A Million Dreams for the World We’re Gonna Make
Why Startup Employees Should Watch The Greatest Showman
“Through the dark, through the door / Through where no one’s been before / But it feels like home”
Barely ten minutes into The Greatest Showman (released January 31, 2018 in the Philippines), I had to be handed tissue to wipe the tears pouring over my face because of the first full song of the film. To be fair, this is nothing new to me (I CRY ALL THE TIME). It was only when the credits rolled that I realized a reason for my non-stop crying for two hours: I was unloading all the startup feels I’ve been keeping in for the past couple of weeks. I was coming from a place of absolute exhaustion, yet I walked out of the cinema filled with renewed strength and determination.
If you’re living the startup life like me, you’d know what I’m talking about: periods of doubt, fatigue, and resignation (not necessarily in the employment sense) are part of regular programming. I know People Operations teams worry about that all the time, trying to keep energies and hopes high for the company. This is a huge challenge; I personally know how difficult that is to do, and yet this musical about American oddities did the trick.
The Greatest Showman left me recharged and ready for more tough days at the office. Now, I don’t know if I’m just another oddity or if it has the same effect on fellow startup employees, but I wanted to share why this film could be meaningful for anyone who’s in the same state I came from.
A Startup CEO to Rally Behind: P.T. Barnum
Here’s a man with an out-of-the-box idea. Here’s a man who puts his name on the line just to have a shot at seeing his vision come to life. Hugh Jackman’s character (P.T. Barnum) is a CEO if I’ve ever seen one.
Charismatic and inspiring, he personally recruits each outcast to join his ragtag team. He makes them believe in themselves, that they have the potential to be more, and that they play an important part in the world he wants to create. Startup leaders are influential forces in people operations and business development. Barnum even uses this to woo Zac Efron’s character (Phillip Carlyle) to help expand his reach.
Listen to: Come Alive, The Other Side
Startup CEOs aren’t perfect though. We see this when Barnum falls into the trap of getting distracted, forgetting his reasons for even starting in the first place, and leaving too much up to his junior partner Carlyle. We also see how the company reacts to this: the circus troupe feels ignored and a bit abandoned by their ringleader, like they’re left to fend for themselves.
As a startup leader and as a startup employee, I take comfort in Barnum’s redemption arc in the end. Be it in the form of an immaterial success or in the form of losing everything they’ve built, a big shift always happens to make startup CEOs like Barnum come around and come back home.
Listen to: From Now On
The Greatest Startup Story
If you’ve ever had a taste of startup success, you’ve probably gotten drunk off feeling unstoppable. There really is nothing like knowing that an idea you only merely believed in is coming into fruition because of your hard work. You were in the thick of things, and it’s slowly starting to pay off.
My heart was so full when I saw this happen for the characters in the film. They had simple reasons for joining the troupe, but they got more than what they gambled for. They put themselves out there in a world with so many unknowns, in a world that’s pitted against them. It’s the greatest story ever told: from small and humble beginnings, the underdogs grew to be giants… to be the stars of their own show, spotlights and all.
Listen to: The Greatest Show
The struggles Barnum’s circus had to go through were so familiar. How do you manage critics who think you’re a sham? How about financiers who don’t believe you’re capable of generating revenue? How do you keep your show interesting, keep your audiences engaged? How do you appeal to a bigger market? How do you pick yourself up from losing everything — resources, trust, vision, and hope? I thoroughly enjoyed how the film portrayed (but not fully tackled) these trials because they were on the encouraging note. We live the opposite of a happy path in the startup scene, but it’s nice to be reminded that it’s possible.
Another familiar conflict addressed in The Greatest Showman is the thirst for more success. Once you’ve seen how possible it is for a dream to come true, you start wanting to test how many more you can make come true. This isn’t such a bad thing for startups; in fact, this is how most startups grow and scale. How the movie approached this spoke to me because there’s a difference between going after something that doesn’t feel loyal to your reason for starting in the first place and something that does. That part of the film, even the song that represents it, felt incredibly uncomfortable for me. There’s anxiety that comes from being scared that you can’t do it and there’s anxiety that comes from the gut feel that what you’re after isn’t right. With only three years in the startup scene, I already know that uneasiness too well; and I’ve learned how to tell the two fears apart.
Listen to: Never Enough
There is promise in attaining more than what you set out to achieve, and that can get addicting. We see how Barnum, Carlyle, and the rest of the circus troupe are driven by this throughout the movie. They do what they do for their own different reasons, but they’re all tied together by just one great success story.
Marching On To The Beat You Drum
Most startups have an image of a changed world they want to help create. In the movie’s case, it’s a world where the imperfect and peculiar are celebrated. Change like that takes perseverance and hard work. That’s what it took for Barnum (who took odd jobs in the opening montage), but it was worth it for his family. The world he wanted to build for his wife and kids was enough to keep him awake and going.
For his band of oddities, however, it took more than just that dedication; it involved getting over their own insecurities and putting themselves out there. But they also believed in that world that they could help shape. That shared hope was worth the inevitable opposition.
Startup life may sometimes feel like living an “us against the world” story. There will be resistance from the market, the critics, the government, and even from within. There will be doubts. There will be friction. There will be white flags. But there will also be a glimpse of the vision you’ve fought hard to see. There will be a reason to keep going.
Listen to: A Million Dreams
In the movie, this developed from showing how the oddities rallied behind Barnum’s vision to uncovering how they continued to because of their vision for themselves. Though it’s true that a major factor for anyone to join a startup is “The Dream” behind it, there are a million other individual dreams keeping it alive and running.
Finding a good startup to join is just like looking for a soulmate. I believe in this even more now that I’ve seen people come and go over the years. Aside from believing in the same crazy dreams, another important factor is matching your brand of crazy with the entire band’s. I know what it feels like to work for a startup that’s not a perfect match: it’s a constant battle to prove yourself, to prove you fit and deserve to be there. I also know what it feels like to be with your startup soulmate: it’s not perfect either. There’s an ache that makes you want to be a better person, but it’s accompanied by the reassurance that you can let yourself shine through your work and it’s appreciated. It’s like finding your home.
Listen to: This is Me
The characters in The Greatest Showman have found their startup soulmate, their home. You see them fight to keep it, not just because of “The Dream”, but because of what it meant for them: a place where they can be themselves. It’s a lovely sentiment and a great reminder for those moments (and if you’re in the startup scene, you know what I mean) where you feel like nothing’s worth fighting for anymore.
It’s not easy being in the startup scene. To be fair, I don’t think anyone ever said it was. Startup leaders and employees alike have very personal stakes invested in “The Dream” and it takes an emotional toll. It’s exhausting. We take beatings backstage, but we put on smiles under the spotlight.
Watching The Greatest Showman is a good break from that. Sit in the darkness for two hours, shed a tear (or more) for your startup journey so far, and march on with new anthems to get you through the rest of the way back home.
