November marks the one-year anniversary of that desperate moment that proceeds success. Only hindsight makes this statement true as failure is also proceeded by the same desperate moment. It was a time where hope was challenged, success was no longer on the horizon, yet we kept holding on. We didn’t quit.
People ask me how we did it. How did we hold on when others started to give up on us? I found it fascinating that some people appeared to get a perverse sense of comfort from watching us struggle. I also found eternal gratefulness to those who guided us and stood beside us during those challenging days.
But when it came down to it, it was really about every relentless inch. We had no idea if the things we tried would move us closer to success or perhaps take us backwards. We just knew one thing – we had to wake up every day and do something. The small things added up and were manageable to action. Those inches demonstrated to ourselves, and the people we needed to reach, that we were relentless. We weren’t going away.
My co-founder would always tell me that we could do 10 more push-ups. And we did. He would always have these crazy ass creative ideas that would immediately send me into exhaustion but I knew he was brilliant and, if I executed on his ideas, we would get one more inch closer.
One of our favourite rituals that I enjoy sharing is that we would toast our week’s accomplishments every Friday late in the afternoon over chicken wings and beer at our neighbourhood pub. Some weeks we had awesome things to celebrate while other times we simply celebrated the fact that we cycled our butts into the office through rain and snow. Reminding ourselves of every little inch and ending the week on a positive note was nothing short of powerful. It was a recipe for success.
We believed, never gave up and hustled for every inch. So here we are today…one year on and life is pretty okay.
Author: Whitney Rockley, Co-founders & Managing Partner, McRock Capital