without having the values or reputation once they see it works for somebody. It's normally very easy to spot, if actions actually follow words and when missions sound particularly similar.

Having worked in so many industries all around the world and trying to determine the reasons behind questionable steps, I always wondered why someone would go through all the trouble. The world is full of potential for everybody, so why try to take something from somebody instead of coming up with your own? It might be easier at first, creating your own legacy might even lead to something much bigger. After all, the world thrives from the innovators.

Your own biggest enemy 

Yes, cash is the main driver when people lose morals, but I’d actually argue that in a majority of times it’s our own ego that pulls the trigger. Jealousy, wanting to be successful and adored, greed and our own narcissism is what normally get in our way and we should always strive be aware of it. Apart form the long lasting damage this might create, most of the times, the value from acting on their behalf is very short sighted unless you’re extremely lucky. In the end, all business normally is a marathon, not a sprint. You might win taking a shortcut (like obtaining privileged information under false pretenses) before you’re caught, but you’ll never build a reputation of being a good runner when all eyes are on you. 

So don‘t look away! 

And this goes for both on the outside and the inside. Fortunately we live in times where most bad things make it to the surface at some point, but it always takes bold people like you and me to call them out and direct attention to what’s wrong. But apart from the “see something, say something” aspect we should all pay close attention to our inner self. Be aware that most of these things start within a person by somehow excusing or explaining a morally flawed action to someone’s self to create a better feeling and just continue. Challenge yourself, get a mentor or a coach or even ask your direct opposition about what they think about your actions to determine what people outside of your circle think. In the end, our own groups will always tell you you're right, maybe even with the most questionable actions. That's why its called ethics, not opinion, even today.

The Sum of all Things 

Most of the times we meet a new person we just have very limited time to get to know each other. But building meaningful relationships still depends on a deep understanding of each other’s goals, views and values. This is where your reputation and your actions in your community come in. It starts with little things like how long you take to reply to an email that might not be in your best interest but the other persons. How kind or open you are to helping others and how much you honor commitments you made once things change. All these points build an overall feeling that cannot always be linked to one specific action, that’s why it’s such an important indicator for our society to hinge our trust on this collection of actions and feelings. And no, just denying facts at a later point won't help you, sorry.

In the End, the Customer Always Finds Out

This was actually a very nice piece of advice of one of our "competitors" we spoke with the other day. We've been never afraid of people joining our industry and market; I even encourage entrepreneurs to do so when being on stage and we even help other companies that might become our future competitors. After all, the better product will win and that's fair gain. As long as business ethics are followed and no dirty tricks are played, we can even have great fun in that process, a little competition never hurt. But rest assured that clients are intelligent people and can connect the dots pretty well as we learned recently.

Last But Not Least: Stay Positive!

This incident has been very annoying to us obviously. Having somebody prey on our trust always creates bad feelings. But since the very early days of my business I always refuse to let that change the open and positive way I approach the world. Because once you start distrusting people form the start and approach new relationships this way, you lose the most valuable thing at all, a positive and open-minded approach to new things.

In the end of the day we all want to create awesome products that make people active and fight the problems of our society in a sustainable way. For that, a clear conscience and a good night sleep is the best basis to rock with real creativity and a great team.

P.S.:

The whole story which led me to writing this article is very visible on social media, especially on Linkedin and we'd like to thank for all the positive messages, help and uplifting words of the sports tech community showing us that things like that are far from being acceptable. If you should have any questions or if we can help in any way to avoid you having the same experience, don't hesitate to reach out.