Reflections on the not for profit entrepreneurial journey

Sometimes you have to look back to push forward.

I have been involved in the Oregon entrepreneurial ecosystem in some capacity for nearly 15(!) years. Time spent volunteering at OEN (PubTalk chair, marketing chair, vice chair, and board chair), Governor’s small business advisory group, PIE mentor, access to capital discussions, and finally launching Built Oregon. All while meeting and connecting as many people in the state as I could.

I was recently reflecting on what we’ve accomplished at Built Oregon for an update email to kick off 2019. But I was also pondering what we had failed to do. Thoughts popping into my head as to why some things didn’t happen. Then a normal catch up meeting with my Built cofounder Rick Turoczy led to an offhand comment that sparked this post.

Rick mentioned that when I first proposed the idea for the Built Up Festival he — and others — said it couldn’t be done or that I should think smaller and establish lower goals. I ignored those comments (To a point. I did reduce my initial attendance target so that it was lower than 1000 people.) and dove in to launch the first one. Naively and confidently.

And that’s what Rick’s comment highlighted for me. That my original attitude towards the Festival might be missing in regards to some of the new Built objectives we want to accomplish.

It was something I hadn’t even considered, but made total sense.

It’s easy (ish) to pick a thing and focus on that one project in order to, in all honesty, see if you can actually pull off something meaningful. However, to keep that same belief, passion, drive, and to some degree, naivety, around all the other crazy ideas once you’ve achieved some level of “success” is challenging.

When you do something nobody thinks can be pulled off, there is little risk. Anything that is accomplished can be considered a success. The bar is low.

But once you’ve done it once, there are expectations. The thoughts of risk/reward trickle into your head. The idea that you’ve built (pun intended) something of value means you have to be more careful. The bar has to be raised. There’s Aa sense that people are now expecting perfection and success going forward. In creeps paralysis by analysis. A constant re-thinking around ideas.

Will it work? Who will pay for it? How will this benefit the community? What happens if it fails? How do we define success?

What Rick made me realize is that I had become paralyzed with the fear of failure. We’ve created this brand, Built Oregon. People know about it now. There is a sense of it being somewhat impactful to the community.

How do we not fuck it up? And by having that thinking trickle into my head….I’m fucking up.

It’s not that we aren’t doing good things at Built. The amazing Built Board members and volunteers have put time and resources on getting the organization to this point. Their altruistic attitude to try and build something impactful and support other consumer brands is not only infectious, but also inspiring. It’s the reason we try and execute on new ideas.

But what I’ve come to realize, for right or wrong, is that Built Oregon is primarily my crazy startup idea. An entrepreneurial journey to create a not for profit organization that actually does good work, and has an innovative core that helps to nurture a sense of optimism that anything is possible if you just try, learn, evolve, and be unabashedly honest and transparent with the community.

And as with any entrepreneurial leap, no matter the organizational structure, little steps of success can sometimes be beat back by the fear of failure.

So while looking back at the past year’s accomplishments from Bridges to the Festival, there is still — if I’m honest with myself—the sense that I’ve been risk averse of trying bold new ideas because that thought of failure is in my head. That determined naivety that I had in year one of the Festival has slowly dimmed. Replaced by too…many….thoughts.

I think it’s a feeling that many entrepreneurs get in their heads. This sense that you don’t want to let people down or how something just might affect your brand.

• The nation’s first not for profit consumer product accelerator — Ooh, we better make sure everything is dialed in perfectly before launching something that we know will be an experiment that evolves anyways.
• Short term loan fund for product companies — Man, funds are hard have you thought of losses, reserves, diligence, operating expenses, what gap you are filling, who will fund it, how will you sustain it, how will you build the pipeline, on and on? So we end up in the same access to capital gap conversations over and over.
• Storytelling and news resource — Who will have time to write those stories or do the podcast? How will we make sure the content is of the highest quality? Who will sponsor it?
• Fundraising campaign — Do people really want to support what we are doing? What is the message that resonates the most with them? Do we apply for this grant or that funding resource?
• Build a brand — EVERYONE is making a trucker hat or hoodie or stickers. Why should we even try to add our name to the mix? Will people even care that we are trying to source as much as we can through Oregon based suppliers and using some of the profits to help build a loan fund for consumer brands in the state?

So many ideas and thoughts that the Built crew has discussed over the past year and yet we’ve only done a few of them. Why?

Resources and time are certainly factors. Being a volunteer organization has its limitations for sure. But coming from my perspective at least there is this feeling of not wanting to fail at anything we try — a little voice that leads to doubt, and ultimately procrastination, which is a winning combo….am I right?

Looking back to look forward got me thinking about the brand we have built to date; one that has always been focused on putting the community, founders, and employees of the product companies first. Therefore, if we put the community first — in everything — then why am I hesitant to try new and bold things?

Last year we launched the Bridges program with the Portland Mercado, APANO, NAYA PDX and Soul District to help connect entrepreneurs of color with retail opportunities. We are using our connections to build bridges and lower barriers.

Was the program perfectly executed? Nope. Could we have launched and run it better? Yep.

But did it have a positive outcome that we can evolve into something more impactful? Absolutely.

Two Board members launched our first “The Present is Female” event during the Festival, which is leading into a more concrete program called She Flies in 2019 that will include office hours, quarterly gatherings, and a focus during this year’s Festival.

Did they have an idea of the incredible engagement and feedback that one event would garner? To some extent, yes. But ultimately they simply saw a need and took the leap — always with the community focus at the core.

We can’t let the fear of failure prevent us from trying new things. This is something I’m really carrying into 2019. It’s time to work on ideas, big and small, and see which ones can make a difference and then scale those up. Some will fail — including ones we think will be core aspects of the organization.

But the success will be in the learning and doing.

Do or do not, there is no try — Yoda

Let the force be with us in 2019 as build our alliance of consumer product companies and supporters.