About The Book

I finally decided that my path for this project would be to build a community around entrepreneurs and stories of failing.  I want to make all of my essays available here on the site available free of charge, but will eventually be packaging up the essays into an ebook and bound edition as well.

If you agree with a post, think I am crazy, or have a relevant story to share, hopefully you will contribute to this community.  I am looking to my extended network for entrepreneurs and VCs to adopt an essay and add commentary.

What is it that keeps people from starting their own business?  Money?  Nope.  Lack of connections?  Not that either.  Failure.  People fear failure.  There are no shortages of platitudes about the importance of failure on the road to success.  Yet, when we look to our bookshelves for guidance on how to proceed, on how to be successful, how often are we treated to stories of failure?  That which we do read is often times a story fraught with hardship and discouragement, but seldom are we treated to the many ways of failing.

Is it fair to say, then, that those who have their stories of success written in books for all to consume are those who have never borne witness to failure?  Likely not.  Success sells.  Why read about the man who stuck out instead of the one who hit the game winning home run?  Why read about the man who bankrupted multiple companies instead of the one who made a million dollars with one?  Simple.  Failure is a great teacher, and the lessons carry from generation to generation.

“The Failing Point” is the first book to embrace and chronicle the failures of one man on the road to success, and allow readers a view into the journey more than the sanitized destination.

This is a commmunity book for entrepreneurs and business leaders filled with lessons learned over a career working for some of the greatest companies and leaders, and companies and leaders of whom you’ve never heard.  There are many books which attempt to lay out the steps the author thinks you should take to make you a millionaire or an overnight success.  This is not that book.

This book is a set of essays broken down into the following chapters:

• Getting Started
• Building the Team
• Building Product
• Raising Capital
• Making Money
• Running the Business
• External Relations
• Customer Relations
• When Things Go Really Wrong

Each of the essays will have a title which completes the following sentence: “Under no circumstances should you…”

They say you learn the most from your mistakes.  If that is true, this project is a trove of learning for the reader.  Hopefully the communnity can avoid failure and some of the common mistakes I, and many I have known, have made along the way.

I have a post about why I was creating this community book The Failing Point.