Stories

Some might call it a coincidence that Washington won a championship right after we moved to town. We call it fate.

It’s weird. It’s weird when you take the chance to look back at how far you’ve come and see how much has changed. It’s weird when the complete free-for-all transforms into processes and structure. It’s weird growing up.

We knew we were going to be stretched a little thin but we’re young! And have energy! And can work our way through anything!

It worked pretty well when launching K.C. It should work again, right?

My mind raced back to California. Jumping on the fast-track to corporate success sounded like the right move. The sunny, 75 degree weather and lure of easy west coast living was too good to turn down. But for some reason I did.

Focusing on the negatives is too simple — the tough part is admitting it. But there is just as much joy in the the failures as there is in the solutions. Once we acknowledged that simple truth, it changed everything.

We’ve found we aren’t great at watering and taking care of our own plants, so an office dog is out of the question.

The alarm bells began going off loud and clear. What went wrong? What do we do now? Did we even have a viable business? The immediate signs were pointing towards no.

There is no quick cure. There is no miracle algorithm. There’s no one move that’s going to bring success. Clear, patient, grinding work is the variable in success.

The anxiety from a roller coaster’s first drop was how we felt about our last semester of college. We strapped in and slowly lurched our way towards graduation. But our roller coaster wasn’t already built; we were laying down track as we plummeted to the ground. It’s safe to say we were a little unprepared.

After only 10 seconds, our confidence was gone. We were stuck in the middle of an awkward silence with an audience waiting for someone to do something. We were being forced to go off script before we even said a word. Standing there completely taken aback, we shared hurried glances at each other trying to silently figure out what our opening line was. Our rehearsals was somewhere other than our brains.