Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Hello and welcome to another episode of Growth Bites. Today we’ll talk about what you can do when the going gets tough: when revenues are down, employees are quitting, your business is in flames – this happens to everyone.
- Even though you know the reward will pay off at the end of the day, dealing with these things can be lonely and depressing. [01:36]
- It all comes down to not giving up, but what do you do when you need motivation? [01:46]
- When things get difficult for me, I visit a post by Alexis Ohanian of Reddit called “Keep Calm and Carry On: What You Didn’t Know About the Reddit Story.” [02:06]
- When things get tough, this post reminds me that things can be a lot worse, and that things really aren’t that bad. Compared to this post, a lot of really bad things haven’t happened to me yet. It allows me to get back up and get back to work. [02:47]
- The story behind the post is that his girlfriend had a terrible accident and was constantly in the hospital. A couple months later, his dog died. Then, his mother is hospitalized with brain cancer at age 51. [03:46]
- “If you’ve worked with the spineless, you know how frustrating it can be to deal with their poisonous helplessness — something that’s only heightened in a startup where the most important thing you can do is not give up. And you’d better fucking believe that when you come home to a mother battling brain cancer and a father spending every waking hour taking care of her and running his own business, you don’t complain, you don’t cower, and you most certainly don’t quit.” [05:57]
- “She fought for far longer than any doctor expected and died on March 15, 2008. But I got to prove that her 25 years of wholeheartedly supporting me weren’t in vain — you can bet that had a lot to do with my feelings about selling reddit.” [06:28]
- This whole post is a reminder that shit will happen and will wake me up when I’m feeling down and give me energy. [07:04]
Resources from this Episode:
- Keep Calm and Carry On: What You Didn’t Know About the Reddit Story by Alexis Ohanian
Leave some feedback:
- What should I talk about next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
- Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here.
- Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes.
- Get the non-iTunes RSS feed
Connect with Eric Siu: